The Chicago Bulls made the big, mad coach go away during the 2015 offseason, as they had to. The relationship between the Bulls front office and former coach Tom Thibodeau, due to massive missteps on the part of both sides, was beyond repair. Thibodeau had to go, and while it would have been just as effective to lose the presidential pairing of personnel chiefs John Paxson and Gar Forman along the way, teams can survive with a good-enough roster, sound coaching, and a front office with a series of screwups in its past.

It turns out that the roster wasn’t good enough, the coaching was far from sound, and the front office had dug itself too deep a hole after years of matching solid basketball work with impersonal cataloguing of assets alongside its disastrous unending commitment to its own family tree. Mixed in with the comfort derived from the knowledge that the team’s family ownership is typically far more concerned with how its beloved Chicago White Sox were doing in a Cactus League game than it is a Bulls playoff contest, and you’re left with a roster full of underachieving ne’er do well’s understandably waiting out senior year.

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We don’t blame the Bulls players for waiting for that final bell to ring. The 2015-16 season began with the team’s new coach, Fred Hoiberg, completely blowing his relationship with what a person he could have expected to be his hardest worker in Joakim Noah, betraying him via the media, as big man Pau Gasol counted down the days until he could make good on his blown 2014 opportunity to become a San Antonio Spur. Go-to star Jimmy Butler would not stop talking, while former MVP Derrick Rose took off just about every play that didn’t feature him.

The result was a mess of a season that saw the Bulls miss the playoffs for the first time since Joe Smith was a member of the team, with the squad falling off precipitously offensively even in the wake of losing Thibodeau’s too-thin playbook. Hoiberg’s new players acted the martyr all season, abandoning his hoped-for setup with even a chortle from the coach on the sideline.

No distress from any direction, it seemed, as the ownership barely raised a hackle while the front office stayed hidden throughout. The Bulls limped down the stretch in what should have been a race for the final playoff seed in the East, only bothering to compete when the national television cameras were focused on them, betraying their basketball gifts and potential all along the way.

Apathy reigned, from the ownership on downward. And downward. And downward. And …

2015-16 season in 140 characters or less

Sometimes it snows in April — Joakim Noah (@JoakimNoah) April 2, 2016





Did the summer help at all?

Probably not. Unless you love to laugh and laugh.

Some 13 years after Paxson reportedly chafed at giving up Donyell Marshall as part of a deal that would have sent draftee Dwyane Wade to Chicago, the Bulls ended up signing the 34-year old future Hall of Famer after the former (and future, if we’re honest) Miami Heat star threw an understandable snit after years of being asked to hold the line financially while Heat president chased down other boffo free agents.

View photos Dwyane Wade, breakin’ all the rules. (Getty Images) More

Two years and $47 million for the former franchise-type that nearly signed with the Bulls all the way back in 2010. Wade will no doubt resume contact with Riley midseason, prior to finalizing a massive deal with Miami that will pay him deep into his late 30s, as the new NBA collective bargaining agreement will likely allow for. This hometown turn for Wade will be a brief, ultimately embarrassing, turn for everyone involved.

The cash-in for Wade came a few weeks after the Bulls finally put a cap on the Derrick Rose era, dealing the 2010-11 MVP to New York along with sprightly swingman Justin Holiday (one of the rare bright spots late in Chicago’s 2015-16 season) for a package including big man Robin Lopez and combo guard Jerian Grant (Jose Calderon, a serviceable veteran also included in the deal, was later moved to the Lakers in exchange for payroll and cap relief for one of sports’ most profitable franchises).