I think this team's record will basically come down to health. They were incredibly healthy last year. Despite the rocky start, Zach actually had an incredibly healthy year (in terms of missing games). I know he was working his way back to 100% but he was still out there. Vooch and Pat didn't miss a single game. DeMar only missed a handful, and even Caruso had what is considered a healthy season for him.
This team will likely be "better" this year than they were last year. I don't expect Vooch and DeMar to have regressed much. I actually expect we'll get a better season from Zach. I think Coby and Pat will both take steps forward, although maybe not as much as some may want. Carter and Craig are both positive additions. While I agree that Craig isn't the shooter some hoped he'd be, he'll probably be a better shooter than Javonte or DJJ, and those are the guys he's replacing. He also offers more size than those guys.
So a fully healthy team this year should be better than last year. My guess would be in the 42-45 win range. With that being said, I think injuries will be what hurts this team. Vooch and DeMar have been incredibly healthy, but they're both old. If Vooch goes down, this team is in trouble. And I say that as someone who thinks Vooch isn't actually nearly as impactful as his numbers make him look. They have zero depth at the center position.
If the mid-3 lose a decent amount of games to injury and Caruso spends more time injured than he did last year (very likely), I think this team really crumbles. And I think that's why so many predictions for this season are so low on the Bulls. Just like they went from being a genuinely good (albeit a bit deceptive) team with Lonzo to a seriously mid team. AK clearly hasn't learned his lesson and still has an incredibly fragile team. If they suffer some key injuries this season, they could go from being a mid team to a genuine 30-35 win team.
I think the national reporters are working under the assumption that the FO will blow things up by the deadline when the team has a poor-to-mediocre record. I see the season happening a lot like last year: poor record until it’s garbage time, when they’ll tally some pity victories (assuming good injury luck). I just don’t see this FO under these owners going into a rebuild mid-season.
Yep, agree completely. That's the problem with these record predictions. The local media is always way too optimistic while the national media assumes things that aren't true (ie. AK blowing this up midseason, which we all know won't happen) because they don't actually pay very close attention to this organization.
If you're saying Vooch going down puts this team in trouble (I assume W/L wise), then by definition this is saying Vooch is valuable. Drummond as a backup center with Sanogo or Favors 3rd seems about league average for backup center situation.
Yes, Drummond is about league average for a backup center. If Vooch gets injured, that means Drummond then has to play starting center, which he is not league average at.
What I was saying is that Vooch isn't as productive as his numbers make him look in my opinion. That doesn't mean he's on the same level as Drummond or even that he isn't a starting level center in this league. It just means I don't think his numbers and his impact directly correlate.
So yes, Vooch isn't as good as his numbers make him look (in my opinion) but losing him for a sigbificant part of the season would still greatly impact the Bulls because of who would then pick up his minutes.
I'll give you an A for effort, Big Jilm! But no, I'm not saying Vooch has a high impact on winning but still sucks.
Vooch's basic stats indicate he's one of the better centers in the league. I believe those stats are a bit deceiving. Just like Zach's stats would make people think he's better than he really is.
If you lose a middle of the road starting center to injury and replace him with Drummond, Craig, Pat Williams, Sonogo, etc. you are replacing a starting level center with players who are nowhere near starting level at the center position.
What happens when you replace an average starter with a below average player? Hint: the team gets worse! Just because the team gets worse doesn't mean the starter was amazing and making the team way better than other starting level centers would.
This has been highly entertaining to try and follow. Really look forward to the Vuc narrative developing further on BaB this season, I love a good yarn
That's why we're all here, right?! If you don't mind me asking, would you care to expound your belief that losing Vooch means he's more impactful than people think? I'm always open to hearing a different perspective, so I'd love to hear your thoughts.
The Bulls front office is making a compelling argument for the wisdom of fans rooting against their favorite team. But before we can get into that debate, I don't think there are enough people that care to root either way. Chicago is a great town when you win but otherwise the Bears as total garbage are still > a mediocre Bulls team.
The defensive rating is a real thing for what it is, it does accurately capture a certain thing that Billy Donovan is doing. But I wouldn't put a ton of thought into it, basically all conversations about it revolve around people "Huh. But they look like shit defensively?"
