the Bulls have lost their tegridy
if AKME was capable of feeling shame, that'd be an embarrassing game we just saw
I think this here blog has a smart audience, and so I’m preaching to the choir and against somewhat-strawmen1 when I get all up in arms about this so I won’t go to far into it yet again:
The Bulls are not stuck in the middle. Stop thinking they are inconsistent, or play up/down to competition2 , or there’s some coaching move that would significantly help. They are the ‘down’ competition, they may be firmly out of the truly-awful group but in that next-worst tier. They are sub-middle! They’d love to be in the middle!
All that said, they should’ve beat an Atlanta Hawks team coming into their building having played the night before and thus resting many of their better players:
Instead that group of role players and minor-leaguers controlled all 48 minutes in Chicago, ultimately winning 110-94 and holding the Bulls to a putrid 91.3pts/100 possessions. Two of those 2-Way players were standouts, as Keaton Wallace had 27 and Daeqwon Plowden3 - in his first NBA game - had 19.
It had the potential to be much worse, as two of their better shooters in Bogdanovic and Mathews went a combined 1/15 from three and the Hawks as a team shot a measly 30% from distance. But the Bulls had their worst shooting night of the season only getting up 27 attempts and hitting 6 (22%).
But this wasn’t a game that simply saw a Bulls team missing shots and being sloppy with the ball yet again. They will probably always lose when those two things happen, but to lose to this Hawks outfit took a special deficiency in other areas, including a lack of effort.
And as someone whose only game-to-game motivation is daydreaming over how ashamed Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley feel watching it (in person! in front of the home fans!), this was the funniest game all season.
You had Josh Giddey getting his lazy dribble picked then a lazy foul to try and compensate:
And Giddey again with this defensive ‘stance’:
And Okongwu4 easily getting a loose ball and then sending Vuc stumbling into hell
And Dyson Daniels getting rewarded for awful free throw form (Hawks missed 7 free throws, another entry in ‘could’ve been much worse’ category) by having the ball come right back to him in between three Bulls, who proceeded to guide Daniels back to the rim.
And a Dalen Terry special: true two-way threat (to his own team)
There’s undoubtedly more, please post your favorites in the comments!
I am not upset at this lack of effort. I think there may be something to the theory - one that I just came up with - that the team on a back-to-back that plays all different players may have a freshness advantage over the team that plays the same guys both nights. And the Bulls role players are not actually better than the GLeague level of the Hawks on Wednesday, they just have better draft pedigree5.
But it’s notable that such a game can come from the team that has Billy Donovan out there every other game meandering for 8 minute chunks of speech at a time including words like ‘integrity’ and ‘competitiveness’.
And even THAT is not worth getting upset about, he’s a ballcoach, and that should be his mindset, which happens to be in unison with what his bosses in the front office said on media day.
What’s especially annoying is remembering that media day was the last time we heard from that front office. And even more annoying is the thought (that’s all we can do is speculate, since they go in hiding and never do anything) that they still feel like an overall success, and next time they speak will accentuate positives.
The Sixers lost again on Wednesday as well, and are still 2 games behind the Bulls for 10th place and a play-in tournament berth. Even if Philly does follow through on getting their own shit together and make a desperate run to overtake Chicago, it’s impossible to see a situation where by the trade deadline the Bulls - in AKME’s mind - aren’t still ‘in the hunt’ for postseason play. And thus they will make moves (or more accurately, not make moves) in that “competitiveness” and “integrity” motivation. That’s not so funny!
these are real people, but they’re either somewhat-naive fans, or those who work for the team broadcast
As a sub-middle team, they will win 2/3 of games against the dregs, and lose 2/3 games against the good teams, and it’s a toss-up against their own cohort. Read how the vaunted win over the Celtics was covered by their perspective: the Bulls are the bad team that makes better teams soul-search!
I hope he sticks around because CHGO’s post-game nickname of ‘Mr. Plow’ was a good one.
Selected 2 picks after Pat Williams, by the way. I’d mention what Williams did in this game but we are not caring about that anymore.
Also why Matas Buzelis looked comfortable, to the point where he was maybe the team’s 4th best player even at just 8 points on 8 shots.
There’s not much to say about the current team at this point. The all-star veteran players (LaVine and Vooch) have been in the league for a combined 25 years and have won a total of 4 playoff games between the two of them. This is who they are. They do not impact winning on a significant level and if they’re the best players on your team, you’re going nowhere.
What’s funny is that I think AK’s previous bad trades are now making it difficult for him to trade LaVine and Vooch. Like, dude…the whole world just watched you trade Caruso for Giddey. Of course front offices aren’t giving you good offers now. They know you’ll accept bad offers!
The long term hope for this franchise is largely tied to the fact that I don’t believe the Reinsdorfs feel the same sense of loyalty to AK as they did with Pax. If the Bulls miss the play-in tournament for a couple of consecutive years, that might be it for AK. However, that would require Philly stepping up and actually taking this 10 seed that we’re trying to give away. Come on, Philly!
Vuc expressing his anger this week at falling below 10rpg was a real gem, an insight into the worst type of "star" you could possibly have on your team short of a guy stealing from your locker or waving guns around. There's zero fucking correlation between his "double double machine" schtick and winning basketball games. Or even winning on the glass! Atlanta killed them last night as Vuc "dominated."
Karnisovas is literally cornering the market on these kind of flawed players who are somehow less than their counting stats. With Giddey you now have 3 starters who are prop bet gods but won't take a charge, run down a breakaway or even run back on defense. There's no "second gear" and they all suck in the clutch. There's "second gear" defense in this league even among stereotypical "bad defenders" like Curry and DeRozan and none of these guys have it.
The org, and even Billy who definitely knows better, seem okay with this. They seem to think they've found undervalued gems by taking on the league's overrated players.