I'm not worried the Bulls will be 'too good', I'm worried it doesn't matter

Luck isn't a plan, unless it's "wouldn't we be lucky if the front office was replaced?"

This bit was tacked on to Tuesday’s post but that was already getting long and a holistic ‘season preview’ is all to easy to spiral towards out of control wordiness. Plus it’s depressing!

It sucks to high heaven that this franchise, a purported ‘glamor’, big market, global brand, franchise, is having another season where a substantial portion of their fanbase can deduce that it’s best to root against them. At least they still care? At least to the point where it’s of genuine concern that maybe the preseason performance and publicized buy-in from veterans will make this team “too good” to accomplish what they believe is the team’s best chance at getting out of the muck: their own draft selection being as high as possible.

I do not have this worry, I suppose because I don’t care enough? This front office is so bad at what they do, it’s led to a point of dispair from which even getting the top pick in next May’s draft lottery (next May!) wouldn’t be a panacea.

It’s such despair that it’s led to a pretty high confidence that there’s no need to worry: this Bulls team will be bad. Not because the front office intends to, but instead because they don’t intend to, and they fail at everything they intend.

In a more specific prognostication, I think the team’s defense will be so bad it’ll collapse this house of cards built on ‘vibes’. The deficits will grow, defeats will mount, and soon everyone will be back out for themselves again.

I’m thinking pretty bad, something like 24 wins, and a Billy Donovan resigns¹ in January kind of bad.

Worse, due to the non-competitive nature of what happens when a truly awful NBA team plays out the regular season, we’ll go through an entire year after which many of these preseason unanswered questions will still not be answered.

It didn’t have to be this way, but instead they appeared more interested in less important things than fostering player development. Like relying on Zach LaVine to raise his own trade value, or placating Vuc’s ego, or facilitating Lonzo Ball’s comeback, or the ‘show the home fans our competitive spirit’ or whatever AK persisently mentions to that effect.

After the disastrous goals-shifting offseason², at least the Bulls could’ve made their fans happy and in alignment with the team by jettisoning these vestiges of the banner-raised-for-first-place-that-one-January team. Not only could we better learn what the likes of Josh Giddey, Ayo Dosunmu, and Patrick Williams could do, we could likely see that they’d be bad and the team’s best asset would improve.

But I have to keep reminding myself (and then you all) that when I refer to fans it is not patrons, and it’s likely not a coincidence that all of those things I deemed ‘less important’ than going development mode either save or generates money.

I worry not that they’ll be too good, but that the front office is so bad that they are operating like they’ll be good, and screwing up this rebuild before it can even get truly started.

This will suck! BUT, it won’t be a complete waste if they get a top pick as a result, right?

Many fans will rejoice at what would unequivocally be abject failure, and they have a case to do so. But I think AKME’s incompetence runs so deep that even a top pick wouldn’t provide an escape pod. That said, getting a blue chip prospect in June is better than being stuck with this executive team and NOT getting that!

I used to be concerned the Bulls would win too much where they’d dupe their dumb front office into making more win-now moves. That proved to be true, though it actually manifested in transactional paralysis and the benchmark for success was lower than even my worst fears.

This year, if they win so much they lose their pick, that’d be bad. If they lose a lot of games and AKME gets a pick that extends their reign of terror, that’s also bad?

But then you have to figure they were probably sticking around for years and years regardless because ownership doesn’t care enough to know they don’t know what they’re doing.

Go Bulls? Wait, go Tank? Um…I suppose it’s freeing not to worry about the results. Hope that since they are dead set on playing veterans, that they play well enough to maintain their value (I don’t think it’ll raise, just that it doesn’t drop). I suppose hope for other teams to stumble early and get desperate, so desperate that even Arturas Karnisovas could exert leverage. Hope that some of the young players show something, and it’s something we can take into this team’s next era. Even if that era is already doomed if these same guys are in charge.

Half-assed prediction of the end of season East standings!

1. Celtics

2. Bucks

3. Sixers

4. Knicks

5. Cavs

6. Hawks

7. Heat

8. Magic

9. Pacers

10. Raptors

11. Pistons

12. Hornets

13. Bulls

14. Wizards

15. Nets

1. but still gets paid. However that’s phrased by him and the team, “mutual parting of ways” or whatever.

2. it can’t be emphasized enough: they did not want to lose DeRozan, but were forced to due to lack of foresight and execution.