You have to score in the last 2 minutes of the game and you can pick what defense you face: the Bulls at full strength or the Knicks at full strength. Despite the MASSIVE disparity in their DRtg, you'd choose to attack the Bulls 9/10 in that scenario. They have one great defender, two pretty good ones and attacking the rest is like a video game level with a known glitch that offenses can just exploit for infinite coins over and over again.
Honest question with the DRTG. You could imagine a strategy that tricks people into shots that are high percentage at the league level but that you can defend particularly well. Is that what we are seeing with the Bulls corner three defense or is it just dumb luck?
I think they are doing this in the Premier League a bit by identifying the "press triggers" of the opposition (backwards passes, passes to the defensive backs, studs on the ball, etc.) and then baiting them into pressing the ball handler by incorporating these press triggers into their passing combinations. If done correctly, this puts a player behind the ball and makes it that much easier to break the line.
So much of the "analytics" discussions talk about global probabilities and ignore conditional contexts. So depending on whether or not these teams are sophisticated enough to account for conditional probabilities, there may be ways to gain advantage in the way I mentioned.
I think the team will do better than those pundits think because the conference has gotten worse, aside from Boston, Cleveland and Milwaukee.
-The 76ers are back to having one superstar and a bunch of role players. Kelly Oubre is in their rotation. P.J. Tucker is their starting power forward. Nurse is an egotistical, empty suit of clothes and he'll work Embid into an early grave.
-The Heat are a year older and have significantly less depth than last year. They had a negative point differential and are counting on whom - RJ Hampton? - to improve it.
-The Raptors sucked last year and replaced their overrated point guard with Dennis Schröder, who has lovely comps like Shake Milton and Theo Maledon.
-The Knicks don't have a superstar player, which leaves them scuffling in the middle class like everyone else.
I think the Bulls could be better than any of that bunch. Not, like, 50 win better, but, like, 45 wins as enough to snag a 5-8 seed.
I'm more worried about Indiana or Orlando figuring it out and passing the Bulls than more than a couple of these teams being worse than expected.
The talent differential for New York and the 76ers vs. Chicago is just huge. They both have multiple role players that would probably take starters' minutes here. Things would have to go very wrong (as in their best player going down for 60 games) for that to happen I think.
Schroder easily would have been a better starting PG than any Chicago fielded last year. I am confident in stating that because we started one of his backups for 22 games and that was an immediate improvement over the PG play we'd had in the first 60. We're putting a lot on The Continual Improvement of Coby White to take that for granted. He's a guy that's done it on the highest level, in the regular season and in the playoffs, in a variety of roles on a variety of teams and we've got a guy who we think might be able to finally do it as the 4th most important player on the floor. Schroder is probably a bottom 5 starting PG in the league, like Pat Beverley last year. That's still aspirational for Coby White.
You're probably right. IMO, though, the talent gap with Philly is entirely embodied in Joel Embid. Certainly if he non-load manages his way to award qualification, then Philly will lap the Bulls and win 50. If not, though? Lots of very old players and pressure on Maxey. They could drop into the mid-40s. New York has more talent, but it's the same team that won 47 last year, so a couple bad breaks could drag them within range. I'm not a Coby fan, but he's got better advanced stats than Schröder, as does Carter. I tend to think Schröder looked better than he is playing with Lebron and AD.
BaB predicts Bulls will suck…shocker!!! W/L records after trade deadline mean nothing? Season-long DRtg metic is witchcraft? Bulls are way oversold, the market has capitulated. That said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Donny should be fired and DeRozan traded since small ball and iso mid-range ball don’t work. Looking forward to the White/PW/Phillips/Bitim/Sanogo tank lineup!
You have to assign a weight to how meaningful the W/L record of a certain stretch is, and I think it's pretty obvious that the post-trade deadline stretch doesn't count for much. If it all hinged on Patrick Beverley, I got bad news... Beverly's gone.
