Had the Chicago Bulls spent the past six months playing like they have this week in the NBA playoffs, more people might have watched them on TV.

Instead, the team's local viewership this season fell to its lowest mark since the year before they drafted former star Derrick Rose.

The 42 Bulls regular-season games on CSN Chicago this year averaged a 1.98 rating in the Chicago market, or about 69,000 Chicago-area TV households watching per game.

That's down 33 percent from last year and 58 percent from two years ago. It's also the first time since the 2007-08 season that Bulls ratings on the regional network have fallen below a 2.0 average.

Contrast that with the playoff games against the Boston Celtics this week, for which CSN posted more impressive numbers as the Bulls took a 2-0 lead in the series. The network posted higher ratings the evening of April 18 than anyone else in the Chicago market among 18- to 34-year-olds, and online viewers spent more time streaming the game than any other Bulls game on CSN this season.

But the regular-season plummet is an indicator of the fan apathy that plagued the team all season. Despite the high-profile offseason acquisitions of Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo, the Bulls struggled to a middling 41-41 record and the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference.