Who has a shot to beat the Miami Heat in a seven-game playoff series?
That’s the question everybody was asking on opening night of the 2013-’14 NBA season. The Bulls did not seem worthy in their 107-95 loss.
San Antonio, Indiana, Chicago, Brooklyn and Oklahoma City all are considered elite while the Los Angeles Clippers, Houston Rockets, Golden State Warriors, Memphis Grizzlies and New York Knicks have this season to make their case to join that group.
So who has the best chance?
Many believe the answer to that question to be the Bulls, including ESPN’s Michael Wilbon in the story of the day:
It’s like the 1990-91 season, a lot like it actually, when Michael Jordan’s Bulls were trying to catch the two-time NBA Champion Bad Boy Detroit Pistons, the team that had thrice beaten the Bulls in the playoffs on the way to those titles. And those Bulls, with Jordan leading the way, had to go through the Pistons the same way these Bulls, with Rose leading the way, have to go through Miami. Slaying the dragon that torments you is usually the only way to glory in the NBA and it is no different for these Bulls.
Taking down a sitting champion requires, yes, a wonderful team. But of even greater importance it demands a supremely skilled, relentlessly driven — if not outright ruthless — player in his physical prime who (usually) has suffered enough indignity in his basketball life to play with utter defiance from November through June, to attack the season as if it’s a prize fight.
Wilbon is not the only one on the Bulls bandwagon. Bill Simmons and Jalen Rose ranked them as their No. 1 team going into the season:
Now, Wilbon, Simmons and Rose are not the be-all and end-all of basketball knowledge, but the Bulls do make a compelling case … based on what we do know.
What we do know is that with a healthy Derrick Rose, a Noah-Boozer-Gibson front-court and Tom Thibodeau on the sideline, the Bulls are a perennial 60-win team. That’s usually good for the top seed in the East, if not the NBA. We also know how well the Bulls were without Rose. Chicago won 45 games without Rose and a multitude of injuries to the rest of its core throughout the season. They beat a healthy Brooklyn team on the road in Game 7 and took Miami to five games in last years Eastern semifinals without Rose, Luol Deng, Kirk Hinrich, and an injured Noah.
LOOKING FOR BULLS TICKETS? LOOK NO FURTHER.
But we also know that that recipe needs a few more ingredients. We just don’t know what. Remember when Chicago cruised to a 62-win season in 2010-’11, had home-court but lost to the Heat in 5 games in the Eastern Conference Finals?
Predicting Chicago to beat the Heat this season because they get Rose back, added Mike Dunleavy and are expecting an improved Jimmy Butler is like baking a cake with a new recipe and assuming it will turn out better.
You have to try it first.
But in case you’re into that whole predictions thing, check out what the SheridanHoops staff thinks about the upcoming season.
And now more from around the NBA