Throughout the already epic first round series, Chicago has been mislabeled as a young, upstart club with a ton of promise.  Their best player has all of the talent in the world and is only 20, yes, but the core that surrounds him is far different than what Kevin Pritchard has in Portland or Sam Presti does in Oklahoma City, where they have players like Jerryd Bayless and Serge Ibaka stashed away and are only natural maturation and a few minor tweaks away from being title contenders (more on this below).

The average age of Chicago's seven-man rotation (Rose, Gordon, Salmons, Tyrus Thomas, Noah, Miller and Hinrich) is 26-years-old.  How does that compare to the average age of the other 15 playoff teams?

1. Blazers: 24.2

2. Heat: 25.4

3. Hawks: 25.4

4. Bulls: 26.0

5. Jazz: 26.7

6. Rockets: 26.9

7. Cavaliers: 27.1

8. Sixers: 27.1

9. Lakers: 27.3

10. Nuggets: 27.9

11. Celtics: 28.0

12. Magic: 28.3

13. Pistons: 28.6

14. Hornets: 29.0

15. Mavericks: 29.4

16. Spurs: 31.6

Salmons and Miller raise that average age considerably and will not be around when the Chicago Roses are ready to compete for the Finals in earnest; substitute in Luol Deng/Chuck Cunningham and that average age decreases to 25.1, ahead of Miami.  But Chicago didn't come out of nowhere overnight as this team was believed to be close enough to compete for the Finals 20 months ago when Kobe Bryant was telling anyone who would listen to buy a Bulls jersey.  They were upstarts then, underachievers as the 07-08 season played out and now recycled as 'upstarts' with Rose.

Noah and Tyrus should come of age at the same time as Rose, but will max out as role players and won't even reach the status of David West and Tyson Chandler of last season.  As good as Chris Paul is and how much he improves his teammates, there is no magic point guard deodorant for a dearth of true talent when it gets into May.  The incremental improvements of Noah and Thomas, plus some sort of combination of Deng, Gordon and Hinrich will be good, but not good enough to get into June no matter how much Rose improves.

The John Paxson regime should stay on win, lose or draw, but the promising playoffs shouldn't mask the certainty that they will need to make at least one significant upgrade to really be contenders.  I don't think it will either, because the Bulls' front office seems to know this and also see themselves as a player in the 2010 free agency market if they don't make a significant trade even before then or re-sign Gordon without dealing Hinrich.

Chicago's situation is therefore different from Portland's, where their current unit is the one they expect to win a title someday (save some sort of consolidation of depth for a superstar point guard or small forward).  This is step one for the Blazers, similar to the first steps that the Pistons had against the Celtics in the mid-80's and the Bulls against the Pistons in the late-80's.  Chicago can't even be lumped into the same group as the Thunder, who will be Kevin Durant, Jeff Green, Russell Westbrook and their 2009 lottery pick and will look the same way six years from now.

For the Bulls, this is much more '86 playoffs where Jordan was playing against Boston with Orlando Woolridge, Charles Oakley, Sidney Green and George Gervin than it was in '89 when the pieces of Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant and Bill Cartwright were in place and they took Detroit to six in the ECF.  Paxson was present for both the 63-point game in Boston and the first three championships, but that was it.  The turnover with Rose is unlikely to be quite as severe, but the members of his supporting cast will look much different than this one.