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With the first pre-season game days away, it's time for this annual thread. (Hat tip Jack Finn.)

The roster appears finalized for the most part, but feel free to amend your prediction if a major change ensues before the opening night.

Math note: The Bulls winning percentage of .756 last year would equal out to winning 50 games this year in the shorter season.

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My prediction: 49 Wins


Reasoning: The grueling nature of the season will produce a few more fluke upsets for mediocre or bad teams, catching their betters in schedule fatigued situations.

Tom Thibodeau will not ride his players quite as hard with the nature of the schedule, and the knowledge that we are now legit contenders not needing to be so concerned with the crutch of HCA.

The overall fire and drive of the team in the regular season will be *slightly* reduced from last year, as they focus more on being ready for the playoffs and the ultimate goal therein - where we will come in actually more prepared and more balanced as a team than last year.

53

52-14

Seeing that the season isn't going to be much easier for any other teams, I think the Bulls will do just fine comparatively. This all goes down the crapper, of course, if there are any injuries to Rose, Deng, Noah or Boozer.

55 +/- 2

46 or so is what i'm thinking

it's pretty hard to sustain a 60+ win pace + i get the nagging feeling there was some sort of motivational ~magic~ in thibs/rose being united for the first time that will fade a little bit in the second year due to burnout or whatever

Rerisen wrote:Math note: The Bulls winning percentage of .756 last year would equal out to winning 50 games this year in the shorter season.

60 = 74
55 = 68
50 = 62
45 = 56
40 = 50
35 = bullsh**

52. The Bulls are one of the few teams that is ideally prepared for a shortened season. Roughly the same team, the same coach, and 2-deep at each position which will be important in a condensed schedule.

I'll go with 49 wins. The Bulls will be a better team this year but it might not be reflected in their regular season record because of the grueling schedule.

The Bulls, not the fans, will miss Bogans more than expected. 47 wins

i got us winning 46-49 wins. our schedule is brutal.

really ticks me off because the last schedule we had, i had us winning 60-65 games because of how easy our road trips were. because the nba wanted us on primetime, the teams we had that were difficult were taken off the long road trips and placed in they own specialty. we had a circus trip without the lakers or dallas on there cause we had dallas at the beginning of the season, and the lakers on christmas. our circus trip was a damn breeze.

now we got brutal road trips and normally when the schedule eases for us in march and april, its nonexistent. every month going to be a challenge.

but i still think our defense and rebounding and improved offense, and of course mvp rose will at least get us top 3 in the east.

o2cats wrote:The Bulls, not the fans, will miss Bogans more than expected. 47 wins

47 as well

but not because of no bogans

50-16.

50 seems as a good enough number, anything higher and I will be pleasantly suprised.

Anything lower and I will cry myself to sleep until my eyes go dry.

Somewhere between 44-47 wins.

49-17 or 52-14.

The schedule this year will be hard on all the teams. That said I see the Bulls resting the starters more near the end of the regular season to get ready for the playoffs. 48 wins

Hummm wrote:The schedule this year will be hard on all the teams

it is actually a tougher than average schedule for the bulls

most eastern conference teams we play 3 times. most western conference teams we play only once. here are the teams we play an extra game against:

good:

heat
celtics
knicks
grizzlies
hornets
hawks

bad:

bucks
kings
pistons

and then there's the remaining schedule, where one team gets home-court advantage in the series. here's the schedule for the deciding game (in order from best to worst teams, roughly):

at lakers
at thunder
dallas
at spurs
at magic
nuggets
blazers
at 76ers
at clippers
nets
rockets
pacers
at warriors
at cavs
wizards
suns
at bobcats
jazz
at wolves
raptors

a bit slanted toward road deciding games against tougher teams

53

48 wins.

I picked 45 or under because we've always started out very slow and by March, we're in high gear. This season NY, Indiana, Miami, and Boston have gotten better. We're not sneaking up on teams like we did last season.