Belief is a funny thing.
It makes you overthink and second-guess yourself at the same time. It can make you soul-search and come out with an answer you know is not true. It can make you lie even when the inevitable is as inevitable as anything in the history of inevitability.
And then there’s the Bulls.
Where belief goes to die. Where they’ve found a way over the last three seasons to distinguish with clarity the diametric difference in believing in something and Bullieving in it. Where the half-fake/half-accurate definition of insanity — ‘‘doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different result’’ — should be printed on the welcome mat as you enter Jerry Reinsdorf’s office.
So this season ended the exact same way as last season — but different. A feckless loss to the same team (Heat) in the same game (Game 84) with the same advancement on the line (a trip to the NBA playoffs as an 8-seed) all replicating themselves, but this time in the Bulls’ favor because Jimmy Butler suffered an injury in Game 83 to open the door for the Bulls to accomplish what they didn’t in the same game last season. Which made the situation and everything surrounding it different. Which also made losing this game and ending this season the way that they did way worse, making it way more frustrating, way more annoying and damning and way, way, way more problematic than that loss April 14, 2023.
Because the glaring difference this time: This season was over before the first half ended. Last season, at least the Bulls fought until the two-minute mark of the fourth quarter. In a season in which this time they played the role of punch-drunk brawlers who fought damn near every game to the end and left with your respect even with the L’s they took, in this final game, they got punched in the jaw early and never recovered. A 19-0 run by the Heat in the first quarter. Shooting 27.3% in the first half. Allowing 15 bench points in that half to a team two starters down. Then this from Michael Wilbon on ESPN’s ‘‘NBA Countdown’’ at halftime: ‘‘[The Bulls] missed more open shots than anyone in the history of basketball in that half.’’
Taxes, death and Bulls disappointment. Of the 11 experts who predicted the outcome of the game for ESPN.com (knowing that Butler was not playing), eight picked the Bulls. As Charles Barkley always says, ‘‘Only God’s an expert.’’ Makes you wonder if God’s a Bulls fan or if He’s even checking for our prayers for them anymore.
I’ve said and written this before about how this entire season for the Bulls came down to only one thing: Could they win the final play-in game this time? Could this same team win two play-in games this season instead of one? Could the squad that looked like it discovered itself once Zach LaVine was ruled out for the season win the one game it couldn’t last season? That was always — all season long — the only barometer to determine any difference between last season and now. And here we are. Here now is.
Now what? There’s only hope that this loss, the one that cuts much deeper than its twin from last season, is the one that forces those C-Suite members to, for the first time in a very long time, see in the mirror what we see when we look at them. That they see whom they’ve presented themselves and this team to be to this city. See through the b.s. that we’ve all been seeing through as we see through them. That’s what we hope.
But it won’t happen because hope is different than belief. All we honestly asked from the Bulls this season was a seven-game series for the first time in two years. A little upward and forward movement. Not much. Just something to hang our beliefs on because hope no longer seemed to be enough. Aspirations only go so far when you put faith in organizations that deep down don’t like or trust and refuse to be honest with themselves. Something more concrete is sought, is needed. So you ask: Do they deserve your belief?
See, when you go into the fourth quarter of the most important game you’ve had in the last three seasons — a revenge game where your sole purpose is to show the team you lost to before, to show the NBA, to show the people in your city, to show the haters who’ve been right about you all along, to show yourselves, that you are no longer what and who you once were — losing by 22, your answer becomes, ‘‘No.’’ They don’t deserve your belief.
Because the funny thing about belief is that it should never be given or gifted; it should always be earned.
