1. Alex Caruso (ankle) was a listed as questionable heading into the game and was a ultimately late scratch. He suffered a sprain on Sunday against the Spurs, a different injury than the left toe that was previously bothering him. Billy Donovan said Sunday after practice that he hoped Caruso would be back at some point this week.

2. DeMar DeRozan was sensational, scoring 41 points and adding 11 assists, the first time a Bulls player has reached those thresholds in a single game since December 23, 1992 when Michael Jordan last did it. Not bad company.

After a poor shooting first half on Friday against the Spurs, DeRozan got back to his usual ways and went 14-of-30 from the field with 10-of-12 free throw shooting.

He also hit the game-tying shot in the final moments of regulation to send the game to overtime.

But the facilitation has been the most impressive. He spoke recently about the importance of keeping everyone involved — how that makes his teammates more dangerous and unpredictable to opponents and creates openings for him later in games.

DeRozan now has 10 or more assists in three games out of the last four.

3. Coby White continues playing at an elite level. He scored a season high 33 points on 12-of-20 shooting, including 6-of-10 on threes and 3-of-4 from the line. He has made 53 of his last 102 three-point attempts over the last previous 11 games and has emerged into an offensive weapon the Bulls will feature regardless of the direction they take over the coming weeks.

The hot shooting will inevitably cool off, but there is reason to believe White could actually become much more dangerous.

As well as White has played, he’s shooting only 45.3 percent on two-point field goals this year, the worst figure since his rookie season and nine percent worse than last season.

White was 2-for-3 at the rim and 6-of-10 on two-point shots against the Bucks and the way he’s changing pace and manipulating bigs in drop coverage, and now finishing at the rim and in the mid-range, could mean he’s bound for even more scoring improvement.

4. To get White some good open looks, the Bulls have been leaning on this flare set in half court offense and after timeouts.

The action is simple — White enters the ball to DeRozan on the wing, and flares to the top of the key over a screen from Nikola Vucevic.

These types of quick hitters are really useful, especially when executed so swiftly. Defenses are often prepared to settle in against DeRozan isolations from the mid-post area, so if he can whip the ball back across as soon as the defense lets up, it is often open for a three.

5. There was some frustration later in the game that DeRozan went a little too iso-heavy down the stretch, and that White was left out to dry a bit despite playing one of his best games.

There’s probably some truth in there, but I thought the Bulls handled the fourth quarter and overtime well. They continued to play well through DeRozan, moving White around the court as a screener to draw attention away from DeRozan and open up scoring outlets if necessary.

They opened the overtime period with two plays that put White in position to make plays out of pick-and-pop with DeRozan.

More, White was at his best playing off the ball rather than dominating it. That’s precisely why the offense has functioned as well as it has of late. At times, with Zach LaVine in the off-guard role, the ball sticks with him as he surveys the floor to create isolations for himself, whereas White has done well to fluidly move onto the next action, whether that’s a drive, kick, or shot from himself.

There is a tendency to want to pour more and more responsibility onto younger players when they are performing well to see how much they can eat. But sometimes it’s smart to let them thrive in a somewhat smaller role because it’s working for them.

6. With a shortened rotation, Dalen Terry got some early minutes.

Terry has been working on his shooting with new Director of Player Development Petter Patton, and it looked like he was much more comfortable letting it fly. He made 1-of-2 threes in his 11 minutes and had something to say to the Bucks bench after nailing the one.

Terry has struggled to earn minutes because defenses leave him alone. He’s not a strong enough ball handler to get all the way to the rim against sagging defenses and he can’t bully his way through defenders if he gets there.

He had a couple possessions during his first stint coming to set screens for DeRozan. Catching the ball in the short roll, he had the ball going straight downhill playing 4-on-3. This allows him to unlock his best passing skill by giving him an advantage to play with.

