Now, that’s more like it. None of this back-to-back prosperity for the Bulls. Winning streaks, even little ones, will ruin everything. Victory is the enemy.
Not only does winning mess up the draft lottery, winning changes the Bulls from unique and tragic into dreary and ordinary. What the Bulls need is less Atlanta and more Milwaukee and New York.
Scoring the fewest points of any Bulls team ever is, of course, a start, but they can do better. There are many records within reach if only the Bulls bend low enough.
Worst Bulls team of all time? Trying to find anyone to argue that is harder than finding someone who cares. That is why it is important to have goals, to give this season a frame before it floats off into Clipperville.
We know the Bulls are the worst ever already, though authentication is needed to make it permanent. The Bulls require a number and the shortened season complicates the job. Sure, one victory would be a scar to fit on any season, whether 50 games or 82, but accidents will happen, even when Brent Barry has the ball.
So here is the number to settle for all time how awful the Bulls are. Fourteen. The 1975-76 Bulls won 24 games out of 82 for a percentage of .293. If this team can go 14-36, it will be at .280, a destination unfortunately threatened by the Bulls’ refusal to lose back-to-back-to-backs. That earlier team, with Bob Love and Jerry Sloan and Norm Van Lier, still averaged 95 points a game, the lowest by a Bulls team. This one may not score 95 in any game, so things look promising.
Along the way, the Bulls may pick up other little earmarks for history, losing a game by more than 37 points, scoring fewer than 71 at home (that’s a cinch), fewest points in a half (24), in a quarter (11, the fourth quarter, naturally).
The team record of 13 losses in a row should be a cinch, and while the league record of 23, held by Vancouver, may require some outside help, the Bulls do control their own destiny.
Never in the history of the NBA has a team gone from best to worst in a single season. Never has a team gone from best to a losing record, so the Bulls certainly can make more than local history.
The Bulls can be the highest compost heap in the NBA’s half century or so of piling up such stuff. Oh, sure, competition is a little tougher this season than when Philadelphia won only nine games in 1972-73. Nobody was gagging like the Sixers. There was no Charlotte or Denver or Dallas or Clippers to make a race of it.
The next worst team won more than twice as many games as Philadelphia, so the Bulls have their work cut out for them. They do not have the luxury of stinking alone.
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The Bulls cannot win more than five games to get the record. The 76ers had 82 games to lose 71. The Bulls have to lose 45 out of 50. There are back-to-backs with Charlotte and Toronto at the end of the week and there is Dallas and Vancouver later on, so the Bulls cannot take anything for granted. They have to stay focused or the next thing they know, they will be just another shabby bunch with no real distinction.
If the NBA record seems too lofty a goal, there is still the eminence that comes with being the worst sports team ever in the city. That spot now belongs to the ’69 Bears, and these Bulls better get it before the ’99 Bears do.
Those Bears went 1-13, a percentage of .071. The Bulls still can earn official standing as Chicago’s all-time worst body of jocks, but even if they don’t, I think we can safely agree that any team with Butkus and Sayers always will be a notch above any team with LaRue and Simpkins.
The Bulls could win nine games and still be worse than the worst Blackhawks team, win 16 and out-crud the worst Sox team and win 18 and still be inferior to the worst Cubs team.
And if local and national distinction is not inspiration enough, there is international fame to be had. I give you Charleroi Pepsis of Belgium and the European League, a basketball team that managed to win only one game, or the doomed Scarborough Seadogs, at the very bottom of the lowest division of the English League.
I ask this: Are the Bulls going to let a bunch of foreigners and soccer ninnies beat ’em? I think not.
Remember, aim low. The worst of luck. And may the farce be with you.