Dunc'd On had them at 40 wins and the 8th seed, What was more telling tho, is they just obviously hated talking about the Bulls. This team is so predictable, so boring, with no potential interesting storylines on the horizon, that national guys loathe talking about them. They wouldn't even give Caruso the obligatory DPOY contention mention in their awards projections, seemingly overlooking him because he's got that Bull's smell on him. They said whereas the team is projected to finish 8th, they are rooting for any lower team to supplant them because of who the Bulls are (a veteran play-in tier team refusing to make any real decision toward the future). And local guys covering the team... You could really just listen to the discussion leading into the 2022-23 season and it's basically the same thing with minor trivial changes. All a long way of saying, this is really one of the most unwatchable/ unlikable teams in the league from an objective intrigue perspective, until something major happens.
I found someone who is bold on the Bulls prospects for this coming season (granted, it's one of his so-called increasingly bold predictions, and the Bulls are prediction 12 of 20):
Philosophically, I still don’t like how myopic Chicago’s front office is. Its vision has a low ceiling, which is an injustice to fans who understand that this era is unlikely to end with a single playoff series victory. But that doesn’t mean this iteration of the Bulls won’t be competitive or even pretty good.
They enter this season as a fascinating test case for the value of continuity in a league full of change. Last year, they tied the Bucks and Pelicans for the second-most minutes rolled over from the previous year (a whopping 87 percent). This year, pretty much every integral member is back: Chicago re-signed Nikola Vucevic, Ayo Dosunmu, and Coby White, while Zach LaVine and/or DeMar DeRozan have somehow not been traded. Instead of doing reconstructive surgery on a roster that didn’t make the postseason, over the summer, Chicago added Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig, two auxiliary pieces who can up this team’s 3-point rate and fit nicely into its aggressive defensive scheme.
When you separate big-picture nausea from the actual roster Billy Donovan will coach, what’s there is OK! The Bulls have a bunch of good players who make sense next to each other! Their best five—Alex Caruso, DeRozan, LaVine, Patrick Williams, and Vucevic—outscored opponents by 10.3 points per 100 possessions in 200 minutes last year. Swap White in for Caruso—their expected new starting lineup—and they were at plus-11.5 in 81 minutes.
Chicago had the best defense in the NBA after the All-Star break last year, a stat that might be fool’s gold considering the lethargic competition, but it shouldn’t be ignored entirely. This team finished 13th in net rating for the entire season and 29th in win differential—which means their overall record had 4.2 fewer wins than was expected based on their point differential. Related: They won only 39.5 percent of their clutch games, the fourth worst. That will probably be better in 2024.
A commitment to more 3-point shots will put math in their favor, too. Chicago’s primary shot takers love the midrange, but all of them can drill spot-up jumpers from the outside, too. Targeting 3s was a clear mandate during the preseason, and we’ll see how long it lasts. But if the Bulls are even just slightly below league average in 3-point frequency—instead of dead last—their offensive rating will rise.
Unlike last year, the Bulls finally have some clarity on Lonzo Ball’s status. They’re better constructed to fill the void he left last year, swarming the floor with three-guard lineups (Caruso, Carter, and Dosunmu are a bed of scorpions) that can create turnovers and speed up the game’s tempo.
There’s always a chance Chicago will start slow and finally acquiesce to whoever calls with the best offer for LaVine or DeRozan. But finishing with a better record than the Sixers (a mess) or the Heat (down two starters from last year’s Finals run and also not that much better than Chicago during last year’s regular season) isn’t out of the question. Don’t sleep on this team’s talent, cohesiveness, and room to grow in a conference that’s competitive, albeit top-heavy.
You know, this is so classic Bulls that I don't even know where to start.
That last playoff series was atrocious. They lacked length, shooting, and size. It's a few years later, and they still lack length, shooting, and size. It's like it takes a few years to learn the lessons that the team success (or lack thereof) teaches you.
41 wins. Tops. To slow to react, respond, or adjust.
