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Where did the Chicago Bulls go wrong?

There are plenty of ways to explain what went wrong for the Chicago Bulls this season. Just to be clear, none of it adds up to an acceptable excuse for not making the playoffs.

Maybe there's some bad luck involved, since a 42-40 record was good enough to make the playoffs in the East the past 10 seasons, but the Bulls were better than that and everyone involved knows it.

Secondly, even though the firing of coach Tom Thibodeau last May seems like a bad idea now, Fred Hoiberg will be back for a second season. The basketball-operations team of Gar Forman and John Paxson aren't getting canned. So there's no point in demanding changes.

All three principles will get a chance for redemption next season. If the Bulls miss the playoffs again, that's a problem, because they're not going to blow up the roster and start from scratch.

With those qualifiers out of the way, let's rehash the Bulls' disappointing regular season and figure out how this team missed the playoffs for the first time in eight years:

Broken orbital bone:

The first scrimmage on the first day of training camp, Derrick Rose took an inadvertent elbow from Taj Gibson and suffered a broken orbital bone below his left eye.

So Hoiberg set out to completely revamp the Bulls' offensive system. He wanted to play faster and use a free-form offense without many set plays. And his point guard, who was used to walking the ball up the court and looking at the bench for the play call on every possession, spent most of training camp sitting in darkness at his 80th floor condo, because his injured eye couldn't handle the light.

Then Rose played on opening night of the regular season. In retrospect, even Hoiberg wondered if they would have been better off letting Kirk Hinrich lead the Bulls into the new offense and let Rose spend a few weeks getting acclimated.

Rose's season went fairly well, all things considered. He played in 66 games, averaging 18 points on 46 percent shooting after Christmas. It was a nice step forward for Rose, who made it to 51 games in 2014-15.

The givebacks:

The season began relatively well, but the first real sign of trouble came Dec. 7. Two days after a tough loss at home to Charlotte, the Bulls led Phoenix by 11 points with seven minutes remaining.

Should have been easy, right? The Suns turned out to be one of the league's worst teams. On this night, they exploited some bad pick-and-roll coverage by the Bulls to pile up 28 points in the game's final seven minutes and won 103-101.

Every team has bad nights, but this wasn't the only one. A few weeks later, the Bulls had an inexplicable home loss to Brooklyn on Dec. 21. This game followed the four-overtime loss to Detroit and Jimmy Butler's "we need to be coached harder" speech after a loss in New York.

By then, it was clear something was wrong with the Bulls' mental toughness. When they were blown out on back-to-back nights by the New York Knicks in March, all doubt was removed.

Injuries out of control:

The Bulls used their 24th different starting lineup Monday in New Orleans. Some teams had worse injury luck than the Bulls - the Pelicans and Memphis come to mind - but it's obviously tough to build momentum with so many key guys jumping in and out of the lineup. Rose had seven different injury absences, counting these last two games.

Which player did the Bulls miss the most? A case could be made for Joakim Noah, since the defense went in the toilet after he was lost for the season with a separated left shoulder Jan. 15.

On that date, the Bulls led the league in defensive field-goal percentage at .422. From Jan. 16 through today, they rank 17th at .459.

The Bulls were at their worst in games Nikola Mirotic missed, going 5-11. Much of his time off with appendicitis coincided with Butler being out with a left-knee strain, and they went 5-10 without Butler.

Is Mirotic an underrated X-factor, though? The Bulls are 14-8 this season when Mirotic starts.

Too much youth:

Even without the injuries, the Bulls were counting heavily on young guys such as Mirotic, Tony Snell, Doug McDermott and Bobby Portis. Snell really struggled, the other three had their moments, but no one was good enough to consistently help the Bulls win.

Rookie Cristiano Felicio and February addition Justin Holiday turned out to be reliable bench players late in the season.

New philosophy:

Clearly, the transition from Thibodeau's defensive juggernaut to Golden State-style high scoring didn't work this season. With another training camp and some changes to the roster, maybe Hoiberg can still pull it off.

This is a summer when the front office needs to shine. Forman and Paxson need to be able to make difficult roster choices while navigating an unprecedented landscape where every NBA team will have money spend on free agents.

Most important, if Hoiberg is going to promote a style of play where the ball moves and people are unselfish, Forman and Paxson need to set a similar tone. Make sure everyone in the organization knows winning is what matters most.

If it doesn't, winning probably won't happen.

• Get the latest Bulls news via Twitter by following @McGrawDHBulls.

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Bulls scouting report

Bulls vs. Philadelphia 76ers at the United Center, 7 p.m. Wednesday

TV: Comcast SportsNet

Radio: ESPN 1000-AM

Outlook: The Sixers won 18 and 19 games the past two seasons. This year they have just 10 victories heading into Tuesday's date in Toronto and have long clinched the NBA's worst record. Rookie PF Jahlil Okafor has been out since Feb. 28 with a knee injury. That leaves PG Ish Smith as the team's top scorer at 14.7 ppg, followed by SF Robert Covington (12.4) and C Nerlens Noel (11.2). The last time these teams met, in Philadelphia on Jan. 14, Jimmy Butler scored a career-high 53 points as the Bulls won in overtime. The Sixers have dropped seven in a row at the United Center and nine straight overall to the Bulls.

Next: 2016-17 season opener

- Mike McGraw

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