Don't Sweat the Relegation Zone
a successful rebuild season isn't defined by season record
This post is a response to not something specific - though I could’ve swear I’ve seen it from legitimate Bulls takes-havers - but more a bubbling concern: the likelihood of the Bulls being in the ‘Relegation Zone’ for the 2027 Draft Lottery.
For a refresher on the rules, plus commentary on the unfortunate catchiness in spite of inaccuracy of the name, this from Tom Ziller:
In May the NBA adopted its latest batch of draft lottery reforms. It's a broad shift in how the best picks in a draft are decided and could have broad impacts on strategic team-building over time. One element is the lottery penalty the three worst teams will face. Media has been referring to this as "the relegation zone," but it's not relegation. That has a meaning in sports, and this ain't it. I propose we call it the "Zone of Shame." You know, like the plastic cone dogs have to wear after surgery so they don't lick their wounds, getting them infected and disgusting. As the "Zone of Shame" is an anti-tanking measure, and tanking is an abomination, it seems appropriate.
Like Ziller, I think the latest revisions to the lottery rules seem great. And one of the reasons is that it removes galaxy-brain discourse surrounding team-rebuilding strategy: what should be a straightforward season-long mission of “be young, and maybe not good, but try to improve pools of current players and future assets” was overtaken by short-term haphazard ideas mostly being blatant self-sabotage to increase percentage points in a game of chance. These ideas grew out of control in my opinion, from sitting healthy players for the final week of a lost season to going into the season (or multiple seasons!) not merely trying to rebuild and losing games as a byproduct but making as many regular season losses as possible the goal.
A new discourse surrounding a motivation for teams to be out of the ‘relegation zone’ is not nearly as annoying. Very simply because it advocates for winning games versus losing them. But it does have a similar fundamental issue, where regular season record is the measure of success.
Perhaps the best expressed trait of Bryson Graham’s early tenure running the Chicago Bulls (and in stark opposite of his predecessor) is that he seems to correctly assess - and says so to the media - that his team is extremely far away from contention and will be very bad next season. And now that the offseason has died down - with the Bulls business more concluded than others - we are starting to see 2025-26 win projections that place a good chance that the Bulls will have one of the three worst records in the league.
It makes sense to me that they’ll lose more than last year, where even their post-deadline tank left them with an inflated win total due to:
Billy Donovan
Opponents tanking/resting earlier and more proficiently
Clutch-time luck
The actual roster may very well be worse this year too, especially if Donovan’s departure means that playing time no longer needs to be earned, but instead simply given to young prospects.
And it should, because that is the generic mission of a rebuilding year: improve the current young players while also improving the base of assets.
And Graham looks to have made moves with those goals in mind. He acquired veterans and held on to others with the theory that their playing time will not take away from the Future Core but instead foster their development1. Plus those players are signed to contracts that theoretically2 will be tradeable for positive value in return, not traded merely to make the Bulls worse after they’re gone.
Because that last mentioned tactic, increasing chances to win the 2027 Draft Lottery, is an example of ‘improving asset base’, but to a much smaller degree. So small that I believe it should not even be considered when evaluating transactions. Just today the Bulls surfaced in rumors to be in the mix for Clippers’ restricted free agent Bennedict Mathurin, and such a pursuit should be judged against present (he’s only 24) and long-term value, not if Mathruin will help the Bulls win enough games to stay out of the bottom three.
And, for my own sanity, I don’t think Bulls fans should consider this year’s regular season win total in relation to the bottom-three of the league a factor either. It will be a successful season if The New Young Core (Caleb Wilson far and away the most important) improves, and if Graham can obtain more future assets, even if they finish in the relegation zone for this next draft lottery.
If it’s tough to unlearn galaxy-brain thinking in the face of simple motivations, consider this: the 2028 draft looks to be way better (at least more top-heavy) than 2027. And if the Bulls did get a top-5 pick next year (to repeat: they’d have a better chance of a top-5 pick if they’re not in the relegation zone) after selecting 4th this past draft, a different recently-implemented lottery rule would be enforced to where the Bulls literally could not have a top-5 pick in 2028.
Note that this is a strategy adopted by Arturas Karnisovas at the last trade deadline where he insisted on bringing in veteran big men to ‘balance the roster’, but like all AKME ideas it was too little and too late and therefore too dumb.
This is something Graham has to prove to be correct before we can say they were good targets of his.