Baffoe: I Don't Want The Bulls To Make The Playoffs

By Tim Baffoe--

(CBS) When I watch a team lose both games of a home-and-home against the clown shoes that are the New York Knicks, I can't help but think, "Boy, do I want to see some of this in the postseason."

I want off this broken third-world shuttle bus that is the 2015-'16 Chicago Bulls.

Anger, disappointment, disgust, ennui -- I've wavered between them all in a given week watching this team this season. Now it's just fatigue. I'm tired of the Bulls, and I don't want to deal with their high school pep rally fire breathing in a likely sweep of a playoff series.

"Hell yeah, I'm embarrassed," forward Taj Gibson vented to ESPN.com on Thursday night after the loss in New York. "I take pride in wearing this jersey. I love wearing the Bulls jersey. Especially what we've been through, I take pride in playing for Chicago. When I wear that jersey, I try to go out there and play my heart out. And it's frustrating when we come up short, and we look at ourselves, we're losing to ... I don't want to criticize (anybody), (but) trash teams. Everybody's in the NBA for a reason, but we're playing against teams that are not playing for anything, and we're just laying down. It feels like now we're a target. It feels like teams are not taking us serious.

"Teams are more eager to play us. (In years prior,) it was vice versa. They knew we were coming in to punch people in the face and keep playing. It's just, it's hard, man. It really eats me up inside. It's really hard to sleep at night knowing it's coming down to the wire, and our effort isn't there. It's really frustrating."

Nobody's going to question Gibson's heart or desire, but it's twice in two weeks that he's had to call out his team, and there's no turbo button to hit on the game controller to get this team to act like it cares each time its last hardass scolds them. And when even he's aware that the 36-35 Bulls -- who are 1.5 games behind the Detroit Pistons for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference -- are a hot lunch for future opponents, why should I cross my fingers in hopes that LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers get the opportunity to feast on this turd on national television?

I'm tired of coach Fred Hoiberg's postgame interviews after every loss in which he consistently sounds like he's giving a police report upon finding his home robbed. (Though a tiny part of me is morbidly curious to watch for him to finally snap in the most profanity-laced tirade ever to come out of Ames, Iowa.)

Hoiberg hosted his former team, the Iowa State Cyclones, who are playing in the Sweet 16 at the United Center on Friday night, at the Advocate Center before Wednesday's Act I of the New York tragedy. There was no confirmation on the rumor that he whispered to his former players, "Take me with you."

I'm tired of reconsidering my acceptance a year ago that the Bulls would be better moving on from Tom Thibodeau.

I'm tired of not hearing from GarPax as this disease reaches Stage 4. Yet if either of them were to come down from the front office, I'd probably just get madder at their Orwellian diagnosis. And my brain is too numb right now to consider the argument for firing them for refeeding us the same unsuccessful roster garnished with a new coach they hardly play for.

I'm tired of the depressing pall of Joakim Noah hanging over this team.

Beyond mentally checking out, I'm tired of this team being physically broken, whether Derrick Rose is sore this week or on-his-way-out Pau Gasol has knee swelling. The European eBay item we got swindled on, Nikola Mirotic, got his medical charts mixed up by the infamous Bulls medical staff. And now it's Jimmy Butler, whose left knee isn't right and may need surgery when the season ends in hopefully 11 games from now.

"Maybe. I hope not,'' Butler told the Chicago Sun-Times. "Is my knee the same as it was before the injury? No.

"But I want to play, man. And at times I feel like I'm hurting this team. That's the most disappointing part because I'm not the player I was. I don't know if there's something really wrong in there, but it's not really right, either. But I'll be fine. I have to figure out a way to help us win playing with this. That's all I'm worried about.''

Intelligence shuts Butler down for the rest of the season, but this is the Bulls.

At least the remaining schedule is conducive to the sadism of this duct tape-and-meth mix that gets five-plus players to walk on the court with spacey eyes (just to walk off it with heads hung).

I don't dislike a single player, as I normally do so as to justify my loathing of a team. But these Bulls are like the new HBO show Vinyl that I was so excited about and that immediately disappointed -- where I've already made a commitment and invested enough hours to the point that there's no point to turn around and swim halfway across the lake back to shore but instead ride it out and await a merciful ending and a non-renewal. And both leave me wanting booze and drugs.

The least of favors the Bulls could do for me right now is make sure they finish out of the playoffs and spare me the job requirement of watching a few more ritual floggings. Fittingly, the upcoming draft crop is less than stellar, but I'm so nauseous from this merry-go-round from hell of a supposed preseason contender that I'll gladly trade a first-round snuff film for a chance to redraft Tony Snell in the lottery instead of at spot 16.

I'm that tired of the Bulls.

Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.