season preview

Sam Smith

Is it just the beginning? Or is it the beginning of the end?

The Bulls open the 2015-16 NBA season Tuesday in the United Center against the defending Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers. The general consensus regarding the Bulls is this is a pivotal season, a potential closing of the title window, as it were, with Joakim Noah and Pau Gasol possible free agents and Derrick Rose with a history of major injuries. It’s either now or never.

This also is a Bulls team with nine of the 15 players on the roster 27 years of age or under, in the prime of their careers or well before it. Which would suggest several years remaining to be competitive and chase excellence.

“We will have to see,” Rose said when asked whether this is the best Bulls team—top to bottom—he has played on. “I'm very, very confident with this team that we have. But in the past we've had some great teams. You can't compare them. Our No. 1 goal is to win a championship this year. Everything that's happened in the past is in the past. This year I feel confident with the teammates that I have, and we're building something. We have young guys; we have Jimmy (Butler, an All-Star), we've got Dougie (McDermott); he's playing great, Tony (Snell) is coming into his own. So we've got a bunch of young guys that are trying to figure out the NBA and figure out the system. We've just got to bring them along. Who knows how good we can be?”

That, obviously, will be determined during the next six months of the regular season. And a very different season.

There is a new coach, a first time NBA coach in former Bulls player Fred Hoiberg. There’s perhaps more quality depth than any Bulls team in years. There’s a former Defensive Player of the Year and two-time All-Star in Joakim Noah coming off the bench, making it four Bulls players from the last four years to be All-Stars.

“It is a good problem to have when you have as many guys as we do to play,” said Hoiberg. “There’s got to be sacrifice. It’s hopefully going to keep us fresh as the season goes on, to have as many bodies as we do. It’ll be good for our guys. Instead of playing 35, 36 (minutes), if you’re playing 25, 26 and keep some legs fresh, I think that’s definitely possible.”

And then there’s Rose, in many respects the fulcrum to balance out this roster of depth and talent. The Bulls have been to the conference finals once since 1998. That was when Rose had his best season in 2011. They’ll need him to have a great season to return. And even with the preseason orbital injury and three weeks out, this was the first summer since 2011 that Rose wasn’t recovering from knee surgery.

“It’s great for him and the team to have him out there,” said Hoiberg. “I don’t think people understand the work he put in (during) the offseason to get himself prepared for this year and then to have that unfortunate incident about a half hour into our first practice; all the guys felt really bad about that. Everybody understands the importance of Derrick to this team and where we want to go.

“It’s a long year; that’s where in regards to Derrick you have to be a little careful,” Hoiberg added. “It’s a marathon. You have to prepare your guys the best you can and try to keep them healthy. It’s great to get him back. It’s great for our guys, just the dynamic explosiveness he brings to the floor. If those guys aren’t running, Derrick is going to pass them by. I know it’s fun for our guys to play that way.”

So it will also be a new style, faster and more wide open, a new coach, a new starting--and perhaps finishing--lineup.

“We’ll go with whoever is playing well (to close games),” said Hoiberg. “We’ve really got 11, 12 guys you’d feel comfortable throwing out there in the game. That’s how it’s going to be, at least initiall, in the season: Who’s out there performing? Who’s playing well? Who’s hot? You’ve got to ride that. That’s how we’ll go and that’s how we’ll determine who is going to close out games for us at least early on.”

But it’s still the same nemesis in LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Something old in Gasol; something new in Hoiberg; something borrowed like the guys from around the world like Nikola Mirotic, Cameron Bairstow and Cristiano Felicio, the latter making the team as 15th man; and something blue to symbolize the loyalty of someone like Kirk Hinrich.

Is this a team you can love? We’ll soon discover.

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Sam Smith's Bulls season preview

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