I'm Close to Giving Up.

By Sean Mackey

Four of the Bulls starters were out (Deng, Rose & Noah injured, Hinrich suspended) making room for a 3 guard lineup that included Acie Law, Flip Murray & Janerro Pargo when they took on the Grizzlies last night. This is a starting five that would have probably lost to 1999's opening day starters that consisted of Toni Kukoc, Ron Harper, Brent Barry, Mark Bryant & Andrew Lang. Beat reporter KC Johnson joked on Twitter that he kept thinking that Marcus Fizer was going to be coming off the bench....it was that bad. To make matters worse, James Johnson would have most likely started over Acie Law but was late to practice on Monday and was benched. I never understood the benching of a guy who's been playing well for something so trivial. The Bulls were once down by 21 then decided to fight back to cut the lead to 4 but ended up losing 104-97.

This is the 8 straight loss for the Bulls and they're only trailing 1.5 games behind the Raptors for the last playoff spot. It's important for either Chicago to heal quickly and steal the last spot from the Raptors or tank the rest of the season and pray they do worse than the Clippers so they can keep their lottery pick. If the Raptors don't make the playoffs this year, it's pretty much a sure bet that Chris Bosh will want to leave. He doesn't want to make the same mistake Garnett made and continue playing for a mediocre team that has no chance at the playoffs every year. Bosh, Rose and Noah would be a dominant force and an immediate playoff contender in the East.

Then there's the unlikely plan B....lose the rest of the season and hope to fall into the draft lottery. If the Bulls landed in the top 10, they wouldn't swap picks with the Bucks but it's HIGHLY unlikely. Althought the dream of drafting Evan Turner and then picking up Chris Bosh would make any Bulls fan happy.

Either way, the Bulls need to decide what they're gonna do. Deng & Noah are probably going to be out for at least a few more weeks and if Brad Miller goes down or Taj Gibson's foot problems emerge, kiss the 2010 playoffs goodbye.