Chicago Bulls: They Get Respect, but Where Are the Props?
A Rose-less Chicago Bulls team dug deep into their energy reserve and played a high-octane game to beat and even the season score against the Miami Heat.
In the long-run, the game has very little indication of what will happen in a potential post-season match-up, but it did shed more light on the parity of these two clubs, which some would have you believe is still cavernous.
The fascination with the Miami Heat is understandable: never in league history has there been so much premier talent consolidated on one team.
The problem is that so many are blinded by the light shone by said stars that they overlook the things that not only expose them as flawed, but makes them downright beatable.
This partiality is particularly noticeable when it comes to comparisons between the Bulls and the Heat.
If you watch any nationally televised game and listen to the panel debate the league’s top teams in each conference, Miami (currently in second place) is still the team to beat in the East.
From a literal standpoint, that is true: the Miami Heat are last season’s conference champions and, by default, are the reigning champs.
But that same logic is not applied to the Western Conference.
On the other side of the Mississippi, the Oklahoma City Thunder is considered to be the team to beat even though the Dallas Mavericks are last year’s conference and league champions.
So why are the rules different for Miami?
Why can’t Chicago, who’s been on a tear again this season, be discussed in the same vain?
It seems like the reasoning is based on the following postulation: Three superstars is more than one superstar; therefore, if a team has three superstars then they are better than a team that has only one superstar.
Regardless of whatever circumstances the Bulls and the Heat find themselves in, the Heat are always regarded as the superior team.
When watching the halftime analysis on ESPN of the most recent contest, analysts Chris Broussard and Jon Barry spoke as if the Bulls were playing well but the Heat would turn it up in the second half and put this lower-tier team in their place.
Well, Miami did turn it up a notch, but so did Chicago.
Two of the Heat’s big three dazzled, but the rest of their team fizzled.
The Bulls had six players who scored in double figures, and their leading scorer was John Lucas III, a third string point guard who got ample minutes only because Derrick Rose was out.
The most glaring inequity could be found in the fact that the Bulls’ bench outscored Miami’s bench 56-15; even if you take away Lucas’s 24 points, the Bulls still have a 32-15 advantage.
That summation is actually the biggest, most evidential counter-argument against the Heat’s media- pitched preeminence: teams versus stars.
Miami’s star power was not enough to best the more complete Dallas team in last year’s NBA Finals.
This season they have shown that they have trouble with those same kinds of teams, especially those who shoot well from beyond the arc.
The Bulls, on the other hand, have demonstrated that depth and completeness are enough to overcome most any adversity.
Substantial sitting spells by key players have had little effect on Chicago’s ability to keep winning; in fact, the only real speculation that can be debated at this point is how good would they be by now if these injuries were minimal.
Chicago’s problem, though, is that they don’t play into the media hype machine.
Derrick Rose remains reserved when in front of the press. He and the other Bulls players always talk in terms of team when it comes to success and failures.
This collective demeanor is probably the biggest reason why the clamor surrounding Chicago is always at such a minimum, but without all of this attention, the Bulls can go on winning games without the distraction of too much fanfare.
By the time the playoffs roll around, their performance and positioning will force everyone else to sit up and take notice.
No one in the media actually disrespects the Bulls; they just seem to have a hard time heaping accolades upon them like they do the other marquee teams.
It does seem though, that the Bulls don’t seem to mind much. They seem perfectly fine with earning their props the old-fashioned way.
