Chicago Bulls 2025 Media Day ::looks up antonym for 'anticipation'::

I suppose 'dread'...but we all expect it so that's a bit harsh

The Chicago Bulls kick off their 2025-26 campaign, what will be the AKME regime’s 6th and my own (sigh) 23rd. Training camp starts tomorrow but Monday is media day.

New to the beat is Joel Lorenzi, who takes over at The Athletic where he previously covered an exemplary NBA organization in the Oklahoma City Thunder. Joel asked on social media what fans are desiring out of coverage. Personally, I welcome any media attention treating the Chicago Bulls like a non-exemplary, merely normal NBA organization. Even that is a bit too kind considering their market and history, but like the Bulls themselves I am aiming low.

Too much of this franchise, from ownership to the mostly-bought media, has a perspective of entrenchment and inertia, and can answer “because…Bulls” to any attempt at objective assessment. Especially when it comes to the big picture, where we’ve seen the worst front office in basketball, get a contract extension then continue to make bad moves that are only rationalized by figuring they’re not too damaging, and a bit of who-the-hell-cares-are-simply-not-intending-to-be-relevant.

And as today is a rare media appearance by Arturas Karnisovas¹ (Marc Eversley is only better at elocution, he says similarly dumb things), the beat reporters - and by extension the fanbase - gets the added gutpunch of being condescended to by a smirking underqualified moron.

They will not set objective goals, and they will say that is actually good because goals mean scrutiny and that can lead to mistakes.

They will instead insist that they will know ‘success’ not by win total or postseason seeding, but simply by vibes. And last season was a success because it felt good to them (enough to sell ownership, which is good enough) to finish 15-5.

We’re going to hear 15-5 a lot, yet suspiciously little about getting trucked at home in the losers’ bracket, because this roster is Continuity 2.0. At least the last iteration was building off of a playoff appearance!

(I’d have to think the Bulls shoot up to 1st in the below chart if only considering post-TradeDeadline minutes…)

Here is the roster, I didn’t bother with the training camp signings because as we know it is FULL, thus why the Bulls will have a bottom-ten payroll, well below the luxury tax and with cap exceptions unspent.

It’s a somewhat astounding dedication to slightly-below-mediocrity. They have built a roster that while not having many “very good players” should be really resilient to injury and other in-season ‘chaos’ they’ve lamented in the past. I’d casually assess that Coby White is the only irreplaceable player²?

And that means, yup, within 4 wins of 35 victories. Management will say ‘improvement’ this season will mean success to them. Note that is subject to their self-assessment, as 39 wins would not be improvement over last year, but being 8th place would be.

But regardless, at the end of the year the season will be deemed a success. It won’t matter where they are relative to themselves, or the rest of the league, or who on the team is contributing or showing growth. Forever in transition, but under the same leadership, and only talked about a couple days a year.

1. as I write this I see Karnisovas is speaking with Billy Donovan - the newly christened hall-of-famer - as his shield

2. lmao, after publishing I see they said Coby will be limited in camp due to a calf strain suffered last month