Why We Deserve to Make the Playoffs

I'd like to consider myself a normal here after reading BaB for so long, but I've only just started posting for a few months now so unfortunately that is not the case. So, in my first fanpost here I aspire to not come up with a way to trade Deng for Bosh or try to tell everyone that Taj is the next Tim, but to attempt to get a lot of you to believe something you should know, that the Bulls do in fact, despite some hideous losses, deserve to make the playoffs or really just explain my opinion of why we deserve to do so. Whether you believe they should belong in the 8th seed or 5th, just know that the Bulls should be in there somewhere.

The Bulls were obviously a better team before the trade deadline as we all know. With names like Tyrus Thomas and John Salmons on our roster, we sounded a bit more intimidating and better than we actually were. In reality, Salmons was retarded and Tyrus was benched in favor of the bestrookieevercreated, Taj Gibson. (Well, I'd like to take a moment to really applaud Taj's play the second half of the season. I guess that I, along with others, have pointed out his flaws much more than he deserved, and while he's older, he is still a rookie and has been playing some good basketball lately. If he wasn't starting over Tyrus and taking all of his minutes at the time I think we would all love Taj much more, but the sheer fact that he didn't deserve a starting spot over TT but still played over him regardless ultimately ruined what ever bit of praise a lot of us could give him, which wasn't really his fault to begin with.)

Anyway, after adding Flip, Hakim, Law, and VANILLA SKY(!), we were obviously a lot worse. We started out with 4 wins in 5 games but those wins came against the Minny, Philly, Indiana, and Portland. Surprisingly we lost to the Wizards but beat Portland, but regardless, those wins were nice at first but after those five games came the monster 10 game losing streak that looked like it destroyed any chance we had in the postseason.

During that huge losing streak we were without our second best player, Joakim Noah. The loss wasn't as huge as it sounded though, as Noah hadn't been close to his self ever since the January 23rd game in Houston, where he missed due to the rise of his foot injury. We were winning games without him after that and for some reason it seemed like his loss wouldn't be as big as it has been. Not to mention, for some games during that streak we missed our 2nd leading scorer and one of our better rebounders, Luol Deng. Granted, I'm not as big of a fan of Deng as most, but I'm not a big enough idiot to say he doesn't matter to our team. Without him our second option is either Flip Murray and Kirk Hinrich, and frankly, I'd rather have Deng shoot the ball 5473294 times more than either of the two. And even our precious gem missed a few games during that streak. Rose is a huge difference maker but we probably would have still lost the game if he were healthy and played.

Before the arrival of the delightful foursome, our record was 27-26, not great at all. After the Portland game, 31-27. Nothing spectacular. But keep in mind this is WITHOUT our second best player. I honestly believe that a healthy Bulls team is better than a healthy Bucks, Heat, Bobcats, and Raptors team. And I'd like to think if we were healthy through even the second half of the season, with Vanilla Sky and crew, we'd be either 5th or 6th seed in the East.

The main point of this post isn't to try to use statistics to convince anyone who thinks otherwise, it's the fact that we've dealt with more key injuries than any other team (eh, okay maaaaaybe Portland) in the league. That we're even close to getting the 8th seed is crazy, considering we went on a 10 game losing streak and such a crucial time. Whether it's Toronto absolutely sucking, the Bulls rising once again, or the awfulness of the Eastern Conference I have no idea, but I prefer to think it's a combination of the three. But the fact of the matter is, at a point in this season we were in the 6th seed and seemed like a lock to make the playoffs if no significant injuries occurred. We deserved it too, and hell, Rose deserved all of it leading this team the entire time. Don't let the losing streak and tough losses blind you from that fact we've had huge injuries that nearly no other team has had to deal with.

All of this is more opinion based than a post using statistics to prove a point, but this is my first post, so I think I'll improve and find ways to incorporate statistics into posts as I go on, but I'm glad that I'm not coming up with ridiculous trade ideas or stupid ways to try to get LeBron to join us. But, more importantly, I'm looking forward to what all of you think about whether the Bulls should be in the playoffs or not.