the Bulls have done it (it = guaranteed additional revenue)

is "clinch" the right word for a 9th seed?

As we know, the Bulls don’t have established goals. The franchise, communicated by Arturas Karnisovas, is operating on a more nuanced way of self-assessment. Objective results don’t matter: if you don’t reach your goals, just change ‘em.

At the trade deadline we heard AK admit, repeatedly and with a straight (if slightly smirked) face: they just want to show the fans a good time. For a market as big as Chicago, and being not in competition for entertainment dollars with another basketball team, this is an impossibly low bar to clear.

I’m not interested in shaming people who do spend to attend. But you gotta admit: you can’t earn money for games that don’t take place. So it was big news for a side of the general ledger that the Bulls have secured home court for the 9/10 play-in game, where they’ll be facing the Atlanta Hawks.

It was looking possible that the Hawks might overtake the Bulls in the final week of the season. But the Bulls had enough tanky opponents, including the current back-to-back with the Pistons and Wizards. And the Hawks ruined their in-season momentum by bringing back Trey Young back from injury (jokes!).

As usual, most thoughts don’t go to the team performance, but how AK will spin the team performance after they’re mercifully eliminated (either in the play-in or by the Celtics in the first round). It is truly bananas to consider that a single-elimination tournament would inform decisionmakers this much.

Like said earlier in this space: it’s difficult, but I’m trying to instead achieve serenity in thinking AK will just make up whatever bullshit necessary, it doesn’t actually matter to what degree it’s bullshit. The Bulls didn’t even win the play-in last year, but merely losing to a team that made the finals has been repeated several times as an achievement.

So that brings us to these final two games, that are literally meaningless in terms of seeding. The Bulls were in the same position last year, and did rest a couple players, but ultimately won both as their opponents were really really trying to lose.

Tonight, they’re resting the healthy DeRozan and Vuc (UPDATE: totally missed this the first time, just saw that Coby White is playing for some reason?), the banged-up Caruso and Ayo and Drummond, and there’s those several players - we’ll hear the stat “$70M of non-playing payroll” a lot - already ruled out.

So that’s at least a sign of sanity from Billy Donovan and the organization. Donovan - who isn’t leaving after all - has rode his rotation very hard the past couple months, even in an already-effectively-decided game against the Pistons last night had the starters playing late.

There are marginal stakes in the Bulls losing the next two games to stay below Houston in the draft (which holds if Bulls don't win the play-in tournament). There's not-real-at-all stakes though in winning and padding the arbitrary 'record since 5-14 start' in the AK press conference, and that’s how this team has conditioned us to worry.