Now that the Chicago Bulls are officially out of the Playoffs, we can all finally look at their weirdly underwhelming season as a whole and try to figure out how in the hell did they get there?!
We know that they had their injuries, but so do other teams, we know that there was some friction in the locker room. Whether that was the media spinning stuff we don’t know, people like Jimmy Butler constantly refuted it but then again he openly ripped his new coach so he must have caused something.
But there was a little trigger that we didn’t think about, Kirk Hinrich. He got booted by the Bulls and we knew that he was at his best hustling for Chicago, maybe that was part of it.
And the unceremonious dumping of veteran stalwart Kirk Hinrich to save $2.5 million on the imminent luxury-tax payment was pitched by Forman, beyond the cost-saving aspect, as giving the Bulls a free look at Justin Holiday, a trade exception and an unprotected second-round pick.
That those assets could become trade chips and Holiday has played well hasn’t assuaged some players’ puzzlement over Hinrich’s departure. Beyond his limited-minutes defensive aptitude, Hinrich possessed a powerful, behind-the-scenes presence of accountability and quietly helped teammates in a well-received manner.
But Hinrich’s trade, which was strongly debated internally, had another ripple effect in an already fragile locker room.
It was a lot of things that the Bulls did to themselves. New coach, new leader, Joakim Noah was put to the side and now Kirk Hinrich was possibly a part of it.
It’s was all Chicago, they changed too quickly and as it turns out it was a house of cards ready to fall.
