these Bulls don't quit, and thus won by default in the 9/10 play-in game

oh that's right, the Hawks are trash

As expected, the Bulls won the first round of this play-in tournament as the Hawks mostly self-eliminated themselves from the postseason, giving up 131 points to the Bulls.

If there was any hope that the front office would suffer any shame in a loss (debatable as a concept, as they are literally shameless), that was dashed when the one Hawks trick - hitting threes - didn’t happen early. Atlanta went 1/9 from three in the first quarter and gave up 40 to the Bulls in that period.

It made one remember: oh, right, as rudderless and mediocre as the Bulls have been this season (three seasons…), the Hawks are an outright mess. Trae Young - the Zach LaVine of the south - “returned” from a lengthy injury and not only hasn’t played great himself but his team lost six straight games to close the season. That included a 42 point loss on the season’s final day where their starters did play quite a bit.

Somewhat similar to the Bulls, the Hawks have never been good with their best players playing together and haven’t made many meaningful transactions (they did replace the coach). Unlike the Bulls, there’s an expectation that they will realize this and make significant changes this offseason.

So, yup, they’re trash. And when not starting the game hot they were ready to roll over. There was a blip in the 2nd and 3rd quarters - usually when Young was out of the game - where they made a run. But they never took the lead, or had anyone thinking they’d really feel threaten to, because their defense was as abysmal as it has been all season.

Credit the Bulls for embracing fundamentals like ‘not quitting on the season’. The activity deficit was all over the court, through pushing on the break and gang-rebounding on the offensive glass, to being aggressive in launching the threes that the Hawks were allowing wide open. They scored a season-high 71 points in the paint. As expected, they had nobody to slow down DeMar DeRozan, but that blinded me to realizing they also had nobody to slow down Coby White, who was able to drive and finish at will.

Objectively fun to see Coby White perform on this kind of stage, enough to temporarily distract us - the idea of questioning attending patrons is asinine - from the existential dread of this team’s front office declaring mission accomplished due to results from a single-elimination tournament of mediocre-to-awful teams.

The Play-In cannot salvage this putrid Bulls season

The Bulls advance, playing Wednesday in Miami against a Heat team that is also not any good and will be missing Jimmy Butler. They may be missing others as well, and knowing Butler is out for weeks means they won’t really be too upset if they don’t make the playoffs.

Whereas the Bulls players, who are banged up all over, seem to be treating this gimmicky Eastern Conference subsidy like truly do-or-die shit. I totally expect Alex Caruso to play even with reports of a significant foot and ankle injury. I totally expect them to win, and prolong the torture of following this team another 10 days.

They don’t give up, even if most fans did a long time ago.