Why The Bulls Are The Most Uninspiring NBA Team This Season

The Bulls are 2-5 and headed nowhere. Again.

Chicago's win total in the market was 37.5. That set the bar for a perfectly average season. Going over by five wins, a pretty good accomplishment versus market expectation, would result in the Bulls being just one game over .500 and likely a play-in appearance, maybe a first-round out.

But instead, against what is ranked the 20th-most-difficult schedule so far at DunksAndThrees.com, the Bulls are 28th in offense and 17th in defense so far. Not even average. Below average.

None of this is surprising.

The Bulls broke out in 2021-22, reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2017, before losing in the first round. They went backward last season, falling to 40-42 and losing in the second game of the play-in tournament, three minutes shy of another playoff appearance. But from the beginning of the formation of this core, there were questions.

Was Nikola Vucevic really worth the first-round pick they sent Orlando? Was DeMar DeRozan really the player to put this team into conference contention? Even in the season where they surged in 2022, they were never really considered an Eastern Conference threat.

The defense of Chicago's core is mostly built around the unspoken: Lonzo Ball's knee injury gone awry, which has cost Ball all of last season and this season. Ball was the secondary playmaker and wing defender to make their starting unit viable and reinforce the bench. His absence is $20.5 million of dead salary this year with only the disabled player exception to compensate.

But Ball won't play this year. DeRozan is a free agent this summer at age 34. This team hasn't gained anything close to meaningful momentum, and there's no young player waiting to spring into stardom.

When asked why this year would be different on media day, DeRozan deadpanned, "Because the third time's the charm."

It has not been.

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You can find ways around it with the early schedule small-sample. The loss to Denver Saturday was totally understandable; a road back-to-back in altitude versus the defending champs. The loss to Detroit earlier was their worst, but it too was a back-to-back. Losses to Dallas and OKC are losses to superior opponents.

But at some point if Chicago is going to be anything more than a random placeholder team, the standard garnish on every other team's season, they need to find ways to win games like the loss Friday in the open of tournament play, at home, to the Nets.

In that game, the Bulls fell apart late. Zach LaVine missed multiple shots late, but also had huge defensive lapses. And when asked by the Athletic, he rejected the premise those lapses were on him.

From the Athletic:

Surprisingly, LaVine took exception to labels of “lapses” and “miscues.” When asked how he looks back on those, LaVine saved his best defense for after the game.

“I didn’t think they were lapses,” he said. “We’re all out there playing hard. You go for the steal. The ball gets tipped back out. A guy goes in the lane, gets a charge call that didn’t get called. And then it gets kicked back out to another person. I thought we were doing good rotations.

“And then Bridges made a good move on the baseline. That’s basketball. I don’t think they’re defensive lapses. It’s basketball.”

On some level, this is inherent to the problem with the NBA schedule. You play so many games it's hard for any sequence to have meaning. It's all just basketball. But it's also not the urgency you want to see from your supposedly star player.

LaVine was ascending to star status in 2021. He averaged 27-5-5 that season on 51-42-85 shooting splits.

But LaVine has stagnated and regressed since DeRozan's arrival in the summer of 2021. And over the last three seasons, the Bulls have been better with DeRozan on the floor without LaVine and with LaVine on the floor without DeRozan than with the two together. Much of that has to do with playing starters versus staggered bench lineups, but regardless, it's not ideal.

When DeRozan was in San Antonio, the minutes were better when DeRozan was without LaMarcus Aldridge or Aldridge was without DeRozan than when they were together. Kyle Lowry's minutes were better in team performance without DeRozan in Toronto.

The key here is that these numbers reflect "what works the best or worst" and not how individuals play. This is not about how DeRozan is a bad player who drags other stars down. DeRozan has become a fine-if-not-great defender, a marvelous mid-range and post-up scorer, and a top-end passer.

But the minutes don't work, and LaVine, in particular, seems better suited for high-octane, fast-paced offenses rather than the Bulls' plodding and methodical style. DeRozan's clog of the mid-range and high-usage on-ball has limited LaVine's development in creativity.

This isn't to say that trading DeRozan would solve Chicago's problems. LaVine's stagnation is partly due to his inability to adjust to role. But the combination the Bulls have invested in doesn't work, and Lonzo Ball won't be returning to push the defense to a level where they can get away with it.

And yet, there's very little hope that the Bulls will redirect towards a rebuild. Ownership has consistently preferred taking shortcuts to playoff revenue than suffering through a true rebuild. The potential for longshot upside in the middle of the draft where Chicago has found itself not only hasn't produced a home run, they've flied out each time. Dalen Terry, in particular, seems an especially painful miss.

The Bulls will just keep slogging forward, largely wasting everyone's time with a team that doesn't appear inspired or motivated. Billy Donovan, despite coaching a team anchored by Nikola Vucevic in the middle and DeRozan and LaVine on the wings to a top-six defense (and better defensive marks than offensive marks this season) may pay the price if the Bulls continue sliding. But nothing will really change.

Maybe DeRozan's departure this summer in free agency if they don't re-sign him results in a reset. Maybe some other black swan event alters their course. But until something occurs to shift the winds of fate, Chicago seems dead set on not playing horrible basketball, not playing great basketball, not playing basketball for the future or basketball for now.

It's just basketball.