I firmly believe that, given reasonable health and a minimum of suspensions, this team as currently configured will approach a level of production commensurate with that of a moderately achieving group of men with a common purpose: successful on occasion, lacking conviction on others, overall staying competitive and engaged for long stretches at a time--withstanding the rigors of travel and recovery, stout in their defense of each other on the court and off, noble in deed and principled in purpose; they will serve no master other than the rulebook as conceived and birthed by the Canadian-American himself, James Naismith, a man whom fortune smiled upon and virtue failed to abandon in his darkest hours, hours of doubt: doubt of a new sport, a new physicality, questions arising as to best methods with which to affix a basket to a wooden pole inside a gymnasium--this James, this prophet, did he foresee the 2023-2024 Chicago Bulls basketball season, imagined the lengths their fanbase go to to find the silver linings in a preseason of disharmony, apathy, double-dribbling? . . . could he have even envisioned, much as the founding fathers could not have envisioned--or even attempted to envision--computers, wireless communication, the internet?; could Naismith have, in his wildest, sherry-filled fantasies, dared to dream of a day in which Andre Drummond would step out of the locker room, transverse the hallway, lace up his Nikes and step, every bit a Bull and proud of both the awareness of this fact AND the sheer audacity of its naked truth, hear his name announced while children ate nachos, parents nervously checked text messages, scoreboards displayed totals of rebounds, assists, points scored; ads announced new product, new sponsorships; V.I.P. men both courtside and in suites checking their tie knots in a passed mirror, struggling to trap the olive at the bottom of a cup with a cheap plastic straw [the olive is being trapped], brazenly high-fiving corporate contacts, cheering on a three-pointer, booing a block, updating their phone's calendar's for the next opportunity to watch, in person, live and direct, in living color, the spectacle and counter-spectacle, as reflected in the myopic seatmate's glasses, of your Chicago Bulls, forecasted to finish in the low-to-mid-30s in wins, 12th in the playoff hunt, a top-tier bottom feeder, capable of stealing a game, stopping a streak, breaking a heart?
I think this team's record will basically come down to health. They were incredibly healthy last year. Despite the rocky start, Zach actually had an incredibly healthy year (in terms of missing games). I know he was working his way back to 100% but he was still out there. Vooch and Pat didn't miss a single game. DeMar only missed a handful, and even Caruso had what is considered a healthy season for him.
This team will likely be "better" this year than they were last year. I don't expect Vooch and DeMar to have regressed much. I actually expect we'll get a better season from Zach. I think Coby and Pat will both take steps forward, although maybe not as much as some may want. Carter and Craig are both positive additions. While I agree that Craig isn't the shooter some hoped he'd be, he'll probably be a better shooter than Javonte or DJJ, and those are the guys he's replacing. He also offers more size than those guys.
So a fully healthy team this year should be better than last year. My guess would be in the 42-45 win range. With that being said, I think injuries will be what hurts this team. Vooch and DeMar have been incredibly healthy, but they're both old. If Vooch goes down, this team is in trouble. And I say that as someone who thinks Vooch isn't actually nearly as impactful as his numbers make him look. They have zero depth at the center position.
If the mid-3 lose a decent amount of games to injury and Caruso spends more time injured than he did last year (very likely), I think this team really crumbles. And I think that's why so many predictions for this season are so low on the Bulls. Just like they went from being a genuinely good (albeit a bit deceptive) team with Lonzo to a seriously mid team. AK clearly hasn't learned his lesson and still has an incredibly fragile team. If they suffer some key injuries this season, they could go from being a mid team to a genuine 30-35 win team.
this is basically tomorrow's post, heh
Whoops! Well, we'll just call this a primer for your article tomorrow haha
I think the national reporters are working under the assumption that the FO will blow things up by the deadline when the team has a poor-to-mediocre record. I see the season happening a lot like last year: poor record until it’s garbage time, when they’ll tally some pity victories (assuming good injury luck). I just don’t see this FO under these owners going into a rebuild mid-season.
Yep, agree completely. That's the problem with these record predictions. The local media is always way too optimistic while the national media assumes things that aren't true (ie. AK blowing this up midseason, which we all know won't happen) because they don't actually pay very close attention to this organization.
If you're saying Vooch going down puts this team in trouble (I assume W/L wise), then by definition this is saying Vooch is valuable. Drummond as a backup center with Sanogo or Favors 3rd seems about league average for backup center situation.
Yes, Drummond is about league average for a backup center. If Vooch gets injured, that means Drummond then has to play starting center, which he is not league average at.
What I was saying is that Vooch isn't as productive as his numbers make him look in my opinion. That doesn't mean he's on the same level as Drummond or even that he isn't a starting level center in this league. It just means I don't think his numbers and his impact directly correlate.
