A full house, the 50th consecutive sellout at the United Center, came for this?
These were those Bulls whose season tickets they were warned to order fast? These were those Bulls who had no need for Kobe Bryant or anybody else?
Psyched up by pyrotechnics and ear-splitting player introductions, 22,034 fans took their seats Friday night to enjoy the new Bulls.
Numbed into absolute silence, all 22,034 filed out mortified by a scoreboard that read 76ers 96, Bulls 85.
The players and coaches had little to add.
“An awful performance, really,” Luol Deng said.
“If we would have come out and played Bulls basketball and lost, it would be all right,” said Tyrus Thomas. “But we didn’t.”
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Oh, this was Bulls basketball, all right … the kind Jalen Rose’s and Jamal Crawford’s teams used to play.
Shoot and miss, shoot and miss, shoot and miss (86 attempts, 33 field goals).
Stand around, let the other guys hustle for all the shots that miss (55 rebounds for Philadelphia, 36 for the Bulls).
Ladies and gentlemen, you could be in for a cold, cold, cold, Kobe-free winter here in Chicago.
Everybody in a uniform looked tradable in the Bulls’ home opener with Philadelphia, a team so weak it was projected in Sports Illustrated’s NBA preview issue to be the Eastern Conference’s 15th best (i.e., worst).
What an unexpectedly horrid start for the guys of Scott Skiles, whose five-year record as Bulls coach fell to 156-157.
“For the second night in a row, we looked dead out there,” Skiles said.
What a half-hearted first half they gave to their fans:
*Ben Wallace, one point, no rebounds.
*Luol Deng, two points, zero assists.
*Kirk Hinrich, no points, two fouls.
“If Tyrus Thomas wasn’t playing like this, they wouldn’t be in this basketball game at all,” ex-Bull Kendall Gill said 100 percent correctly at halftime on TV.
Thomas, who stunk up the state of New Jersey in the Bulls’ season opener Wednesday, was by far the best player they had two nights later.
If any scouts from the Lakers saw this game, they might ask for Thomas instead of Deng in a deal for Bryant.
“I think I did all right, but we didn’t win, so it didn’t matter,” Thomas said
Almost unbelievably, Thomas personally accounted for a third (12) of the Bulls’ rebounds.
He, Ben Gordon and Andres Nocioni were responsible for 61 of the team’s 85 points.
Everybody else was a no-show.
“We expected to start this season much better,” said Deng, who uncharacteristically came up with a mere 10 points and four rebounds in more than 35 minutes of play.
Adding insult to injury, the Nets team that beat them in Wednesday night’s season opener was beaten Friday night by 37 points.
Only a too-little, too-late comeback in the last few minutes enabled the feeble Bulls to get back into the game. But they spent the entire night playing catch-up with the Sixers and never really caught up.
“We came back to within two points and then started making silly plays again,” Deng said.
In the home team’s dressing room a couple of hours before the game, various Bulls held court on the number of teams good enough to win the East.
“Wow,” journeyman Joe Smith said. “I would say Detroit, and definitely New Jersey after what they showed us on opening night, and Boston, of course. I still think Cleveland could win again, even though people are giving them a hard time. It’s up for grabs.”
“The East is wide open,” chimed in Deng. “You have to give Cleveland respect. People say they’re not as good as last year, but I don’t know about that.”
Hey, gang. Guess who else might not be as good as last year?
A little team we used to call … Da Bulls.
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There we were, watching a Bulls team that took 22 of 26 at home versus the East last season. They were granted the luxury of drawing Philly as an opponent for this season’s United Center coming-out party. No more Allen Iverson, no more Chris Webber and not a hope or a prayer for Mo Cheeks’ 76ers this season.
Wallace made a short, sweet pregame speech, his wild hair protruding from a headband like a Chia Pet.
And then the Bulls’ center ran the floor for more than 24 minutes and finished with a particularly ugly single-single — four points, one board.
Deng barely cracked double figures. Hinrich laid a five-foul, eight-point egg. Smith didn’t sink a shot from the floor.
All of which left their coach mystified. His team was a shell of its old self, and Skiles was as clueless as anybody else in the United Center as to why.
“I know I should have an exact reason for why it happened, and I don’t,” he said.
Eighty games to go. Few could be as bad as this.
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