For whom is this Lonzo Ball comeback, if it ever happens, even for?

from Lonzo to hometown players, the Bulls are looking to sell reality competition deemphasizing "competition"

The most boring+hopeless Bulls season in years is set to begin, but we need to get through the preseason first.

Since the stated goal of “establishing identity” is already out the window because the roster is forever unsettled, and they’re not doing the smart thing and bubble-wrapping Zach LaVine until a trade can settle that roster, they’ve moved on to other non-basketball things.

Arturas Karnisovas is no dummy. Wait, no, yes he is very much a dummy. So I don’t doubt in his mind he thinks he’s built a “competitive” team. But he is also at least wise enough to hedge his bets and provide other potential sources of entertainment besides “being good at basketball”.

One could even call them distractions, so I deserve some shame for perpetuating.

The main sideshow appears to be the Lonzo Ball Comeback Story, which I have derided as hopeless and will continue to try to ignore (at least not publicize) until he is meaningfully resuming his career. I have felt similarly about Ben Simmons, Derrick Rose, Zion Williamson…I just assume they’ll never play again and try not to bother wondering when it’ll be proved otherwise. Even if Ball does ‘return’, he can’t play substantial minutes, it’s an already-crowded backcourt, and this is his last season under contract. So I feel secure in this assumption that he’ll never be a meaningful member of the Bulls again.

Lonzo and the Bulls are making this story difficult to ignore because they seem to have a shared interest in perpetuating it, conscribing head coach Billy Donovan and the dwindling beat media.

It’s been an odd ritual: after every practice Donovan will give an update (prompted or unprompted, I’m not sure) that’s entirely non-committal. Then Ball himself will offer his own update directly to the fanbase, usually in conflict¹. Messaging differences aside, the result is the same where he doesn’t play.

I understand why Ball does this, and I suppose the coverage gets more clicks than Julian Phillips’s improved jumper, but what’s in this for the Bulls? They’ve gotten nothing from Ball on the court, and while the 80% insurance reimbursement is smile-inducing for ‘dorf and son, there’s still several million dollars they’re paying someone who can’t perform their job, plus all that paperwork!

During training camp, Donovan said they already had a plan for Lonzo to not truly be coming back even in the best case, as he’ll be on a minutes restriction and sit out of back-to-backs. And Donovan also said this was not entirely about his team, this season:

“I do think the one thing I look at it from this lens is…at [Lonzo]’s age, as much as he loves to play, he wants to play beyond this year. So we also have a responsibility to make sure that he’s in a position where he can play after this season”

Do you actually have that responsibility? Is that why they didn’t simply waive-and-stretch Ball’s contract to better fulfill their primary responsibility: a better-constructed team?

We know the AKME era (and Billy is this kind of coach) is attempting to be player-friendly. So far, instead of being a place Stars want to play, it’s a place former lowest-rung All-Star Nikola Vucevic wants to play. But they likely see some benefit in maintaining a good relationship with Lonzo Ball’s agency, Klutch². They can facilitate Ball’s comeback, sign other clients (Jalen Smith, Talen Horton-Tucker), puff up Zach LaVine³, and…well, what are the Bulls getting in return, and when exactly will some of these favors be repaid?

But there’s another non-basketball benefit to Ball’s comeback, which is the attempt to generate fan interest. It annoys me to no end that beat reporters seemingly only daily job is to post on Twxtter what Donovan says about Lonzo, but then I have to remember that the most prominent member of that corps, KC Johnson, doesn’t work for the media, but for the Bulls-owned broadcast network.

A venture which, as expected, is not going well!

An educated guess of at least half of TV provider subscribers in the Chicago area can’t get this new channel. And in a hilarious indictment of ownership is that (at least from what I can tell anecdotally) most fans are siding against Reindscorp in these negotiations with mega-conglomerates like Comcast (XFinity) and Google (YouTubeTV).

Interest in the Bulls is so low (and they’re the most popular of the 3 teams on this network) that I can’t imagine there is as much urgency from the fans to spend more money to watch this team on TV versus nearly any other year.

And so I suppose it makes good PR sense to come up with programs besides “the NBA regular season” that people want to see, more akin to reality shows than sports. Like this new show about Ball’s comeback. Or local-kid-made-good stuff, acquiring Horton-Tucker to go along with Dosunmu, Buzelis, Carter plus camp signings Steward and Freeman-Liberty. There’s a very special episode in this series in January: “Derrick Rose night”

It’s not only TV, but butts in seats that Karnisovas seems concerned about, as he said multiple times (and this was unprompted) that “home court advantage” was a key goal for him this season. That seems less likely after ditching your best (and certainly most exciting in the clutch) players, but hey look over there we have non-competitive reasons to watch. It’s not about basketball, but people.

1. as I was writing this post, there was actual reporting by Darnell Mayberry using ‘team sources” , so I have to admit that’s different than what’s been going on until now.

2. in GM Marc Eversley’s case, perhaps future employment

3. they did a bad job of this but seem to have more sensible marching orders this preseason