Bulls vs. Heat play-in preview: who wants it less?

Bulls looking to punch their ticket to a guaranteed ass-kicking

::sigh:: The Bulls are gonna make us follow them in these playoffs, aren’t they?

They won the first play-in game by default, as Coby White scored 8 fewer points than Malachi Flynn did a few weeks prior against a given-up Atlanta Hawks team.

The Miami Heat are not one to similarly give up, but that is before Jimmy Butler suffered a multi-week-absence-requiring knee injury in their own play-in first round game. Upon learning that trade deadline acquisition¹ Terry Rozier - who hasn’t played in 12 days nursing a neck strain - was swiftly ruled out too, one can start to wonder if their heart is in it for this season anymore.

The Heat, with their PR-branded ‘culture’, are usually the kind of competitive that the Bulls don’t even aspire to. But they’ve also known when to quit strategically before as well for the long-term health (literally in the case of Rozier) of the franchise. By losing this game, the Heat will jump into the draft lottery, and if they don't reach top-4 will draft between 12-14th after a coin flip.

The Bulls, meanwhile, have been white-knuckling their season and grinding everyone to their collective nub for the past couple months. It’s now routine where Alex Caruso is lied about on the injury report surprisingly trying to play through an injury suffered in the prior game, and that’s happening again tonight. The Bulls, after winning tonight, will go from longshot lottery odds at 11th to the lottery-ineligible 15th slot. BUT, it means two more home gates (and lower rookie scale contract!), even if they are otherwise outclassed against the Celtics in the first round².

Figuring a Bulls victory is a bit presumptuous considering the Bulls themselves are not good, not even average, and can lose any game they play. That’s true. The Heat will be at home, and have the variability of lots of threes on their side. But if they come out cold from distance like the Hawks did, they’ll know they don’t have the firepower to mount a comeback (even with Butler their half-court offense stinks) and just roll over.

And as a reminder: that result will change absolutely nothing when assessing this team’s direction, just the particular Karnisovas Mad Libs after it’s eventually over.

The Play-In cannot salvage this putrid Bulls season

1. see? AK was right on this, too: These midseason moves are mostly meaningless and can backfire!

2. I originally said ‘humiliated’ but as we know the Bulls do not possess shame required for such a description