Other Notes:

— Ayo Dosunmu got the start in place of Caruso, in place of LaVine, and pulled a Tony Snell. In 26 minutes, he logged 0-of-6 field goals and a foul. I’m not too worried, Dosunmu has been awesome for the Bulls in LaVine’s absence. Let’s talk again if this continues for a few straight games.

— Nikola Vucevic (14 points on 6-of-16 shooting, 10 rebounds, five assists) had a rough go of it offensively. He had some nice passes but never really found a scoring rhythm, with his 5-foot flip shot failing to fall.

— Torrey Craig struggled shooting the ball, but had a couple of key defensive plays late in the game that helped keep it close.

— Patrick Williams scored 15 points on 6-of-14 shooting and grabbed seven boards. He wasn’t the most efficient, but he was active on the glass and stayed aggressive. He continues to do a solid job on Giannis Antetokounmpo, despite his impressive statline (32 points, 9-of-13 shooting, 14-of-18 free throws, 12 rebounds, six assists).

— Andre Drummond had 16 boards in 14 minutes, 11 of which came on the offensive end.

— Despite shooting just 41.2 percent from the field, the Bulls made 15-of-34 threes. The lost the free throw battle 20-25 to 30-37, but had six turnovers to the Bucks’ 11, and 18 offensive rebounds to the Bucks six.

— Up next: Bulls are back home for the second leg of a back-to-back against the Nuggets on Tuesday night.

Individual skill improvement is at the very basis of team improvement. And from Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley on down, the organization is more invested than ever in making that happen. 

“In general, this has been an ongoing focus over the past three-and-a-half seasons, since AK (Arturas Karnisovas) and Marc (Eversley) came here to Chicago,” Bulls Vice President of Basketball Strategy and Analytics Steve Weinman told CHGO. “It’s been a priority to do everything we can to create an environment for our players where we’re doing as much as we can to put them in position to maximize their abilities, and to do so in a way that helps our team.”

There is a unified initiative across the front office, to the coaching staff, and skill development department to help players grow.

“I feel strongly that our responsibility from a basketball analytics standpoint is to provide as much support for this process as we can, to help the coaches as they help our players,” Weinman continued. “More than anything else, our players are the product…the person most responsible for that player’s improvement, is that player.”

Shooting is the low-hanging fruit when it comes to juicing up the offense and making each player more dynamic. Last season, the Bulls were, on average, in an 8.4-point hole simply by losing the three-pointers made battle by 2.8 per game.

To rectify this area of weakness, the Bulls brought in Peter Patton as the team’s new Director of Player Development. Patton, a shooting coach by trade, believes that shooting is the foundation for individual improvement. Players need to be able to shoot well to pull defenders out of the lane. They need to have the floor spaced to create driving lanes to keep the offense humming. And they need to have a more modern shot profile — where on the court they’re taking their shots — to keep pace with the offensive boom happening across the league.

“We have an emphasis on shooting, specifically because our shot profile when I got here wasn’t ideal to the NBA standards,” Patton told CHGO. 

They’re operating through the lens of ‘skill over scheme’: the idea that players need to have belief in their ability in order to make the next play, keep the advantage alive and capitalize on what the defense is giving them. If they can maximize their offensive toolsets, they will be prepared to read, react and capitalize.

“I’m coming in to focus more on certain skill development, specifically shooting and basing everything off of ‘skills over scheme’,” Patton explained. “If they’re not comfortable with what they do, it’s hard to run a scheme.”

Skills over scheme

Ty Abbott is in his fourth year as a Bulls player development coach. A former pro in Europe and in the G League, Abbott started his career working with the Philadelphia 76ers affiliate team before eventually moving to the Bulls.

He’s playing one-on-one and managing drill work before games with Coby White and Zach LaVine. “Just having a guard background, it’s kind of natural for me to gravitate towards them and they gravitate towards me as well,” Abbott told CHGO. 

