NEWSLETTER
Alex Caruso said it best.
When speaking on The Ryen Russillo Podcast, the Chicago Bulls’ top defender didn’t hesitate to speak openly about the team’s struggles during the 2022-23 season. When discussing what may have happened if the Bulls held on in the final three minutes to beat the Finals-bound Miami Heat in the Play-In Tournament, Caruso didn’t want to dive too deep into a world of hypotheticals. Instead, he told Russillo that, after the team’s loss, his mind immediately went toward the Bulls’ numerous missed opportunities during the season.
“I’ll take it one step even further back. When we lose the Play-In Game, the season is over, I’m thinking about the two games we lost to Orlando this year, the game to Oklahoma City at home we lost, game at San Antonio early in the year we lost,” Caruso said. “That’s four games right there that … you count them as wins on the schedule. Maybe OKC is a little out of the ordinary than those other two teams. We lost to the Rockets at home in a bad game, I didn’t play in that, I was sitting out, but we still have plenty of talent to beat them … that’s kind of where my mind went when the season was over.”
Bingo. And I’m sure hoping everyone else on the roster had the same line of thinking.
While it’s fun to imagine a world where the Bulls go on their own playoff run after securing the No. 8 seed, the reality is they likely lose in Round 1 for the second-straight year. The Miami Heat were built around a true superstar in Jimmy Butler, as well as a nucleus that had made the NBA Finals just three seasons prior.
Chicago wasn’t built to make some kind of historic surge as the No. 8 seed. Instead, they were built for relentless inconsistency. Caruso didn’t shy away from mentioning the up-and-down nature of the past two seasons in Chicago. He brought up the Bulls’ ugly record against winning teams in 2021-22 followed by their even more ugly record against losing teams in 2022-23.
“We couldn’t beat any of the good teams and then last year, our record against the top six, seven, eight teams or maybe even less like top five, six teams of each conference was above .500. And then the teams that were below .500 on record, we struggled against. So It’s kind of just that putting it all together thing, fill in the roles to make up for the holes that were missing.”
While their current trend might suggest that the third time is the charm, there is a far better chance it simply speaks to who the Bulls are. Without significant changes to the team’s core this offseason, it feels like they are destined to be the kind of erratic team that continuously struggles to truly compete with the big boys.
If there is any way to break that trend, however, it’s to have guys like Alex Caruso in the locker room. The more people who aren’t afraid to call it like it is, the easier it will be to address the problem head-on.
New faces like Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig, fortunately, seem like the kind of no-nonsense veterans who can perhaps help the team face its inconsistencies. Not to mention, both join Caruso in being known for their high effort on a nightly basis. But, at the end of the day, it’s going to take a group effort and team-wide internal development for the Bulls to overcome the issues that have plagued them the past two years. Let’s see if Caruso’s mindset will be contagious.
