I've been out of town the past few days, and during that time was in a state of blissful ignorance in terms of the Bulls on-court performance. After reading about them (and yes, I went through both entertaining game threads), it seems like they just crapped the bed against a far superior Spurs team, and pulled the Boylan Sabotage Special against Indiana.

No matter,  I've been checked out ever since that game against Philly. Not rooting for them to tank, but hoping they lose. Sadly this team is too dumb to even tank properly, or I should say 'conventionally'. I guess Boylan's strategy is very effective, even if it's his imbecilic quest towards securing the head coaching job, and securing playoff funds for the Bulls.

So I've given up on wanting playoffs, and after these past 2 games put them 3 games out and 3 teams out, it's over. However a loss tonight (7:30pm CST, CSN) may finally produce the organizational message of the same. I don't even want them to stop trying, I just want them to stop saying they're trying. It's annoying.

Atlanta is the semi-secured 8th seed, and Hollinger's playoff predictor (which is actually useful by this time of the season) has them at 61% odds of holding on. The Bulls are at 3.9%. To illustrate how futile those odds are, they have a 1.4% chance of winning the draft lottery.

Like the Bulls, the Hawks have an interesting group of free agents available in Josh Smith and Josh Childress. I don't believe they were even offered contract extensions to turn down, yet somehow they persevered where Deng and Gordon didn't.

Lets hope they continue that and beat the Bulls tonight and put us all out of our misery. At least until Boylan says they still have a shot, both the Bulls for the playoffs and he for the head coaching position. But during the game I won't be openly rooting against them, just detachedly watching the game and exuding a simmering hate for Boylan and Paxson. And most of the players. And Solomon Jones, just because.