outside of health, Bulls are luckiest team in the league
"they can't keep getting away with it!!!" ::AK smirk::
I once again have to lead with how great it feels to no longer have to create content based off every game. There’s 82 of these suckers, and almost always at this time of year it’s mostly shit: teams are worn down, injured, strategically resting, or tanking. And don’t get me started on the Eastern Conference extending their 25-year streak of being terrible and that allowing mid-market franchises like the Bulls cover year-after-year. It’s poor conditions of a laboratory to determine actual team quality, which is why it has been so dismaying that the Bulls front office has relied so much on “14-9 after All Star Break”.
We know based off of the front office’s stated mindset and their roster+assets construction that this team has no real future. But do they at least now have a present?
We have another substantial stretch of season here to analyze, even though the self-assessment will be based solely on “competitive games” and postseason seeding. The former keeps the customers coming (or so they think), and the latter will guarantee another opportunity attendance.
Based on those internal metrics, the Bulls have been a great success. They are, incredibly, now farther from dreaded 10th (where there’d be no guaranteed home date) than they are from climbing to 8th.
But is this current team actually good? even average? I was astounded to see the stat after the Bulls blowout win against the hapless Wizards (hapless may not be a strong enough term Bulls didn’t even have Coby White!) of how rare it’s been for this team to win comfortably. The following is 2003-era analysis, but still not resonating with management so it has to be reiterated: competitiveness is a testament to a few key contributors and a genuinely-laudable players and coaches mindset. But all these close victories are mostly luck, a better team would have more comfortable wins.
Let’s parse out the games with the current playing rotation, which is since January 25th when Patrick Williams played his last game of the season. The Bulls have had some small injuries since then, but this is ultimately the squad to assess.
(also it is likely in both cases of the absences of LaVine and Williams that replacing those minutes simply with more from White, Dosunmu, and Caruso has been the opposite of a detriment)
This squad, in 23 games since Williams left the rotation for good, has gone 13-10. Provided several thrills, and while not up in seed are trending that way. Again, this will make AK smugly confident, but we can think more clearly about things than the current lead decision-maker. (Unfortunate but true, that.)
But if you look at net rating in this time the Bulls are 9th in the East at -1.4. Based off total points scored and given up, in a logical world, they’d be 2-3 losses closer to 10th and ultimately “this team” is playing like a 37-win team.
Again, that’s after waving away whatever qualifiers apply to the strength of opponents in 2nd-half regular season games.
Altogether, while potentially making it to .500 and putting a scare in a first-round series would be an impressive turnaround, that makes for a good story but not a good team. This one isn’t even average.
"also it is likely in both cases of the absences of LaVine and Williams that replacing those minutes simply with more from White, Dosunmu, and Caruso has been the opposite of a detriment"
I think this hits the nail on the head. While the Bulls have had a lot of injuries this year, thankfully most of those injuries have been to players who don't necessarily make that big of a difference despite playing fairly heavy minutes (Zach and Pat).
And since the back half of the roster is so bad, instead of relying on those guys a lot more, Billy has transferred most of those minutes to Coby, Ayo, Caruso and DeMar who are arguably the most impactful players on this team. In a sense, the Bulls may actually be getting more impactful minutes every game since Zach and Pat went down than they were at the beginning of the season when everyone was healthy.
The obvious downside to this is the toll that those minutes are taking on this team. DeMar is some sort of freak of nature and seems to be able to handle the minutes just fine, but I have to believe father time will catch up eventually. Coby and AC have been battling injuries all season despite Coby just starting to miss games for the first time over the last week or so.
With the way this team has been chugging along lately, I wouldn't be surprised if they sneak into the playoffs. Unfortunately for them, it'll be against the Celtics who I'm sure are cruising their way to the postseason. Billy has basically been playing a playoff rotation for the past few months now. These guys are going to be dead by postseason. I guess Jerry doesn't really care though as long as he gets that sweet, sweet playoff revenue.
Tough to get too excited by this team but I am at least able to appreciate Coby's and Ayo's respective ascensions. I don't put too much stock in the clutch stuff but it probably is good experience for the younger players. Lord knows they won't be having tons of actual playoff games to replicate these pressure situations.