the Bulls are 3-0, somehow
these wins count even when they "don't count"
The Bulls have opened their season with 3 upset victories, and while it’s only been a week into this long1 year that’s already almost 10% towards my projected win total which is pretty significant (for an insignificant prediction).
How are they doing this? Especially without who I figured to be their most irreplaceable player in Coby White?
Like their 15-5 SURGE to end last season, it’s a bit of luck but also being, well…not “good”, but more “not-bad”. There is certainly something to be said for the Bulls roster being built with the pursuit of averageness as a market inefficiency against teams that have loftier goals:
Most NBA teams are stars and scrubs, so when the stars are out or play poorly (Cade Cunningham, Paolo Banchero, and Trae Young2 all doing so against the Bulls) their backups, and backups to those backups are more too-young prospects or minimum-salary types. The Bulls have a roster full - outside of Noah Essengue who hasn’t played a minute this season - of experienced role players who can meet a replacement-level standard with some great games sprinkled in there but fewer truly-awful games.
Most NBA teams churn the roster and that impacts the start of the season. They even change the coach once every few years. The Bulls instead leverage their ‘continuity’ and clearly are comfortable playing with eachother and with their playing style.
There may have been a third thing - that’s my typical threshold for starting a list - but I forgot. Or perhaps the third thing was more a combination of 1. and 2.: the depth and style is tough for opponents to handle for a full 48 minutes. It means there will be schedule victories, like the win in Orlando where the Magic were on a back-to-back3. But also it’s keeping them ‘competitive’, manifesting what AKME has steadfastly prioritized. This puts the Bulls in position to get a bit lucky in their couple clutch - as defined by the league’s stats site - victories where they have a +36.8 Net Rating over 9 minutes.
Three contests amongst a league where only a few teams have played 4 games is a worthlessly-small sample size. But as ‘victories’ are a stat, it’s only fair to point out others, and the Bulls merely being competitive in all of these games has been due to the team defense. Currently the Bulls have the 3rd best defense in basketball, behind only the Spurs and Thunder. lol, lmao even. Looking at the four factors, what’s potentially sustainable is remaining a solid defensive rebounding team (12th) and not fouling (7th).
But I find my eyes deceiving me on the team’s ability to force turnovers. Tre Jones has been playing in Coby White’s role and while being fundamentally a much better defensive player has more loudly put up gaudy steal numbers which feeds into the Bulls desire to play uptempo. BUT, they’re actually 2nd worst in the league at forcing turnovers. Perhaps there’s something to be made of the Bulls having more live-ball turnovers, but I refuse to research that yet.
The biggest outlier is opponent jump-shooting. Inexplicable by definition: it’s almost like how the defending champs get the opponents’ best, the Bulls always get the opponents’ worst.
This is all to try and explain how the Bulls are getting wins. But whether the Bulls get 31 or 41 wins only matters for your season over/under bets and if the owners get a home gate for the play-in. Even the head decisionmaker said it didn’t matter as much as the intentionally-nonspecific goal of ‘growth’.
Are the Bulls - specifically their most important players - actually growing? Not with as emphatic a statement as ‘3-0’, but somewhat so. Matas Buzelis hasn’t replicated his season-opening performance, but is starting and playing a lot and has been mostly quality. Josh Giddey still gives off the impression that he stinks, and is getting pulled out of games again, but the stats don’t lie on his 41.7% shooting from three and 8 free throws per 36, two areas that SURGED in post-AllStarBreak last season. I think Jones has proven me wrong, elevating from salary flotsam to absolutely necessary, and credit to the Bulls for re-signing him. And I’m withholding credit on a likely Ayo Dosunmu extension until it gets done, hopefully the Bulls didn’t miss an opportunity to get him on a low number if Ayo’s going to shoot 60% on threes all year.
There’s been some other good starts to the season, like I said at the top this whole roster looks to have a lot of aspiring ‘solid 6-8th men on a contender’. But the Bulls aren’t a contender, and don’t make trades to help contenders, so those performances are not actually important long-term.
And while I said the difference between 31 and 41 wins isn’t important either4, what could potentially be is the perception of the team. If the Bulls keep winning - and we can hope that they actually play well too - they will be talked about as a ‘young team on the rise’ and hopefully that makes a difference in building the roster from the outside.
reminder for first-timers: Bulls seasons, though not extending into the postseason very long, always FEEL even longer than the average NBA one
never a star against the Bulls, of course
though not like the 15-5 stretch when it was nearly 100% schedule victories.
to be clear: making the playoffs would be significant. The play-in, no matter how many or few wins it takes to qualify, is not.
There’s so much wildly unsustainable stuff driving this 3-0 start (Vucevic and Tre Jones are making superstar level impact, Ayo making every clutch 3 he takes, the opponent shooting disaster, etc.) BUT I’m enjoying watching how they play and I think there’s something to be said for their chemistry, depth and buy-in to Billy’s coaching that’s going to make them a regular-season menace given how things go in NBA regular seasons. And for whatever reason, they are just clutch monsters.
Given how much the East sucks, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they ride this to top 6 if they stay relatively healthy. And even some injuries can be overcome given this depth.
Of course, they’re probably also a team that has zero playoff upside given the lack of true high level two-way talent and how they can be scouted/schemed against in those settings. And good playoff teams that are locked in will not brick all their open shots.
But I’m not going to worry about that for now and will at least try to enjoy an entertaining product and hope the bozo front office can somehow get this right and get them to the next level.
I've been banging the drum for "not bad" all preseason, and it's good to see the team start out this way. I agree with this post that a key factor is that we can run out a 10-man rotation (maybe 12 next month?) of NBA pros who know how to play basketball, and play team basketball, and try hard for all/most of the game. Many other teams can't/don't do this.
Part of why I feel the Bulls have a chance to stay around .500 and compete for a playoff spot is that I hold the middle-of-the-pack teams in the East in such low regard -- the Eastern Conference this year may be one of the worst conferences in the history of the NBA (as compared against its own era). Teams like the Pistons and Hawks are considered "ascendant" by some experts, but while they have more raw talent and pseudo-star players than others, I just don't think they're that good. The Magic is maybe slightly better, but for a "contender" they don't do much for me...probably competing for the 3rd/4th seed in the East, but would be scrapping for a play-in spot in the West. Not saying we're "better" than those teams objectively, but as the last week has proven, we certainly have a chance to beat them on any given regular season evening.
The Bulls are going to play so many mediocre teams this year (not to mention the actual bad teams). Sure, watching some early season games with the Nuggets, Thunder, Warriors, T-Wolves, etc., makes me realize how far away we are from the tier of elite teams and true contenders, who'll maybe let us hang around for 3 quarters before making us look silly in the 4th. But the Bulls don't even have to be very talented to get to 40-ish wins, in the context of this 2025-2026 season.