Arturas Karnisovas is satisfied

if remembering his stated goals, The Bulls are performing to management's expectations

At the end of my most recent post regarding the Bulls standing in the NBA trade market, it included the factor of how the Bulls see themselves:

we don’t even know the fundamental philosophy of the organization: do the Bulls even think they’re sellers? Are they prioritizing “competitive in every game” and staying in the hunt for the play-in? They’ve exceeded my personal expectations in being that ‘good’ so far this season, but I don’t think AKME had such low expectations. I think they believe they’re playing as well as they hoped for. And with a new identity!

I was holding out on expanding this thought for when they (surely would) beat the Wizards. But though they actually lost to the worst team in basketball, in fairly embarrassing fashion, the overall season status is pretty much the same: in the play-in ‘hunt’, but no threat to actually make the playoffs and a slim chance they’d win a top-4 lottery selection.

This should be considered an abject failure to an objective observer. But after being so ingrained Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley’s regime of limp incompetence, a biased observer such as myself has to think of a more damning truth: this season has seen AKME accomplish their primary goals. Their stupid, vaguely defined, goals.

Drew Stevens at The Bigs is one of the rare independent beat media remaining¹ , and as the Bulls find themselves in this state is consistently reminding everyone of AK’s words on media day after Drew himself asked AK about the team’s own first round pick being top-10 protected.

If you recall, AK responded with it not being ‘our focus’, with instead the focus being on 1. establishing a playing identity and 2. home court advantage²

There was other goals from that day, though not as definitive³: developing young players (nope), and maintaining the integrity of the game by not self-sabotaging (I suppose so, the Wiz loss was a rare no-show in terms of effort). And from sourced reporting we know they wanted to trade Zach LaVine (not yet, and maybe too late?).

We likely won’t hear from AK again until after the trade deadline, and his team will likely be in the same position. Perhaps there’s a trade, but it’ll make little difference in that regard: they’re going to wind up having a puncher’s chance at a top-4 lottery win, and a not-insignificant chance of losing the pick entirely versus picking, like, 9th⁴.

But we can anticipate what AK will say based off his prior press conferences: desperately grasping for any positives to mask the negatives and ultimately sounding like a complete moron. I can hear it now, in my head (and through the pain it causes me): ‘I was happy we played faster and shot more threes, we were good on the road but not at home, and I’m not sure why but would like to see that improve.’

Based off of AK’s own weak standards and faulty ways of measuring success, this has been a good season so far! Pathetic, sure. But is it incorrect?

I mean, yes of course it’s incorrect…but only a little bit. Less incorrect than I was, anyway, as I predicted the Bulls would stumble, spiral, and wind up with a low-20s win total. I believed, though unintentional, that the Bulls would be in that lowest or second-lowest tier of losers. It’s barely the new year and they already have 15 wins.

We have already established that most success has been due to veteran play and not a young player breaking out, but the win total is also due to a lot of luck. he Bulls are 6-0 in games decided in the final 30 seconds. LaVine and Vuc are shooting very well from three, while opponents are missing a high percentage of threes even though the overall Bulls team defense is expectedly poor.

But the biggest factor in the Bulls meager success this season has been player health. I had figured Lonzo Ball for fewer than five games this season, and he’s not only been available but been one of their best +/- positive contributors all year. They haven’t had much missed time from other significant players⁵ all season.

Meanwhile, look at their subjective preseason tier in the Tankathon. It was clear (though some willingly forgot) the Bulls were not going to plan to lose like those more experienced in it: Washington, Utah, Brooklyn, and Portland.

But the next group of Toronto, Charlotte, Detroit, San Antonio have seen the first two suffer major absences, and worse it happens in times they face the Bulls. I feel like the Bulls play the Hornets every other week and somehow Chicago has the healthier Ball brother now. Detroit just lost Jaden Ivey for the rest of the season. The Spurs likely will try to get under the Bulls so that Chicago’s pick conveys to them. Then there’s a couple teams that have more unexpected injuries in New Orleans and Philadelphia. The latter will likely move ahead but the Pelicans are 8 wins behind already (!) and have no similar anticipatory daylight.

These 15 wins, and being merely 10th worst in basketball (and 10th seed in the NBA second division), is as inflated as their high pace makes their scorer’s counting stats.

6 - against teams worse/injured Wizards, Hornets, Raptors, Nets, Spurs

3 - over same-level teams in Detroit and Atlanta. Atlanta should be a step above but seem to trip over themselves whenever facing the Bulls.

3 - Bucks without Giannis, Grizzlies without Morant, Orlando with Banchero playing with a torn oblique for the final quarter and missing every shot

Yes, that leaves a few good wins. But as the Bulls said after losing to the Wizards, any team can lose any regular season game.

AKME doesn’t think of it that subjectively. They just look at non-context Ws. They’ll even look so hard they’ll misrepresent where they are in the standings.

We need to prepare ourselves for how stupid and cravenly misleading AKME will be in spinning this season. It’s even worse than trying to do so many things that they failed. They told us they are trying to do extremely little, and will self-satisfyingly say they’re actually succeeding.

1. though he’s limited, like Will Gottlieb of CHGO, in that he doesn’t travel to road games

2. reminder, this one doesn’t make any sense and it’s one of TWO goals!

3. as much as AK’s mumbling can ever be too definitive. Jeeez, just listen to this.

4. this is not that big of a difference in my opinion, as if they keep this pick they still owe top-8 protected next draft. They need a star, and that’s as unlikely at pick #10 this season versus potentially #8 next season, the real failure would be not winning top-4 lottery. And in a way I’d prefer the obligation extinguished ASAP so we don’t have it hanging over the franchise any longer.

5. put your hand down, Pat, I said significant