Yeah just watching the first two games you would think the seeds are reversed. I love seeing Boston and Alice Horford lose.
This year's Bulls, at least in the regular-season, were all over the map—playing down to terrible teams, up to good teams, and ultimately still looking overmatched against great teams—but Jimmy Butler is a top-ten player in the league; Wade's declining skills play up in the playoffs, where you don't have to worry about back-to-backs and quick turnarounds; and Rondo, flawed as he is, can still apparently play efficient, energized, and engaged basketball if he wants to and his career/season is on-the-line. And then they have a few role-players—Mirotic (who I had such high hopes for when he came into the league), Portis (who still might mature into a low-level impact player), and Zipser—who can really contribute substantially around the margins
if they aren't totally embarrassing themselves (as Mirotic did in Game One).
But the real key to this series—and why the Bulls may just be a really bad matchup for the Celtics—is Robin Lopez. He's a great offensive rebounder going up against a team with pretty poor glass play, and his work—and the Bulls' overall team rebounding (they have excellent rebounding guards, as well) has killed Boston in both games.
If they pull this first-round series out, I could just as easily see Chicago looking like garbage against either Washington or Atlanta (but more likely the former) as reaching the ECF and facing the Cavaliers—they're just a fickle performer this year. And then—while that ECF matchup would have some neat story-lines—there's pretty much no way I see the Bulls making it any farther than a 4-1 series loss to Cleveland.
