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.
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"
I'm not even sure there was enough there to 'recap'
He once again said 'accountability' but didn't actually hold himself accountable
Whatever credit for saying the right thing ("need to make changes" "I have to be better") is countered in that it was a year too late