What the Bulls said as they embark on pointless season

AK not only can't show a plan, he hasn't shown the understanding of *what it means to plan*

The Bulls had months to come up with something better than what they did last week on the radio. Which was essentially a no-good-answers question of their mindset: either delusion that they built a decent (even slightly below-average) team or admitting that they didn’t properly commit the other way either.

If this is Bulls management telling the truth, I wish instead they lied

So it was always too much to expect them to adjust the main message - “what are we doing, here?” - in mere days as they headed into training camp with Monday’s media day.

There was the Bulls lead basketball decision-maker, again reading from a script and with his ballcoach next to him to distract with long-winded answers, saying the same things about being competitive and winning habits and the integrity of the game. He even went out of his way to mention “the importance of winning on your home court” again, he really believes this stuff!).

On the bright side: now, per tradition, Bulls management doesn’t have to talk to anyone again until February so we’re spared watching the executive equivalent of a fish gasping on a boat dock (but with mumbling).

As The Athletic’s Jon Greenberg said after attending: “give the Bulls credit for this. They’re promising absolutely nothing.”

After every one of these, usually after some disastrous move or non-move, there’s just so many fundamental concepts that Arturas Karnisovas¹ has demonstrated a lack of grasping that it’s impossible to squint hard enough to see how this guy can perform the job.

Though actually, I think in analyzing this latest presser I came up with something even more basic that he doesn’t understand: he never speaks towards speculation or goals or expectations, anything that is in the future. Also known as: what he should be thinking about as the leader of this organization.

Every answer regarding this season was “we really don’t know, let’s wait and see”. Again, this is fine from the head coach, but not someone who is supposed to be making moves thinking multiple years down the line. AK’s mind should be almost overflowing with internal analysis of how the team projects with Josh Giddey versus Alex Caruso, what their projected pace of play will be after replacing DeMar DeRozan with, um…

Or, more practically, what are their odds of keeping this top-10 protected first round pick.

You may recall this year’s “training camp will tell us a lot” message as the same message from AK the last two seasons, times when there were no new players but still a resistance to show vision and instead say we really can’t know seemingly anything until Billy implements his new system or the guys gain cohesion or whatever excuse for not committing to anything.

Everything is said as they don’t know yet, and then everything is done as a reaction. And usually it’s a far too late one.

In his scripted opening statement, Karnisovas again referenced the Lonzo Ball injury as what derailed his last plan. But it wasn’t that specific thing so much as the more generically unforeseen circumstances that put up a roadblock that couldn’t be navigated through. Remember, part of the reason AK says he doesn’t make in-season moves is because of the chaos it’ll bring².

AK also played some of his greatest hits, including his mantra that when it comes to a successful team, “identity” comes first. Notably, before “talent”. When asked the main goal of the season (the odd home court fixation being second goal) AK answered it was to establish a playing style.

He’s not remembering you have to build the team first! And make adjustments around changes in the roster. This season is already one long built-in excuse for failure, because this will be the opposite of a cohesive season, mostly due to a lack of execution in the offseason:

• Zach LaVine is still here, talking like and being talked about like he’s a featured player. Zach had an opening statement of his own trying to put “in the past” any ill feelings between he and the Bulls, and AK+Billy did likewise. He was, as Marc Eversley a team source suggested over the summer, “compliant” This was actually the most encouraging part of the day, that both parties were willing and able to lie pretty convincingly. It still makes no sense to actually play him in games, but we’re a long way from that.

• Josh Giddey, the shiny new engine part, received this year’s “Chicago Bulls memorial unreported injury that will surely linger past when they say” award when he revealed he ruptured a tendon in his ankle in the final play of the Olympics this summer. In the open, Donovan referenced the setback in seeing all these guards play together (again, everything was couched with needing to see it in practice first) but I thought it was just that Giddey wasn’t in the country for these voluntary pre-camp workouts, not that he was injured. Well, shit!

• Patrick Williams has been rumored to not be ready practice, and we did not see those rumors totally dismissed by Karnisovas. KC Johnson of the Bulls’ broadcast partner said that any “soreness” rumored for Williams is not related to the surgery but is from something else. Is that better?

• Lonzo Ball and the Bulls are treating this season like Make-A-Wish. And given what little else is going right for the franchise, it’s probably a calculated feel-good story that’ll they know will be forgotten very quickly after it’s no longer advantageous to sell.

• Nikola Vucevic, fucking again, came in with “more Vuc? you hear it more and more”

So while it’s genuinely cool to hear Coby White talk about expanding his leadership role and getting together (with Ayo Dosunmu) this players-only minicamp last month, there is just way too much uncertainty around the team still to think anything foundational will be forged. Even Karnisovas himself offered the caveat that “this isn’t a finished product”. But he knows (I think) there’s no training camp in February after this teardown continues.

And, of course there’s this team’s biggest challenge in achieving AK’s vague benchmarks of establishing a winning culture and winning habits: they’re going to suck!

Of course, there wasn’t going to be anything said on media day that changed my opinion on that point. When analyzing this team’s lack of direction heading into a truly doomed season, I forgot to mention that, though by accident and counter to what they said to start this season, this team will indeed have an “identity” fairly quickly: they’re going to play poorly - partially due to poor planning but also due to these pesky unforeseen circumstances that happens to every NBA team, and be one of the worst teams in the league.

It’ll be - maybe even earlier than usual - disjointed and chaotic, yet also boring. We will learn nothing from it, with the only sustainable, meaningful progressive step being the raised odds of a lottery drawing in May. How’s that for a sales job?

1. and when not hidden, his deputy Marc Eversley isn’t much better, if at all

2. nevermind the lauded head coach who is highly paid to handle such things