2004 All-Star-less Chicago Bulls

He has been away for a few days, mainly my fault I guess, but we are pleased to welcome back staff writer/Lindsey Vonn online picture gawker Jim Cook.  Here is Jim’s sixth piece in an eleven part series looking at all the Chicago Bulls teams during the All-Star selections between MJ and D. Rose. In case you missed any of the first five entries you can find them below.  

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V

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Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve last sent in a recap. I figured with Collin playing grabass with Walt out in California, I wouldn’t have to worry about pumping out these essays for a while. Even more so, I didn’t think anyone else in the entire world would ever want to write for this website that gets about 15 page views a day. But apparently I was more wrong than drooling over a Miley Cyrus music video (don’t act like you haven’t…or haven’t wanted to). So, now that we got our pedophile joke of the day out of the way, I’ll continue on with the 2003-2004 season recap. Just a heads-up, I’m watching the Canada-Russia game as I write this so if I interject with some hockey stuff, just ignore it.   

For all the encouraging things that happened in the 2002-2003 season, there were just as many disappointing things happening in 03-04. And it all started in the off-season with a very unfortunate accident to one of the building blocks of the Bulls future. Jay Williams, coming off a fairly decent rookie campaign, was involved in a motorcycle accident where he fucked his shit up pretty good. Translated to doctor, he severed one of the main nerves in his leg, fractured his pelvis, and tore three ligaments in his knee, and included the dreaded ACL. He was not wearing a helmet and reports came out that he was very close to dying. He was released a couple of months later after it appeared that he would not be able to play for a long time. This Jayson Williams isn’t going to play basketball either for a very long time so I guess that name change thing never really mattered anyways. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4938372. In any case, from the #2 pick in the previous draft, the Bulls were able to squeeze out one season. As we talked about in previous episodes, not a very good ROI.     

Luckily, or maybe unluckily, this accident happened a week before the draft. Not going to lie, this was one of the most frustrating things I have looked at since I started writing this crap about the crappy Bulls. The Bulls were tasked with the 7th pick of the draft, which was one spot too high. Let me walk you through the previous six picks: LeBron, Darko (he sucks, ignore him), Carmelo, Bosh, Wade, and Chris Kaman. 5 of the 6 are NBA All-Stars (guess which one isn’t). 4 of the 6 are undoubtedly franchise cornerstone players. 3 of them are without a doubt Hall of Famers. Also coming out of this draft was David West, who has made multiple All-Star games. All that talent and the Bulls are on the outside looking in. Even after all my whining, the Bulls still decided to make a selection and they settled for a white guard from Kansas, Kirk Hinrich. Had a great career at Kansas, took his team to the NCAA Title game (beating Wade’s Marquette squad and falling to Carmelo’s Syracuse team). Additionally, with the void at point guard left by Jay’s accident, he was able to fill a need that wasn’t a need more than a week ago. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t one of the studs.     

 

The rest of the draft for the Bulls was pretty stupid. They took some man named Mario Austin out of Mississippi State in the second round. When I think of Mario Austin, I think of Mario Lopez instead, aka AC Slater. It might as well been AC because Mario Austin played exactly 0 games in the NBA. Nice pick there. Their other second round pick delights me greatly. Drafted out of the University of Florida, with the 45th overall pick….wait for it…Matt Bonner. If you take out one of the “N”s, his last name becomes Boner, which is what he was as an NBA player. Anyways, enough with the dick jokes, he was immediately traded to Toronto so it wasn’t like he got to see the HARD-WOOD for the Bulls that season. With the 53rd pick, the Bulls picked another boner and took some guy named Tommy Smith. He never saw a game in the NBA either. Why the fuck did the Bulls just throw away all three of their second round draft picks? For a team that won a God damned 30 games the year before, I don’t think that’s the time to decide second round rookies are not good enough to take serious. Dude, teams really need to just throw me a couple of bucks a year to have me be a consultant for them. Maybe give them an outside dose of perception and reality that they can use before they do bonehead things. Fuck. So to recap, 3 second round picks…we kept 2 of them…2 of them never played in the NBA…the Bulls kept the 2 that never played in the NBA.     

As for some free agent pickups, I give you this disclaimer…I’m not kidding about the next statement. The major free agent splash the Bulls made for the 2003-2004 season were Scottie Pippin v2.6 and Kendall Gill. Additionally, this was the beginning of the Linton Johnson era. If you know me at all, you probably know how much I HATE Linton Johnson as a basketball player. He might be a great socialterian, maybe even a total bro, but on the court, he would enrage me like a scorching case of herpes.     

And then follow this logic, because I still don’t. They let Rick Brunson go in free agency to the Toronto Raptors instead of re-signing him. On December 1st, the Bulls pulled the trigger on a blockbuster deal with the Toronto Raptors. Saying hello to Canada was leading scorer from the previous year Jalen Rose, accompanied with leading rebounder from the year before Donyell Marshall, and Lonnie Baxter, who is now in jail. Coming back to Chicago was old man Antonio Davis, Jerome “the Junkyard Dog” Williams, and some guy named Chris Jeffries. Two weeks later, the Bulls and Raptors danced again. Remember that snippet about Rick Brunson? Well he was traded back to the Bulls for Roger Mason. Why didn’t they just throw those two scrubs in the original trade? Seems pretty inefficient. Any why did the Bulls want Rick Brunson back? He’s another boner.     

