The floor is low, but sturdy for the Bulls
they haven't fallen apart, hooray?
You can’t make anything out of 3 games, but the Bulls did go 2-1 (including another clutch win) in the games they started without Giddey, White, and Collins. That’s a lot better than what one would expect (0-3), but I feel even those results wouldn’t have changed the Bulls self-assessment of self-satisfaction in terms of being competitive, and In The Hunt for the (East) postseason.
I will do a proper trade deadline preview later this month. In the meantime, the games will keep coming. They will lose more than they win (and Vuc will get mad) but they will win some games. That does not make them some unique snowflake of a team! The thing about NBA games is that there’s a lot of them. There’s going to be some surprising results. The Brooklyn Nets, who nobody bothers to divine any grander meaning from their results, went on a 4 game losing streak, then 7-3 stretch, then lost 3 straight, then beat the Nuggets (who were without Jokic). The Bulls play them twice this month.
Tonight they play the Boston Celtics for the first time this season. That means I get to publish a roster snapshot and talk about another team that’s not the Bulls!
Like most everyone else, I didn’t commit to predicting how the Celtics would do and put them in a TBD tier alongside the Pacers and Bucks. The Bulls needed 2 of those 3 to miss the play-in for them to get that always-coveted spot. It’s clear the Pacers are taking their ‘gap year’ without Tyrese Haliburton but the Celtics are not doing the same without Jayson Tatum.
While Boston jettisoned most of their championship rotation, they still have Jaylen Brown, who has made a leap this season in being able to take the usage load to bring up mostly role players and fringe roster guys.
They came into the season extremely thin in the frontcourt, enough so to where it wasn’t a crazy hypothetical for them to want to trade for Nikola Vucevic (and further reduce payroll). But they’ve done what every other team but the Bulls has done: have a better center, or a cheaper center who fits better. Neemias Queta is this year’s version of alongside Quinten Post.
In terms of style of play, they are opposite of the Bulls in their ability to slow it down and play iso-ball.
Even with the game in Boston, the Bulls could win it. Not because they’re “up and down”, or even because Coby White may be returning (unfortunately Jalen Smith has been added to the injury outages), but because the NBA has a lot of games.
Should the Celtics be trade deadline buyers and the Bulls sellers? That answer is not influenced at all by this game’s result. Unfortunately I don’t think the Bulls front office feels that way. Or they do, in that it doesn’t matter because they are not selling and never were going to.
tired: the Bulls are 1-7 without Isaac Okoro
wired: the Bulls are 0-6 without Jalen Smith
The schedule is brutal the next couple of weeks ... their slide will continue, although I'm sure they will only be a couple of games out of the play-in, which will give AK all the ammunition he needs to keep the band together at the trade deadline.