Every November the Bulls go on a early season road trip, called “The Circus Trip” and come back with a hole that they have to dig themselves out of. Since Jordan retired, in the Bulls’ nine full circus trips (that is excluding the lockout season), the Bulls have gone a combined 6-52 on the circus trip. The Bulls have barely won 10% of their circus trip games.
It is not like all of these teams were that good. The Bulls have entered the circus trip with a combined 18-42 in past seasons. Not exactly great play, but there is a noticeable drop off in performance when the Bulls’ go on the circus trip from their early November play.
From 1999 to 2003, the Bulls went a combined 0-32 on the circus trip. It wasn’t until the Bulls got Ben Gordon and Luol Deng that they were able to win their first circus trip game. The Bulls beat the Utah Jazz 101-99 on November 24, 2008 to win their first game after starting the season 0-9. Eddy Curry played a big role in the Bulls’ win, scoring 21 points, but the Bulls’ savior was Ben Gordon, who finished with 22 points, and led the Bulls to victory in the fourth.
Since the arrival of Deng and Gordon, the Bulls have gone a combined 6-20. With Gordon and Deng, the Bulls have entered the circus trip with a combined 7-14 record.
The Bulls’ best circus trip was in 2005, when the Bulls went 3-3 on the circus trip after starting the season 3-2.
So how will the Bulls do on this year’s circus trip? I plotted the Bulls’ pre-circus trip win percentage against their circus trip in the 9 full circus trips since Jordan retired. Then I put a trend line over those points.
The Bulls went 5-5 prior to the circus trip this year, for a 50% win percentage. The 50% pre-circus trip win percentage on the x-axis intercepts the trend line at approximately 17%.
As a result, the Bulls predicted record on the circus trip is: 1-6
This is the result of the Bulls’ unbearably bad play on multiple circus trips. The Bulls have gone win-less on five of the circus trips, won 1 game on three of the circus trips, and won multiple games on only one of the circus trips.
Here is what the plot looks like for just the years that Gordon and Deng have been with us.
This outlook is a little brighter. On this plot, the trend line intercepts the 50% win percentage mark on the x-axis at approximately 31%.
Using this, the Bulls predicted record on the circus trip is: 2-5
What does this all mean? It means that fans should not be expecting too much out of the Bulls on this circus trip. Fans should expect the team to do very poorly on the circus trip.
However, this Bulls team has one big thing going for it that the others didn’t, and that is double star power. In the past few years, the Bulls only had Gordon as a guy who could just go out and win you a game by himself. This year, the Bulls have two of those guys with the addition of Derrick Rose.
The Bulls also have the detriment of shaky road play going against them this year. The Bulls are currently 0-3 on the road and lost their games by an average of 11 points a game. However, it is hard to say that we lost those games because we were on the road. It is more likely we just lost those games because they were going against really good teams. In our power rankings the Celtics are currently ranked 2, the Cavaliers 3, and the Magic 4, so we were losing to some of the best team’s in the league in our 3 road games.
The Bulls are currently 1-5 against team’s above them in our power rankings and 4-0 against teams that they are ranked ahead of in our power rankings. So far, the Bulls are winning the games they are supposed to win. If this trend holds true, the Bulls would be expected to go 2-7 on the circus trip, winning their game against the Warriors while losing 5 out of the 6 games against the Lakers, Blazers, Nuggets, Jazz, and Spurs.
As a result of all of this, the Dabullz.com prediction for the Bulls’ circus trip record is 2-7.
