Bulls season is over, bullshit season starts today
the ramblings of an over-his-head failure await
You could figure I am bad at prognosticating, thinking the Bulls would take their annual Eastern Conference gift of facing a Jimmy Butler (and Terry Rozier) -less Miami Heat team and make the playoffs.
I did offer the caveat of thinking Miami would pack it in only if they started out cold. And they did not. It was the Bulls who struggled on offense against “not the Hawks”, after starting the game making their first few attempts was on the wrong side of a 26-2 run by the Heat.
The other big stretch of the game was to end the 3rd quarter, as the Bulls started to get outright embarrassed with every combination of frontcourt players:
Vucevic complaining to officials on both ends while the game was happening around him (he did have a double-double!!!! #milestone)
Javonte Green small-ball center not securing defensive rebounds
Andre Drummond disasterclass of turnovers and fouls
The Bulls found themselves down twenty going into the 4th quarter, and were decidedly not “competitive” in that final period.
That’s all I’ll say about this particular game. It wasn’t like the Bulls were outclassed or this indicated anything about them that we didn’t learn from the 82 regular season matchups. I do think it’s instructive to see that with their highest-paid player (who’s actually a positive on the court) out, the Miami Heat had a starting lineup with an average age (24.7) of Ayo Dosunmu. Nikola Jovic was drafted 9 spots behind Dalen Terry. They made the NBA FINALS last year.
Yet what we’ll hear today from Buls management, timed in an attempt to have the least amount of attention possible, will seem like it’s directed towards the Heat and not the unaccomplished, currently worse, and less promising future state than the Bulls.
Again, this game’s result did not matter in the grand scheme of things. Everything that you can say about this team after getting fairly embarrassed on national television you could’ve said last week, and I did:
Deriving too much from a single-elimination tournament against similarly-middling opponents is the stated mindset of the front office. So prepare your AK Mad Libs: astoundingly-low bar of success (including distracting the paying customers), injury excuses, all the players are great, coaching is great, parsing out season stretches of a good record, prior inaction was proven to be the correct move, want to bring everyone back next year, thinking about the salary cap is for nerds, outright lies that are only assumed unintentional because he’s too stupid to be malicious…
Ultimately, say they’re disappointed but come off incredibly self-satisfied.
That Arturas Karnisovas defaults to positivity-bozo mode (it worked on the ‘dorfs for Jim Boylen, who was even dumber) is not the sign of some master strategist. It’s the flailing of someone in over his head, desperate to not bring attention to past mistakes and too paralyzed in fear of repeating them.
By all rights he should’ve fired himself, and really before the play-in tournament. Today, anything less than executive seppuku is a letdown, even if entirely expected.
A few things were made clear during Jerry's Big Adventure in Springfield last month. He's trying to sew everything up in the next 5 years because he doesn't think he can count on being alive much longer than that, and he said openly that it would be extreme onerous for his heirs to retain both teams rather than selling after he dies, and he expects his heirs will sell.
For Sox fans, you're going to get fucked. The state seems extremely uninterested in adding to the valuation of the Reinsdorf Family Trust, thank goodness, so the rest of us are okay.
For the Bulls I don't know what this means. When Boylen said he was acting as team "CEO," I think that reflected the general paralysis that predates Karnisovas and Eversley and Donovan. I think the Bulls are in a position to be sold as-is, but still fatten the fuck out of his bank account every year. Logically he shouldn't rock the boat. And rationally "what they should do" and "what they can do" have been narrowed down into a very small realm of possibilities, few of which have anything to do with individual players or emotional investment. And practically they don't want to do much (I mean even physical exertion) or spend much (beyond what the league makes them spend), so there's a balance to be sought there as well as some of these decisions are going to be made for them.
I don't think they'll "bring it all back" because that would cost the most money (lol at the idea of ever going into the luxury tax until that guy dies and we boo his widow). DeMar may just sign for a couple years but he's probably not offering a cash discount on his current salary. Patrick Williams is not getting less than he made last year. Everyone else's salaries are incrementally higher in excess of the increase in the luxury tax threshold.
Plan B probably consists of The Rondo Agenda: conceal that you're shipping a bunch of shit out by bringing lower-paid shit in. Toss out Derrick Rose for Jerian Grant by adding a "splashy" Rondo. In the 2024 context this would mean DeMar walking (more likely getting a sign and trade) and signing Chris Paul for a fraction of what DeMar was paid.
Plan C would be Le Reddit Blow It All Up, which involves the most effort and ultimately still a lot of money.
The irony of any post-DeMar Bulls team in 2025 is that if "successful" they will be surrendering a first round pick for a guy who longer plays here, which GMs are mercilessly ridiculed for. In the language of Erving Goffman, Karnisovas most definitely considers himself a shrewd operator and I don't think he can handle that ego death. That shouldn't be a a factor but it is. So I would think he has a strong personal aversion to Plan B, and will try to swing it toward a plan that either retains DeMar or snorts a few lines of Quin Snyder Marching Powder and nukes it down to bedrock at all costs (within reason eh). Thanks for coming to my TedX Talk: Live at Kennedy-King Community College.
unsurprisingly, there's low expectations for the team and that extends towards low expectations for press conferences
AK was not offensively stupid but beyond his prepared statement he still let slip that he's in way over his head
best example was regarding Lonzo. Asked "don't you need to evaluate Lonzo's status before the draft? and you're saying you're going to wait a few months?"
AK: 😐 ::pausing to consider the mere concept of proactivity:: "we will wait and see"