Tyson Chandler was supposed to represent the Bulls of the 2000s, the presumptive second coming of another great era, though the 2.0 version. Taller and quick, adept and athletic. The Bulls cashed in their post-championship era bounty, the No .1 overall draft pick in 1999, Elton Brand, for the right to draft Chandler and pair him with fellow teenaged seven footer Eddy Curry to form what they hoped and believed could be the foundation of a structure that would overshadow the NBA once again for years to come.

Instead, as we know, it came to encapsulate the misery that befell the franchise for the first years of the new millennium, a historic losing period that both humbled and heartened the franchise to move forward and again over the last seven years to become among the league's elite contenders.

But the Bulls would have to endure the humiliation and hardship first, and unfairly it initially fell upon Chandler, a sensitive kid whose growing pains mirrored that of a franchise attempting to be reborn.

"I didn't have a clue (of what was coming)," said Chandler, who grew into an NBA All-Star, champion Olympian and Defensive Player of the Year and now is in his 15th season with his sixth team. "I was 18 years old, coming in not knowing what to expect from the NBA, the Bulls; just trying to find my way.

"I think what happened, now for me being 15 years in the league, they weren't ready for that at that time," Chandler said in a recent interview. "It wouldn't be too much to ask if it would have been the correct transition. It (drafting straight from high school) was new to the league in general, taking guys that young. The league is now more prepared to help groom young players and help them grow and develop.

"It was a tough growing period, a tough time, also for the organization," said the 7-1 Chandler. "We went through three head coaches and two interims. Three heads coaches and a couple of interims meant there was change in management with Jerry Krause to John Paxson. There was so much going on. Different players every single year. We'd have four new players at a time. I think the organization was trying to find themselves clearly after the Jordan era, the Scottie Pippen era. They were trying to figure it out and I think the worst thing to do was bring two 18-year-olds to the organization and try to figure it out that way."

If anything, the Bulls of that time provided a blueprint for the rest of the NBA for what not to do.

Not that then general manager Jerry Krause's plan was wrong. It wasn't.

While a team built around Brand, Ron Artest, Jamal Crawford, Marcus Fizer and free agents like Ron Mercer and Brad Miller may have eventually been competitive—as the team of 2000-01—it didn't have a high ceiling for success.

Krause's dream had been to rebuild a team from the base through the draft and scouting expertise after inheriting Jordan when he became general manager in 1985. So after the lockout 1998-99 season when Jordan retired and Pippen was accommodated with a sign and trade to Houston and Toni Kukoc was later traded to Philadelphia, Krause accumulated draft picks similar to the model used lately by the Philadelphia 76ers.

Krause decided to cash them in for the 2000 draft, using three firsts and three seconds in what turned out to be an overall weak draft.

"It was a great fan base," said Crawford, who remains a Sixth Man of the Year candidate again with the contending Clippers. "They still gave us great support from the championship years and were patient. It's just that we were so young. There were just too many young guys. Even if we had done what the Lakers are doing now with two young guys it would have been better. You needed some stability, but I will say there were some interesting practices."

Krause hired college coach Tim Floyd with the idea—again, worse in practice than in philosophy like with drafting of Curry and Chandler—that a college coach would relate better to young players. But Floyd came in blinded by the NBA glamour and immediately wanted veterans to compete now instead of grooming kids.

It only made a bad situation worse, and especially for Chandler in trying to grow. Bill Cartwright replaced Floyd, Paxson replaced Krause and then Scott Skiles replaced Cartwright all within about two years as the team would miss the playoffs for six consecutive seasons and in that span have the poorest overall record in NBA history. The victims were players as much as fans.

These days from the crow's nest of his ship that has sailed to an NBA championship when he was with the Dallas Mavericks, Chandler can look back with the wisdom of experience.

"It was pressure," he agrees. "Just because I had expectations for myself as well. The biggest thing was trying to come in and find my way and try to help turn the franchise around. I'd won my entire life to that point and just wanted to win. I didn't understand how the league was. I wasn't expecting to walk into what I walked into, to be honest.

"It was so tough," Chandler recalls. "I remember where I just felt like I was going to have a breakdown. I'd go home crying. We lost, I can't remember how many games, my rookie year (61, which was better than that previous two). I remember in Orlando, I was so angry and frustrated and not playing much at that time and I had tears in my eyes and it was frustration and I remember Tim Floyd said ‘What's wrong with you?' I was like, ‘I'm sick of losing, I hate this.' He goes, ‘Kid, you have a long way to go.' We broke the huddle, but I'll never learn to get used to the losing stuff. It was part of my personality not to accept losing like that.

"I had a lot of those moments," Tyson reveals. "Eventually, the team started to get better. But at the same time, for me, it felt like my place there started to be in question, whether I would be a part of the future and I ended up being traded. I felt like I had a lot of talent and a lot of ability to really produce and affect the game, which ended up happening once I left."

Chandler was traded by the Bulls after the 2005-06 season for P.J. Brown and J.R. Smith, the latter quickly moved on to Denver for second round picks.

The Bulls had begun the turnaround under Skiles with the millennium version of the Baby Bulls with the drafting of Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng and Ben Gordon. The Bulls went on to win 47 games and then were 41-41 and scared eventual champion Miami in a tough six-game playoffs in 2006.

Curry was traded to the Knicks with Antonio Davis for Tim Thomas, Michael Sweetney and a first round pick that became the Tyrus Thomas pick when the Bulls swapped the rights to the LaMarcus Aldridge pick. But the Bulls had included a right to swap future picks that enabled the Bulls to draft Joakim Noah. The Knicks selected Wilson Chandler with the pick the Bulls had.

