Can the Bulls pull off not pulling anything off?

the lack of interest in this team works in their favor

Just a quick and small rant today. The team is trudging along on the court, they have a very light schedule and so even through all these injuries (Dalen Terry added to Patrick Williams, though Torrey Craig is close to a return) they can win some games. And win enough to achieve their goals, which is to lose competitively.

That’s all extremely tired and boring, which overshadows the one nice new thing we have - which is Coby White’s ascendance.

And I think the Chicago Bulls’s irrelevance is illustrative in the media coverage. It’s a general NBA fan trend to care more about transactions than on-court play, but it’s fair for this team as we are so starved for change.

So it made sense that this nugget from Darnell Mayberry of The Athletic was amplified in significance:

few within or around the Chicago Bulls organization anticipate the franchise making a major move…If the Bulls swing a deal before the Feb. 8 deadline, most will be surprised. It’s not that the Bulls can’t make a trade, but there’s a prevailing belief that the front office won’t commit to something substantial

Then there’s KC Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago today just reiterating (uses the world ‘obviously’ a half-dozen times) what he’s been hearing for months, which is: not much.

This anticipation of the Bulls continuing to sit on their hands would cause more dismay if I felt anybody covering this team actually knew anything anymore. But especially under the post-GarPax regime, there is less coverage of this team and it is dwindling due to lack of interest.

KC works for a team partner. Mayberry doesn’t travel with the team. The Tribune has a beat reporter in Julia Poe, but she’s yet to unearth anything and also didn’t travel yesterday (to Charlotte, where the Bulls played the Hornets for what feels like 12th time this season). The only fully active beat reporter is Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times, who is a bonafide dipshit and can’t be trusted to accurately disseminate any information he does hear.

So I don’t take any recent reporting “around the Bulls” to provide any additional insight. They’re not even saying it’s coming from sources or anything new, but instead just making assumptions by looking at ::waves hands around:: what this team has done and said for the past FIVE transaction period, and that is indicating this trade deadline will be be more of the same.

This state, of course, plays into the Bulls franchise goal: don’t be an embarrassment. So while we may think it’s embarrassing if the Bulls can’t make a significant trade, again, it’s not the “jeering the front office on national television” type embarrassment that got John Paxson to commit executive seppuku.

The pressure should be on the team to make a move, and after so long it’s past the point where it’s “make a move just to make a move”. They should feel the pressure to not have to smirk and mumble through another press conference explaining why they can’t perform their jobs. But they aren’t operating that way, because they (and helped by the traditional media landscape) have successfully beat it into the fanbase to not expect anything.