Reminder: that thing you like actually is bad and hopeless

Arturas Karnisovas was allowed to give another end of season press conference, so this is already a failed offseason

As Bulls PR-adjacent member KC Johnson would say: “as expected”

Both that the Bulls faceplanted in the play-in tournament, and that the franchise leader Arturas Karnisovas (touting the alignment he has with everyone from ownership to the coaching staff) would still declare victory.

I actually had some shreds of belief that the Bulls could continue their post-AllStarGame bullshit of out-running teams resting or not trying in this losers’ bracket. Not so much due to the Bulls being actually good but the other teams not being good either.

But, no. As Jon Greenberg of The Athletic put it, sarcastically: “It's wild that when the Heat decided to try, they won.”

All the Bulls flaws¹ that were papered-over in March games of no consequence were brought back on Wednesday night, in front of a crowd that for the first time in months actually had to pay for the tickets. That crowd, to their credit, both booed to end the first half and produced “sell the team” chants to end the game.

It was just one game, but when you ascribe all ‘meaning’ to this one game it makes for a fairly embarrassing result. One where the national broadcast spent the last 5 minutes thanking the talent and crew, and the local broadcast is not easily available to a large swath of the city².

However, embarrassment and shame (and its antonym: pride) are not found anywhere the Bulls employee handbook.

So, instead of being fired like the other conference’s play-in loser was, the Bulls lead basketball decisionmaker had an entirely predictable recap of the season. It was so predictable even this dumb blogger called it:

• the team is good enough

• the team is playing to a style (and the style is working)

• the team is only going to improve, and doesn’t need big swings to do so

You can watch, it’s unsurprisingly brief and full of the usual: platitudes, delusional spin of relative success, failure to comprehend basic questions, total misunderstanding of team building and setting expectations.

What was more telling than what Karnisovas said was the questions and reaction from the media. There really wasn’t much contention in the air, even to the level we just saw a few months ago. They are trying, but after so many years it is apparent they realize it’s a losing battle to attempt reason with this outright idiot who wears the armor of job security.

And as I am similarly fatigued, I won’t go into too much detail. But there were some real whoppers in the midst of his core beliefs listed above.

One was, when touting their post-AllStarGame record³: “it’s very hard to win in this league”. No, in actuality it’s very very easy to get wins in March simply by not trying to lose.

Another was a phrase used regarding Josh Giddey and Coby White. This was part of a general message that served as an example of his stupidity neutering any questions: asked repeatedly how he expects to build a title contender (and how soon) without better players, AK simply rejects the entire premise.

“I wouldn't put any limitations on this roster and the way Josh Giddey and Coby White are playing”

That’s your job, you buffoon! To realistically assess the talent, applying context to past results, make projections on future ones.

I can’t stand that this guy leads the Chicago Bulls. He has so clearly, over and over, demonstrated he is in way over his head. There’s no plan to get meaningfully better not because of his decisions to this point, but because he’s the one making the decisions. In this and every other press conference, in place of a plan was just flatly and repeatedly saying:

1. internal improvement will happen because the players are young and gained valuable experience and “lessons” to help their development

2. external improvement will happen through any and all avenues despite the obvious limitations of no high lottery chance nor contracts coming off the books

I did find it somewhat intriguing that AK responded to a good question⁴ about the possibility of not waiting for more draft selections and instead using the picks - a stated success from AK that they own them all going forward - in a trade. Of course, there was no quality answer, simply a “we’ll look at everything”, but also he didn’t shoot it down. Plus in many other answers today kept saying “we want young players with experience”.

While Karnisovas depressed the dozens of Bulls fans still interested enough to care by speaking like he has an indefinite leash, I think it may be shorter than that and there could be a big trade coming this summer.

Or maybe that’s just imagined hope.

The other source of such faint sense of hope is dumb luck in the lottery. The Bulls are not making the playoffs so they technically have a non-zero chance of a top-four, or even number one overall, pick.

As I said many times this season, in lieu of firing these doofuses, we need to look to a move that potentially supersedes the gain of that one. But even so, only Cooper Flagg is the true no-brainer, an apt description since the guy currently running the Bulls is brainless.

In fact, if they get Flagg the Bulls should definitely fire AKME, as they then become too legitimate a team to be led by such amateurs.

1. It’s not really important enough to go over in detail, but briefly: no offensive creation ability in the half-court, high turnovers, awful defensive play especially from Vuc and Giddey. No bench contributions. That they didn’t hit their threes was the death knell, the Heat only scored 38 points in the second half and still had control over 100% of the game.

2. and there isn’t enough demand to even necessitate an update on that!

3. AK said “this isn’t meant to be a victory lap” but it very much came off as such, he even smirked at Will Gottlieb when saying they beat his (and Vegas’s) 27-win projection.

4. this one from Cody Westerlund, and want to reiterate that I think the media was fine today…AK is hopeless is all