So yes, Vooch isn't as good as his numbers make him look (in my opinion) but losing him for a sigbificant part of the season would still greatly impact the Bulls because of who would then pick up his minutes.
So Vuc has high impact on winning but he isn't really very good after all?
I'll give you an A for effort, Big Jilm! But no, I'm not saying Vooch has a high impact on winning but still sucks.
Vooch's basic stats indicate he's one of the better centers in the league. I believe those stats are a bit deceiving. Just like Zach's stats would make people think he's better than he really is.
If you lose a middle of the road starting center to injury and replace him with Drummond, Craig, Pat Williams, Sonogo, etc. you are replacing a starting level center with players who are nowhere near starting level at the center position.
What happens when you replace an average starter with a below average player? Hint: the team gets worse! Just because the team gets worse doesn't mean the starter was amazing and making the team way better than other starting level centers would.
This has been highly entertaining to try and follow. Really look forward to the Vuc narrative developing further on BaB this season, I love a good yarn
That's why we're all here, right?! If you don't mind me asking, would you care to expound your belief that losing Vooch means he's more impactful than people think? I'm always open to hearing a different perspective, so I'd love to hear your thoughts.
My range is 38-43 wins depending on health
Yep my guess is also in range of 38-43 wins.
The Bulls front office is making a compelling argument for the wisdom of fans rooting against their favorite team. But before we can get into that debate, I don't think there are enough people that care to root either way. Chicago is a great town when you win but otherwise the Bears as total garbage are still > a mediocre Bulls team.
The defensive rating is a real thing for what it is, it does accurately capture a certain thing that Billy Donovan is doing. But I wouldn't put a ton of thought into it, basically all conversations about it revolve around people "Huh. But they look like shit defensively?"
You have to score in the last 2 minutes of the game and you can pick what defense you face: the Bulls at full strength or the Knicks at full strength. Despite the MASSIVE disparity in their DRtg, you'd choose to attack the Bulls 9/10 in that scenario. They have one great defender, two pretty good ones and attacking the rest is like a video game level with a known glitch that offenses can just exploit for infinite coins over and over again.
Honest question with the DRTG. You could imagine a strategy that tricks people into shots that are high percentage at the league level but that you can defend particularly well. Is that what we are seeing with the Bulls corner three defense or is it just dumb luck?
Haha, that's awesome, I can't imagine they have the collective IQ to pull that off but it would be cool if they did.
I think they are doing this in the Premier League a bit by identifying the "press triggers" of the opposition (backwards passes, passes to the defensive backs, studs on the ball, etc.) and then baiting them into pressing the ball handler by incorporating these press triggers into their passing combinations. If done correctly, this puts a player behind the ball and makes it that much easier to break the line.
So much of the "analytics" discussions talk about global probabilities and ignore conditional contexts. So depending on whether or not these teams are sophisticated enough to account for conditional probabilities, there may be ways to gain advantage in the way I mentioned.
I think the team will do better than those pundits think because the conference has gotten worse, aside from Boston, Cleveland and Milwaukee.
-The 76ers are back to having one superstar and a bunch of role players. Kelly Oubre is in their rotation. P.J. Tucker is their starting power forward. Nurse is an egotistical, empty suit of clothes and he'll work Embid into an early grave.
-The Heat are a year older and have significantly less depth than last year. They had a negative point differential and are counting on whom - RJ Hampton? - to improve it.
-The Raptors sucked last year and replaced their overrated point guard with Dennis Schröder, who has lovely comps like Shake Milton and Theo Maledon.
-The Knicks don't have a superstar player, which leaves them scuffling in the middle class like everyone else.
I think the Bulls could be better than any of that bunch. Not, like, 50 win better, but, like, 45 wins as enough to snag a 5-8 seed.
I'm more worried about Indiana or Orlando figuring it out and passing the Bulls than more than a couple of these teams being worse than expected.
The talent differential for New York and the 76ers vs. Chicago is just huge. They both have multiple role players that would probably take starters' minutes here. Things would have to go very wrong (as in their best player going down for 60 games) for that to happen I think.