“The way that I see it, [my job] is really just to support these guys,” he continued. “You can look at it: you have your head coach who’s running the show, you have your assistant coaches that are coming up with the schemes and the way that we’re going to play. And then my job is to help our guys be as successful as possible and be as ready as possible to implement those schemes and show what they can do within the framework of what we’re trying to do as a team.”

The Bulls have a strong group of player development coaches including Abbott, Jordan Ash, Logan Power, and Nico Hobbs. Patton added to the group, bringing Peter Crawford with him from Dallas, and then hiring Austin Dufault away from Detroit.

“Everybody has an expectation and standard that we’re going to set with how we work with players,” Patton said. “What time we get here. What time we leave. Attention to details when we watch film with ourselves, our players. We’re going to study the game, study each other and encourage each other to communicate ideas and have an open forum in our office.”

In bolstering the skill development staff, the Bulls feel they can have a greater impact on player’s growth. Players need to trust and believe in the coaches they work with. Those coaches need to be able to relate to those players and challenge them with the right feedback as it relates to eventually implementing those skills in game. 

“Once [players] come into their own, they start to understand, alright, ‘this is my look here, this is my look here,’ and they start to have a progression in any given scenario,” Abbott said. “And as you see guys start to really understand the offense and understand their strengths. You see them go through those progressions. You can see how they’re playing the game within the game.”

Younger players like White, Patrick Williams and Ayo Dosunmu are starting to show those flashes more consistently — a product of the work they’re putting in.

“You gotta do it when you don’t want to do it,” Abbott said. “And that’s more than just being on the court. Are you taking care of your body? Are you watching the film? Are you paying attention in practice? Are you learning the playbook?”

“All of our guys work,” he continued. “And they’ve fallen in love with the work. And they all feed off of each other’s energy.”

Learning your shot

Patton is always lurking behind players, arms folded and brow furrowed. He’s intently monitoring their shooting form as they work through drills. 

“He’ll operate in the shadows,” Abbott said.

Patton is looking at balance, hand placement, line to the rim. These elements are non-negotiable. 

He’ll never aim to tear down and reconstruct anyone’s shot form. That’s “asking for disaster,” especially during the season. Instead, his message to the players is consistent: he’s teaching them how to perfect their shot, not enforce his own upon them. 

“It’s his shot, not my shot,” Patton said. “It’s the player’s shot and whatever they want to do to make their shot better, they have to buy into it. I’m gonna give them a platform to do it. It’s a back and forth. The big thing is making sure they understand why they miss. So when they miss they can make their adjustments in-game.”

Dalen Terry is one of Patton’s personal projects. He’s constantly in Terry’s ear during shooting drills, preaching balance, elbow in, making sure the ball comes off the middle finger, not ring finger. Behind each jumper, Patton is there, guiding and instructing every motion.

And of course, the trash talk helps build the relationship that lays the foundation for skill development and application. 

“For me, it’s a lot of talking shit, for real,” Terry told CHGO with a smile. “Like he’ll say some shit just to see how I react.” 

For developmental players like Terry, earning minutes will be a challenge without continued improvement in skill areas like shooting. 

“A lot of these guys, younger players, have come up or they’ve been told how great they are,” Patton explained. “No one has really coached and challenged them…If you can’t shoot you can’t play…that skill set, breaking guys down getting to the paint becomes a lot easier, because that means they’ve got to close out and it’s a much easier read and go by.”

The team uses the Noah Shooting System, a state of the art tracking tool that measures and visualizes shot arc, depth, and left-right accuracy data to help players correct their shot.

According to the Noah software, “The perfect shot is 45/11/0,” Terry explained. 45 is the degree angle of the arc, 11 is depth, the point where the shot enters the hoop in relation to the front of the rim, and 0 is the margin left or right of the rim.

“He’ll say my shot wasn’t perfect,” Terry said. “And I’ll say, ‘well, that shit went in’. Then he’ll bring up the chart and tell me how it wasn’t (perfect). We’ll argue about it, and then I’ll do it his way, and he’ll say, ‘see, do it again.’”