Coach

Whelp, so much for the “Bill can’t push the” Cartwright jokes. He lasted all of 14 games. I don’t even know why he got canned. It wasn’t like their typical awful starts. He did go 4-10. But after the promise of a new, tall coach, who actually knew how to coach, we were misled and he became the tallest man in the unemployment line. FYI, as a man who has a terribly difficult time holding a job, I know my way around the unemployment process. You don’t need to even stand in line anymore, you can certify online now. So you’re presumably too lazy to do a decent job, too lazy to find a new job, so they make it so you don’t even have to leave your bed to get government money. Hmmm. Anyways, they let Pete Meyers take over the team for 2 games and he dropped those pretty easily. He was like the substitute teacher who really isn’t a teacher so they had no fuckin idea what to do with the students. Eventually, John Pax settled on strict disciplinarian Scott Skiles as the head coach moving forward. With a record of 19-47, you can see that it was obviously a great decision. The Bulls continued their offensive assault on the NBA by finishing 26th (of 29) in scoring. And once again, the team packed the stadium to watch this collection of boners. 3rd in attendance. I guess Scottie Pippin and Antonio Davis were big draws for the fans.     

Record

23-59, miserable again. Second worst team in all of the NBA. So let me get this straight…2 years ago, they suck and get a point guard that didn’t quite light the world on fire, then go all Evil Kinevil on us, and then the year before they do good enough to put themselves far enough out of the jackpot of talent that occupied the 2003 draft, but then revert back to suckdom status? They would have been better off rockin’ mom jeans. What the hell happened here?     

Longest win streak

2, three times. When this team got into a groove, they sure caught fire as you can tell. Maybe it’s the schedule maker’s fault that the Bulls still haven’t put up a win streak longer than 3 since I started writing this blog. But then again, I don’t think they can schedule the Orlando Magic, the only team worse, 3 times in a row. Probably would need them all at home too with that raucous UC crowd behind them.    

 

Best win

I don’t know how they do it year after year, but once again, the Bulls found a way to be good enough on one night of the season to beat the best team in the regular season in a meaningful game. Battling the Indiana Pacers in a December tilt, the Bulls got double doubles from Junk Yard Dog WIlliams, Antonio “Totally on HGH” Davis, and Marcus Fizer. Everyone in the gym had to be aware the Fizer was gunning for the points part of the double double. He shot 5-17. Fizer seems to always been in the middle of these best win categories. Maybe if he was a little bit more consistent, the Bulls wouldn’t have been zlooking-at-church bad all these years. Chris Jeffries played one minute and picked up a foul. Nice work man.    

Longest losing streak

7, twice. You got to be kidding me with these dreadful streaks. Even I don’t go through as many cold streaks as these Bulls teams have. Ok, yeah I do but whatever. The first losing streak was in the midst of the Bill “can’t push the” Cartwright firing and Pistol Pete Meyers experiment. In a bit of good news, and potential for the best win category, Scott Skiles won his first game to snap the 7 game losing streak. I’m pretty tired so that’s all you’re going to get for this heading.    

Worst loss

Typically, I would throw out game 81 of a season where both teams understand they are awful. But losing to the worst team in the league, the Magic, by 9 was completely jaw-dropping when looking at the collection of boners the Magic trotted out on the court that night. The Chicago Bulls sent out basically their best players (except for Chris Jeffries who started that night). The Magic’s starters consisted of, Jesus this feels stupid typing these names cause they suck so bad, Keith Bogans, DeShawn Stevenson, Reece Gaines, Juwaun Howard (he’s still in the league), and Andrew DeClercq. They got big minutes off the bench from Derrick Dial and Britton Johnson. Sigh. Let’s move on.    

Best moment

I’ll tell you what the worst moment of me writing this blog is, besides everything, my ethernet is moving slower than LOST. Did you know that Jamal Crawford has scored 50 points in a game three times? With three different teams to boot. He has got to be the worst player to top 50 in a game more than twice in history. How he did it is beyond me. Well, it’s not, the guy never met a shot he didn’t like. I’d say that’s like me, but even I cringe at the thought of gin. Well, the very game before their disgusting loss to the Magic, Mr. Crawford had a party all over the Raptors and scored himself fiddy points. Shooting a very respectable 18-34 (including 6-11 from three), Jamal tagged 50 on the Raptors and grabbed himself 7 rebounds that night too. Good for him.    

Funniest player to start 25% of the games

Got ourselves a tossup here. For some reason Kendall Gill and his 23% 3 pt shooting percentage started himself 35 games that year. But I think the grand prize winner in this category goes to Linton Johnson. God, how the hell did he start 20 games in the NBA? This enrages me. He averaged 4.2 points per game and shot 35% from the field. He’s a fucking power forward, his whole offensive game is 5 feet from the basket and closer. How can he only make 3 or 4 shots out of 10 from about as far as the length of my dog Barkley (who’s only 5 months). The funniest line from Forrest Gump is when Jinny and Forrest are in college at ‘Bama and she takes him back to her dorm and has her touch her funbag. After he does that, he’s being all weird (probably jizzed in his pants cause that’s what I was doing in college when I touched boobs), he says, “I’m dizzy”. And then Jinny was in Playboy. How does that relate to Linton Johnson starting? It doesn’t. He sucks, no idea how the 3 stooge coaches thought he’d be a good idea to start the game.    

Other bozos on the roster

More Rick Brunson, Ronald “You, me and” DuPree, Kendall “Taller than Matt” Gill, Chris Jeffries (who is that? Can anybody remember him, cause I don’t), Paul Shirly (he’s got a good blog, if Collin isn’t too lazy, he’ll track it down and link to it…don’t count on it though)    

**Editors note on Mr. Shirly’s blog (http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/01/espn-dumps-ex-bull-shirley-for-haiti-remarks.html)  …so um yea, we won’t be linking to any of his stuff.

Leading scorer

Jamal Crawford (17.3 ppg)    

Leading rebounder

Antonio Davis (8.1 rpg)    

Leading Assist

Kirk Hinrich (6.8 dimes per game)