Aside from one player, Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls have been one of the least impactful franchises in the NBA. If they were stripped of his accomplishments, the organization would have zero NBA Finals wins or appearances, one MVP award, and a 45.7% winning rate over their 46 campaigns without his leadership. Historically, this would mark the fifth-lowest win-loss record across all franchises in the league. In the last decade, things have stayed equally as lethargic. The team has won 45.4% of its contests, made two playoff appearances, and won three total postseason games. Fellow Chicago Bulls beat writer Will Gottlieb of CHGO Sports created an interesting statistic that describes the purgatory zone of the NBA, also known as the middle ground between a rebuild and contention. This figure instantly put the Chicago Bulls on blast, and many wonder what the franchise has been doing, clearly without direction or objective for the past decade.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not new information to hear that the Chicago Bulls have been stuck in the middle of the NBA pack for quite some time. To make this more alarmingly apparent, Gottlieb creatively devised a statistic to embody precisely how bad it has been. The NBA Purgatory Index is a chart where any given team earns a point in two ways: playoff wins and top-five draft selections. While there are special cases where these draft selections don\u2019t indicate a rebuild or a playoff win doesn\u2019t signify contention of legitimate degree, it\u2019s a solid blanketing method to see which organizations have been chasing a title or building their roster. In Chicago\u2019s case, they\u2019ve done neither.<\/p>\n