After posting their first undefeated preseason in years, and Chicago's MVP, Derrick Rose, back and looking like the player he was during his MVP season, except BETTER, the Chicago Bulls were looking like the team that was going to topple Lebron and the Miami Heat.
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| The Chicago Bulls could be celebrating their first NBA Championship of the post-Jordan era if they make the right moves this summer. |
Except that between their coach, former Coach of the Year, Tom Thibodeau, and their newly minted Defensive Player of the Year, Joakim Noah, the Chicago Bulls are the toughest team to beat in the NBA because they can make a game ugly with the best defense in the NBA, and you can't defend against heart and hustle.
If only they could get through the regular season without injuries to their key players and had a second option on offense.
Instead, this is the second year in a row that the Indiana Pacers played the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals, and if you bothered to watch any of it, you would see two defensively lazy teams without a heart between them.
Indiana came out of the gate HOT and by the All-Star Break, they were within sight of being on pace for the Chicago Bulls NBA record setting regular season record of 72-10. But a catastophic second half to the regular season nearly gave the Heat the top seed in the Eastern Conference, and it was later revealed that the Pacers were in disarray as a team, with stories of practice and locker room fights involving Evan Turner and soon to be free agent, Lance Stephenson. You can chalk up their elimination to not playing with a common purpose.
Miami essentially played the entire regular season with only two of the big three and because the Eastern Conference is so weak, they nearly got the best record in the East. And now, they took Dwayne Wade out of the ziploc bag for the run to the NBA Finals.
You can't tell me that if the Bulls had one Carmelo Anthony and half of the minimum wage vets that ended up on the Los Angeles Clippers that the Chicago Bulls wouldn't be in the NBA Finals right now.
Just remember how many championships Doc Rivers won as a coach without Tom Thibodeau. None.
The Chicago Bulls are a carefully assembled, well-coached group that, in the absence of Rose, lacks only one thing. A dominant offensive player that can carry the load when the game is close in the final minutes.
Carmelo Anthony would give them a closer, and when DRose returns, they would provide more options that would have to be guarded in those final crucial seconds of the game, making each of them more effective.
In the Eastern Conference, the Chicago Bulls are one dominant offensive player away from being in the NBA Finals on an annual basis.
Instead, fate has us watching a floundering Indiana Pacers team being the only speed bump to the Miami Heat on their way to the NBA Finals.
If the front office can get it done this summer as I wrote in my previous article, mark my words, Carmelo will have the Chicago Bulls in the 2015 NBA Finals.
Do you think signing Carmelo Anthony this summer will get the Chicago Bulls into the NBA Finals? Why or why not? What moves do you think the front office needs to make? Tell us in the comments below!
