I feel like I can write this post now, or at training camp, or when Zach LaVine is traded the the Lakers in October, or when the season starts:
Bulls management has managed to completely suck the life out of what little they had already, to where this upcoming season is incredibly bleak.
Not only are they looking to have a really bad record, they’ve painted themselves in such a corner to where if they surprisingly get some more wins, that result counterintuitively ‘tanks’ their best chance of meaningful long-term improvement.
There was the big schedule release last week, and who can even bother to care? Like seeing write-ups where they go through back-to-backs or a Western Conference road trip, one of the few distinctions among them was just how quickly everyone recognized that this team is one of the bottom 10, perhaps bottom 5 teams in the league.
I’ve seen an over/under 30 wins, other instances of a lower total. But I think even approaching 30 is very generous, and this team is more in the 25 win range. Even with their now-departed two best players last season, it was lucky wins and playing-down-to-competition losses.
And even more strange is seeing the Bulls off the board in some cases. I assume it’s due to the concept of Zach LaVine, but I use that phrasing for a reason: a healthy, engaged, productive Zach LaVine is merely conceptual, and rarely lead to an impact on wins even at its best. It doesn’t make any sense for him to play for the Bulls this season, and if he does it’ll have no impact. And Nikola Vucevic shouldn’t even be mentioned he’s so inconsequential.
I don’t see the story, here. They’re not helpful players! So it makes more sense that both the Bulls are going to be terrible with or without those two on the court, and they won’t return much in a trade to make a difference on the court either.
This has been incomplete, technically, but in losing the actually positive-impacting players the direction has already been established. I don’t doubt that Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley will continue to claim, in a delusional yet genuine way, that they’re not rebuilding and don’t intend on being terrible. But it’s plain to see when not through their filter: they will be terrible.
But that lack of intention by the front office matters, as it’s another reason to have such little faith in them. This teardown (the easiest phase for a management regime) was delayed, then forced upon them, then poorly executed.
So it makes sense that a vast swath of the fanbase is rationalizing that the only day that matters for the whole goddamned year is the Draft Lottery, as it’s a team building task completely taken out of AKME’s hands. And the reward, through sheer luck, is better than what we can expect them to earn through, say, being good at their jobs.
Bleacher Nation, who I think is also being genuine when they say they find any of this “interesting” , also acknowledged this overarching problem:
The team’s 2025 first-round pick will head to the San Antonio Spurs if it lands anywhere outside the Top 10. Considering where the current roster stands, this would be a pretty major disaster for the front office.
Friends: if that’s the current situation, it is already a “major disaster”.
I wrote about this last season when AKME talked “staying competitive” as reason to not make moves with any intent (in either direction) before it was too late. I can’t think of a more horrible situation than when forced to root against their team’s success, putting fans who dare to hope to see interesting, good, entertaining basketball in conflict with that.
This dynamic brings to mind the paradigm a ‘Bulls source’ posited to Darnell Mayberry in that awful post-trade-deadline fallout. The idea of “his fans” versus the paying customers in their building. I suppose they would think that only "his fans” would have the mindset where they embrace the tank and get upset if LaVine had a good game1 or they sign a fringe player who wins the Sean Kilpatrick Memorial2 Award. Those fans would never set foot in the United Center and pay $14 for a beer regardless.
But if we’re to consider the paying customer, how is AKME serving them, either? They’re being shown even less than last season’s thrilling-yet-inconsequential dinner theater with their clutch offensive (DeMar DeRozan) and defensive (Alex Caruso) players gone. It’s possible that like their misguided notion that they won’t be terrible overall, that they feel Josh Giddey is a star in the making or Coby White has more levels to reach. I don’t think using the charity foundations of homegrown players to buy up ticket blocks really counts as revenue, right? How are they going to launch a new TV network with this program?
So if not for jaded observers or casuals with disposable income, I really don’t know for whom AKME thinks this season is for. And I think a lack of attention to both ‘sides’ is such a grim statement that it’s useful to step back once in a while and look at this situation for one of the league’s biggest markets, a glamour franchise.
And given this franchise’s history, we can’t even realistically consider the most obvious and easy change: a new front office.
It’s so bleak right now that it’s only slightly less realistic to hope for NBA expansion of another franchise in the market. It is not too far fetched to think that the commissioner’s office may want to look into the Chicago situation as their chronic dysfunction is bad for the league.
How’s that for a season preview? Early, but again: I don’t see any significant changes coming to where it needs to be altered.
