The Chicago Bulls were ejected from the NBA Playoffs on Thursday, felled by the Philadelphia 76ers and also by injuries to Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah and Luol Deng. That would perhaps make Carlos Boozer the team's best healthy player, and certainly the team's most highly paid healthy player.
Luckily, despite becoming the fifth No. 1 seed to lose in the first round in NBA history, Boozer feels the season was successful. From ESPN Chicago's Nick Friedell:
"I thought I played well, especially with the kind of season it was," Boozer said, when asked to asses his second season in Chicago. "We had the best record again in basketball, won our division again, had the top seed again, that's all that matters, yo."
Um.
Booz should be glad that Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan are not current Chicago Bulls, because they would probably have no ability to stop themselves from beating him about the head in front of TV cameras after a comment like that.
No one's asking Boozer to weep over a first-round loss in a postseason in which it became immediately clear the second Rose was ruled out that a championship was not in the cards. But to say that getting the No. 1 seed is "all that matters" within hours of a series loss is just inane, foolish and something that will leave an ugly mark on a player who hardly needed to give Chicago fans another reason to dislike him.
There's no city where this would fly. In Chicago, the reaction is going to be very, very bad.