Schroder easily would have been a better starting PG than any Chicago fielded last year. I am confident in stating that because we started one of his backups for 22 games and that was an immediate improvement over the PG play we'd had in the first 60. We're putting a lot on The Continual Improvement of Coby White to take that for granted. He's a guy that's done it on the highest level, in the regular season and in the playoffs, in a variety of roles on a variety of teams and we've got a guy who we think might be able to finally do it as the 4th most important player on the floor. Schroder is probably a bottom 5 starting PG in the league, like Pat Beverley last year. That's still aspirational for Coby White.
You're probably right. IMO, though, the talent gap with Philly is entirely embodied in Joel Embid. Certainly if he non-load manages his way to award qualification, then Philly will lap the Bulls and win 50. If not, though? Lots of very old players and pressure on Maxey. They could drop into the mid-40s. New York has more talent, but it's the same team that won 47 last year, so a couple bad breaks could drag them within range. I'm not a Coby fan, but he's got better advanced stats than Schröder, as does Carter. I tend to think Schröder looked better than he is playing with Lebron and AD.
The Knicks are already better than us and they didn't lose any real pieces....there's no reason they will be worse this year
Sixers still have the reigning MVP....there is no reason to believe they will not be better than us.
Indiana could easily pass us this year...hell they would have last year if Hailburton didn't miss a significant amount of time.
Heat lost some pieces but they will still be better than us and have a system that works and makes sense unlike us
Orlando just needs to figure out the guard situation but they have some nice young players down there
BaB predicts Bulls will suck…shocker!!! W/L records after trade deadline mean nothing? Season-long DRtg metic is witchcraft? Bulls are way oversold, the market has capitulated. That said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Donny should be fired and DeRozan traded since small ball and iso mid-range ball don’t work. Looking forward to the White/PW/Phillips/Bitim/Sanogo tank lineup!
You have to assign a weight to how meaningful the W/L record of a certain stretch is, and I think it's pretty obvious that the post-trade deadline stretch doesn't count for much. If it all hinged on Patrick Beverley, I got bad news... Beverly's gone.
Dunc'd On had them at 40 wins and the 8th seed, What was more telling tho, is they just obviously hated talking about the Bulls. This team is so predictable, so boring, with no potential interesting storylines on the horizon, that national guys loathe talking about them. They wouldn't even give Caruso the obligatory DPOY contention mention in their awards projections, seemingly overlooking him because he's got that Bull's smell on him. They said whereas the team is projected to finish 8th, they are rooting for any lower team to supplant them because of who the Bulls are (a veteran play-in tier team refusing to make any real decision toward the future). And local guys covering the team... You could really just listen to the discussion leading into the 2022-23 season and it's basically the same thing with minor trivial changes. All a long way of saying, this is really one of the most unwatchable/ unlikable teams in the league from an objective intrigue perspective, until something major happens.
I love Dunc'd on, and I don't know if it hurts or helps my love that they are so dismissive of the Bulls.
It's like how you don't want to look at a car crash.
I found someone who is bold on the Bulls prospects for this coming season (granted, it's one of his so-called increasingly bold predictions, and the Bulls are prediction 12 of 20):
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/10/23/23927702/nba-preview-predictions-joel-embiid-nikola-jokic
12. The Bulls will host a playoff series.
Philosophically, I still don’t like how myopic Chicago’s front office is. Its vision has a low ceiling, which is an injustice to fans who understand that this era is unlikely to end with a single playoff series victory. But that doesn’t mean this iteration of the Bulls won’t be competitive or even pretty good.
They enter this season as a fascinating test case for the value of continuity in a league full of change. Last year, they tied the Bucks and Pelicans for the second-most minutes rolled over from the previous year (a whopping 87 percent). This year, pretty much every integral member is back: Chicago re-signed Nikola Vucevic, Ayo Dosunmu, and Coby White, while Zach LaVine and/or DeMar DeRozan have somehow not been traded. Instead of doing reconstructive surgery on a roster that didn’t make the postseason, over the summer, Chicago added Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig, two auxiliary pieces who can up this team’s 3-point rate and fit nicely into its aggressive defensive scheme.
When you separate big-picture nausea from the actual roster Billy Donovan will coach, what’s there is OK! The Bulls have a bunch of good players who make sense next to each other! Their best five—Alex Caruso, DeRozan, LaVine, Patrick Williams, and Vucevic—outscored opponents by 10.3 points per 100 possessions in 200 minutes last year. Swap White in for Caruso—their expected new starting lineup—and they were at plus-11.5 in 81 minutes.
