So How Soon Until the Offseason? (and Other Bulls Bullets)
Thanks to a fourth consecutive loss and the second of the season against the rebuilding Orlando Magic, it doesn’t quite feel like the day of love.
Indeed, instead of opening my front door to flowers, chocolates, and a spicy Valentine’s Day card, I feel like I walked out to slashed tires, two broken car windows, and a ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant.
- I put a mix of hope and trust into this Bulls team, and all they’ve done is make me regret it. I’m just not at all sure what we have to look forward to over these next 25 games. FiveThirtyEight now gives the Bulls just a 15 percent chance of making the playoffs, while Basketball Reference is only a little more kind with a 27.5 percent chance. Meanwhile, Tankathon currently has Chicago with the 8th-worst record in the NBA, meaning they have a 26.3 percent chance to keep their top-4 pick.
- The Bulls had a chance to at least pick a direction last week at the trade deadline. They could have fully embraced a chance to grab a potential generational talent in this draft or they could have at least added something to this team to help with a potential playoff pursuit. What they chose is to ride in the middle and just further diminish their chance of making either thing happen. Now, it really just feels like all we can do is wait for the offseason.
- As last night’s game went on, the Bulls looked less and less interested. I’m not sure how the front office can continue to have a belief in this group when they don’t even have a belief in themselves. As Jason Goff put it on Twitter during the game, it’s an extremely bad look when rookie Dalen Terry appears to be the player with the greatest sense of urgency. The Bulls’ “Big 3” doesn’t even look like they’re trying to improve or pull this team out of the mud. They’re simply going through the motions and combining for nine of the team’s 16 turnovers.
- Not to mention, despite supposedly having offense as their collective strength, the Bulls have averaged by far the fewest points in the league over the last four games. Their 93.4 points a night is 10 points less than the team they played last night, which has the 25th offensive rating in the league. The fact that they had an opportunity to get back to .500 and proceed to play these four games is about the strongest proof that this core doesn’t work. Again, scoring isn’t supposed to be the problem when you have Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, and Nikola Vucevic on your team. Yet, for the Bulls, it’s easily their biggest problem right now.
- HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME FEEL THIS WAY ON VALENTINE’S DAY!
- Will Perdue continues to speak facts: “The one thing that maybe doesn’t change the outcome of the game but can change what our expectations are or how we look at it is just, in my opinion, better effort,” the former Bull said on last night’s postgame show. He’s 100 percent right. While the losses would still be frustrating, there would at least be a greater sense of respect for what this group is trying to do. As I said above, it truly feels like they’re checked out, which makes everything that much harder to stomach.
- I’m kind of surprised that Jake Fischer of Yahoo Sports didn’t mention anything about the Bulls in here. Absent some kind of tremendous run, the front office is going to have no choice but to make at least some drastic change this offseason. Could it be trading DeRozan (up for an extension) or LaVine (plenty of rumored interest)?
- The Athletic’s Shams Charania has shared the eight players who are supposed to complete in the NBA’s 3-point contest. After going it the past two seasons, Zach LaVine is not expected to participate.
- The full cast for All-Star Saturday night will be announced live on TNT this evening.
- Ricky …
- The only way these last 25 games could feel at all worth it is if the Bulls were to prioritize youth. Whether it be Ayo Dosunmu, Dalen Terry, Patrick Williams, or even freakin’ Marko Simonovic, there can at least be some value in seeing this final stretch as simply developmental. Now, to be clear, that isn’t going to happen when we consider the veteran talent on this roster … but it should.
- An answer is coming soon …
- ONCE AGAIN … BRING HIM TO ME.
