Chicago Bulls 2022-23 schedule released, and it’s slightly rougher than others

All of the NBA’s 30 teams released their schedule yesterday afternoon.

Here is the schedule for the Bulls.

There isn’t going to be much variance in schedule strength, obviously. And we still don’t know what is going on with Kevin Durant or Donovan Mitchell which will impact new and departing team (Kyrie Irving is also a player with an NBA contract).

But upon first glance it looks like the Bulls start the season relatively easy, and end it relatively difficult. I consider this better than the opposite: the Bulls need to get off to a good start to hopefully convince ownership to be buyers at the trade deadline. And at the end of the season even the likely-great teams will be resting players or jockeying for seeding that may have them tank a game here or there.

Objectively bad news though in that the Bulls have the most back-to-backs scheduled of any team in the Eastern Conference. Adding analysis of team and opponent rest, PositiveResidual.com has the Bulls as 11th-hardest schedule, though I would say they are the best team of that group (the simple axiom being that a shitty team will have a harder schedule because they can’t play themselves).

The league also announced the national television schedule, and while the Bulls don’t have a Christmas game (the disrespect!), there are more than a few occasions where you can avoid Stacey King:

And you may notice in that list that after years on hiatus, THE TNT BULLS WILL RETURN!