Chicago had the best defense in the NBA after the All-Star break last year, a stat that might be fool’s gold considering the lethargic competition, but it shouldn’t be ignored entirely. This team finished 13th in net rating for the entire season and 29th in win differential—which means their overall record had 4.2 fewer wins than was expected based on their point differential. Related: They won only 39.5 percent of their clutch games, the fourth worst. That will probably be better in 2024.
A commitment to more 3-point shots will put math in their favor, too. Chicago’s primary shot takers love the midrange, but all of them can drill spot-up jumpers from the outside, too. Targeting 3s was a clear mandate during the preseason, and we’ll see how long it lasts. But if the Bulls are even just slightly below league average in 3-point frequency—instead of dead last—their offensive rating will rise.
Unlike last year, the Bulls finally have some clarity on Lonzo Ball’s status. They’re better constructed to fill the void he left last year, swarming the floor with three-guard lineups (Caruso, Carter, and Dosunmu are a bed of scorpions) that can create turnovers and speed up the game’s tempo.
There’s always a chance Chicago will start slow and finally acquiesce to whoever calls with the best offer for LaVine or DeRozan. But finishing with a better record than the Sixers (a mess) or the Heat (down two starters from last year’s Finals run and also not that much better than Chicago during last year’s regular season) isn’t out of the question. Don’t sleep on this team’s talent, cohesiveness, and room to grow in a conference that’s competitive, albeit top-heavy.
> The Bulls have a bunch of good players who make sense next to each other!
What.
PART 2 IS UP
https://open.substack.com/pub/blogabull/p/more-reasons-to-feel-nervous-heading?r=2bo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
You know, this is so classic Bulls that I don't even know where to start.
That last playoff series was atrocious. They lacked length, shooting, and size. It's a few years later, and they still lack length, shooting, and size. It's like it takes a few years to learn the lessons that the team success (or lack thereof) teaches you.
41 wins. Tops. To slow to react, respond, or adjust.
I firmly believe that, given reasonable health and a minimum of suspensions, this team as currently configured will approach a level of production commensurate with that of a moderately achieving group of men with a common purpose: successful on occasion, lacking conviction on others, overall staying competitive and engaged for long stretches at a time--withstanding the rigors of travel and recovery, stout in their defense of each other on the court and off, noble in deed and principled in purpose; they will serve no master other than the rulebook as conceived and birthed by the Canadian-American himself, James Naismith, a man whom fortune smiled upon and virtue failed to abandon in his darkest hours, hours of doubt: doubt of a new sport, a new physicality, questions arising as to best methods with which to affix a basket to a wooden pole inside a gymnasium--this James, this prophet, did he foresee the 2023-2024 Chicago Bulls basketball season, imagined the lengths their fanbase go to to find the silver linings in a preseason of disharmony, apathy, double-dribbling? . . . could he have even envisioned, much as the founding fathers could not have envisioned--or even attempted to envision--computers, wireless communication, the internet?; could Naismith have, in his wildest, sherry-filled fantasies, dared to dream of a day in which Andre Drummond would step out of the locker room, transverse the hallway, lace up his Nikes and step, every bit a Bull and proud of both the awareness of this fact AND the sheer audacity of its naked truth, hear his name announced while children ate nachos, parents nervously checked text messages, scoreboards displayed totals of rebounds, assists, points scored; ads announced new product, new sponsorships; V.I.P. men both courtside and in suites checking their tie knots in a passed mirror, struggling to trap the olive at the bottom of a cup with a cheap plastic straw [the olive is being trapped], brazenly high-fiving corporate contacts, cheering on a three-pointer, booing a block, updating their phone's calendar's for the next opportunity to watch, in person, live and direct, in living color, the spectacle and counter-spectacle, as reflected in the myopic seatmate's glasses, of your Chicago Bulls, forecasted to finish in the low-to-mid-30s in wins, 12th in the playoff hunt, a top-tier bottom feeder, capable of stealing a game, stopping a streak, breaking a heart?
* tips cap *