And thus the core was almost in place for what looked like a championship run after the Bulls swept the defending champion Miami Heat in the first round of the 2007 playoffs, but then fell back the following season and Skiles was fired. The Bulls went on to miss the playoffs in 2008, but the shocking consolation was the lottery luck to the No. 1 pick and Derrick Rose.

The Bulls went to the conference finals in 2011 as Rose grew to be the league's MVP and one of the most dynamic players in NBA history. Who knows how far it would have gone as they won the most games in the regular season in 2011-12 for the second straight year under coach Tom Thibodeau. Rose suffered the catastrophic ACL injury in Game 1 of the 2012 playoffs with the Bulls the favorites among many to knock off the Heat and LeBron James. Rose went on to have two more knee surgeries and now is working his way back with a Bulls team fighting to make the playoffs this season.

But there were some brilliant and exciting times even with Rose in and out of the lineup over three years.

Like the Greatest First Round Series Ever Played, the seven overtimes seven gamer between the Bulls and Boston Celtics in 2009. It was Rose's welcome to stardom.

Rose shocked the defending champion Celtics and tied Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's rookie record for points in a first playoff game. The Bulls with Rose's 36 points beat the Celtics in overtime to turn the series on its head. Tyrus Thomas actually saved the game in overtime after Rose fouled out. Kevin Garnett was out injured for the Celtics, but the Bulls' opening win after a 41-41 season would kick off one of the wildest playoff series in NBA history.

Boston's Ray Allen would score 30 points and his team the win in the Game 2 shootout with Ben Gordon, who scored 42 points. Allen made the winner in what was being called the best game of the season. Until the next few.

Gordon hit a late bank shot in regulation and the Bulls went on to win Game 4 in two overtimes. Game 5 went to the Celtics at home but not before what should have been a flagrant foul on Rajon Rondo on Brad Miller at the end of regulation with Miller bleeding and trying to make free throws. The Bulls lost 106-104 in overtime to set up a triple overtime spectacular Game 6 with Ray Allen's 51 points not enough in the United Center. The image of that series and the triple overtime Bulls win—seven overtime periods in the series and six in three games—was Noah taking the ball from Pierce and running down to slam to close out the third overtime. The Bulls didn't have much left for Game 7 and lost in Boston despite 33 from Gordon.

Then there was 2013 and an ailing and broken down Bulls team with Rose and Kirk Hinrich and Luol Deng going out as the series progressed and turning to Nate Robinson and then Noah for the upset.

The Nets won the first game, but the Bulls stole home court advantage with a win in the second and then took a 2-1 lead back home. Then came the amazing Game 4, yet another triple overtime fest in which Robinson off the bench scored 34 points in just under 29 minutes. Robinson had a personal 12-0 run as part of 23 fourth quarter points after the Bulls trailed by 14 in one of the biggest scoring quarters in franchise history to get the Bulls to overtime. Finally, in the third overtime, Nazr Mohammed's four points were enough to carry the Bulls to victory and a 3-1 series lead. After playing 60 minutes in that game, Hinrich was done for the playoffs. Similarly, after the next game, which the Nets won back home, Deng was done for the series with an illness scare and hospitalization.

That left the Bulls facing a Game 7 back in Brooklyn after losing Game 6 at home without Hinrich and Deng and looking like no Joakim Noah in Game 7 with serious foot problems. But Noah came out with all the grit he had. The Nets were done. The Bulls spurted to a 17-point halftime lead over the stunned Nets as Noah played 41 minutes on his foot injury. He accumulated 24 points, 14 rebounds and six blocks in rallying a team starting Robinson and the bench basically consisting of Mohammed, Marquis Teague and Daequan Cook. Jimmy Butler played all 48 minutes for the second straight game and would play all 48 minutes in three of the five games in the next round, which would start after one day off, in a five-game loss to the Miami Heat and LeBron James.

There were so many almosts and could have beens, and it started with what may have been. Krause had the right plan with a post up seven footer in Curry and what he projected as a perimeter seven footer in Chandler, though Chandler would evolve into the natural center. It just was the wrong guys given their ages. And at the wrong time with the wrong mix.

"I don't have any ill feelings toward the organization," says Chandler. "I still show John Paxson all the love in the world. I still respected him even when he traded me. It was a respectful situation and how he dealt with it and me. I feel like all of that had to happen. It was an organization in transition, and a young player trying to learn and find his way. If I could change anything it would have been for the organization to be more where they are now, seven or eight years down the road from me being drafted. That wasn't the case. I understand now looking back what I was walking into, but then I hadn't a clue."

Nor did the Bulls.

"It was part of my growing up that made me respect the league that much more, respect winning that much more, made me respect the game that much more because I had been through those tough times in Chicago," says Chandler. "I understand the good from the bad, what you are supposed to do as a player and what you are not supposed to do as a player, a good coach and a bad coach, and I learned all those things and how to decipher those things and I learned a lot about myself in those times with the Bulls. I think it made me the player I became and I appreciate everything I went through when I was there.

"I never considered myself to be a victim," says Chandler. "I felt I was blessed to be in the league and playing the game I love. If you look at it now and I'm a GM, it's a learning curve. Now I see if you are going to draft a young player like that you need the right coach, the right coaches around him, the right players and the organization has to be ready and have a plan for the young man or else he'll have to figure it out himself and then you are rolling the dice. It was some dark days."

They got much brighter for the Bulls and Chandler and they both became better for their experiences. There always are better times to come.