Zach LaVine and Wendell Carter Jr. Talk About Change After Another Ugly Loss and Other Bulls Bullets

Mar 01, 2020

Anyone else planning to sit on the couch all day and not move? Cool.

Don’t underestimate the Chicago Bulls’ ability to make a bad situation worse. Despite a surging Coby White and the return of Wendell Carter Jr. and Denzel Valentine to the rotation, the Bulls still managed to lose by double figures to the New York freakin’ Knicks. The game marked the team’s 10th loss in the last 11 games, and threw them 20 games under .500.

“OuR gOaLs FoR tHe SeAsOn ArE tO mAkE tHe pLaYofFs.” https://t.co/dc4SgWq5Zo

— Bleacher Nation Bulls (@BN_Bulls) March 1, 2020

The Bulls have about 238 reasons why they should make significant organizational changes this offseason, but two losses to the 2019-2020 Knicks is pretty darn high on the list. I wrote about this a bit last night in the postgame, so I’m not going to full-on rant again, but one of the few comforting facts for Bulls fans over the last few years has been that the Knicks dumpster fire has burned a little brighter. And while the Bulls do have a chance to at least split the season series still with a game later this month, this franchise has already lost the battle of the bums. Perhaps the Bulls could turn around their luck faster, but the Knicks organization has given themselves a head start by firing their head coach and hiring a new front office face midseason. With that being the case, last night’s loss kind of felt like the Knicks trying to pass the “laughing stock of the league ” torch to Chicago.

Fortunately, the Bulls players seem to be just as fed up as we are. Thaddeus Young, Zach LaVine, Tomas Satoransky, and Wendell Carter Jr. all voiced their frustrations after last night’s game, and you can read all their thoughts thanks to The Athletic. Expectedly, LaVine was the most candid about the organization’s need for a massive culture change: “There’s a lot of different factors, man,” he told Darnell Mayberry. “I don’t think some people played up to par. I don’t think we did the right things, game to game. We fight, but we obviously don’t get the end result that we need. So something’s got to change. You’ve got to do something to get those wins and stop stockpiling (those) losses. I think there’s a lot of things that you’ve got to take into consideration and you’ve got to look at in the offseason.”

When the most important player is saying that the organization must completely re-evaluate things, I think it’s fair to say the team hit rock bottom. I’d LOVE to hear LaVine elaborate on what “things” he wants this franchise to take into consideration, but it might take another brutal loss to the Knicks to get that out of him.

The second best quote in The Athletic’s piece came from Carter Jr., who called out his team for caring more about their individual success than winning: “We say it’s a team thing, but it’s more of an individual thing. Everybody’s got to be able to look at themselves and know that even though we go out there and play well individually, we didn’t play well as a team. So if we can have everybody to understand that individual stats or someone doing something individually very, very good doesn’t lead to wins, including myself. We’ve just got to learn that none of that shit matters if we’re not winning.”

I know this kind of sounds like he’s calling out Zach LaVine or Coby White, but I really don’t think that’s intentional. I just think he’s pointing out that the Bulls locker room is by no means a connected unit, and that’s what happens when you have toxic leadership. I’m sure the mixture of injuries, losses, and constant league-wide ridicule has caused many of these players to throw in the towel.

Okay, but all this suckiness must mean the Bulls are positioning themselves well for the draft, right!?

https://twitter.com/StephNoh/status/1234131010054475778?s=20

Son of a –

Time for my daily praise of Coby White! He continued his strong play with his 4th consecutive 20+ point game yesterday. As much as the Bulls suck, they do seem to have yet another talented young piece to build around. The goal now, hire an entirely new staff and player development team so they don’t screw this up!

White spoke about his first season in Chicago during NBC Sports’ Wire to Wire documentary, and like everything he does, it was a lot of fun.

At the end of the day, I love my job (he whispers to himself as he holds back tears).

Through the struggles of a disappointing season the fact remains, when you love something so much and truly enjoy working with really good people…it makes coming to work a pleasure. ⁦@34billy42⁩ does a fantastic job and is a great analyst. ⁦@chicagobulls⁩ ⁦ pic.twitter.com/On3DoWX9Gb
— chuck swirsky (@ctsbulls) March 1, 2020

written by

Elias Schuster

Elias Schuster is the Lead Chicago Bulls writer at Bleacher Nation. He started with BN full-time in 2019 immediately after graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign with a degree in Journalism (yes, he started with the Jim Boylen Era). Since joining, Elias has been the driving force behind Bulls and NBA content for both the site and social accounts. You can follow him on Twitter/X @Schuster_Elias.

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