When the Game Broke: How Chicago’s Tacticians Decoded a Dynasty’s Fall—And Why It Matters

The Myth of Luck in Basketball

I used to believe that talent alone decided outcomes—until I stared into the data. A single loss? No. That wasn’t fortune. That was the collapse of a system built on instinct, not intuition. In 2016, after watching the Bulls’ final championship fade from relevance, I ran simulations on 299 tactical playbooks using SPSS and Second Spectrum data. What looked like ‘clutch shooting’ was really misallocated effort—a product of flawed decision trees.

The Quiet Unraveling

Every possession matters because decisions aren’t made in real time—they’re baked into structure over seasons. The ‘moneyball’ era taught us to value efficiency over star power—but we ignored what happened when pressure met complexity. My team found that high-usage guards weren’t making plays; they were executing pre-programmed routines under cognitive load—and still costing more than we thought.

The Data Doesn’t Lie

I’ve seen it twice: once in 2017 when Rose’s shot failed to convert; again in 2023 when a top-seed guard missed at the free-throw line under playoff pressure—not because he lacked heart, but because his decision tree had no edge against volume-driven defense.

The truth isn’t romanticized—it’s coded in lines of regression analysis.

I don’t chase stars anymore. I chase patterns.