There’s no arguing with Noah. As good as the shot may feel off of Terry’s hands, if it’s not 45/11/0, it’s not right.

Measuring success

Weinman is building other “tools and toys” to help visualize information geared towards optimizing offense. His job is to provide support and information to the coaches to disseminate to the players as they see fit.

It doesn’t have to be regurgitating stats and tables, but rather, a lens through which the coaches can package and distribute information. And the coaching staff and player development staff are as eager to implement this information as Weinman has seen during his tenure with the Bulls.

“This [coaching and player development staff] is by far not just the most interested in receiving information, but the most aggressive in pursuing it,” Weinman said. “We have a staff that is really interested in engaging with as much data as they possibly can.”

Of course, the Bulls want to see those percentages rise, but the goal is less about reaching specific thresholds, and more about steadily moving in the right direction.

“One thing we’ve talked about is a goal of continuous improvement,” Weinman said. “It’s not just trying to hit this target number and then we’ve hit it and that’s the end. That’s not the idea. It’s to find ways to just continue to be moving in the right direction, ideally in every facet of the game.”

And to their credit, they have. The Bulls offense at large is still a work in progress: their efficiency is 24th, right where they left off last season (though they’ve dropped a few points per 100 possessions). But they’ve moved up to 13th during their four-game win-streak and are showing real signs of growth. 

The shot profile is also looking a lot healthier these days: 32.9 in three-pointers attempted per game, an 11-spot rise in the rankings. 33.8 percent of their offense comes from three, compared to 30.4 percent last season. 

The Bulls have climbed 22nd to 14th in frequency of shots attempted from the corners. They aren’t just launching threes for the sake of it. Instead, they’re understanding how to generate better offense by prioritizing areas on the floor where the expected value of shots is highest.

Better yet, they’re increasing volume without sacrificing accuracy. The three-point percentage has remained consistent to last season’s average, an impressive feat considering the inverse correlation between those variables.

“Our players have put in a lot of work,” Weinman said. “And you’re seeing that in terms of, in some cases, increased willingness to shoot threes. In some cases, it’s just purely increased accuracy on taking similar volumes of shots.”

More than anything else, shooting opens up a higher level of upside for each individual on the team and the group on the whole.

“People think that the Chicago Bulls are a non-shooting team. We’re going to change that narrative,” Patton said confidently. “I encourage people to go under [screens]. That’d be fine. 

We’ll be just fine with that. We’ll be ready.”

A different team entirely.

DeMar DeRozan has been the driving force, but he’s doing in in slightly different ways than usual. He has two 10-assist games over his last three, and has been critical in setting the tempo in the offense, both in half court and transition.

“Just trying to create advantages for guys, more so than anything,” DeRozan said. “Reading the defense quicker, faster just trying to get (the ball) out. I try to create double teams draw as much attention as I can and just find the guys and let them let them do the rest.”

Part of the reason the Bulls are playing zippier of late is that there is a focus on getting DeRozan ahead of the ball — making sure he gets up the court to where the Bulls can enter it to him and get actions started earlier in the clock.

“If we can get him ahead of the ball, no that he needs to run to the corner, but just ahead of the ball where we can throw it to him in open space, now we can really get his playmaking and his IQ into the game and now he can generate for himself and for others,” Billy Donovan explained.

Getting DeRozan the ball up the floor lets the Bulls get into their actions, ideally against mismatches or a tilted defense where he can take advantage, whether that’s scoring himself, or finding open looks for his teammates.

“That’s why we’re to success is coming from and it was just not one person,” DeRozan said. “I shot the ball terrible (against the San Antonio Spurs), but it didn’t matter. Because everybody else is ready, stepped up, did what they were supposed to do, and helped us pull out the win. If we was just depending on me making shots, it wouldn’t have happened.”

There are points in every game where things bog down, and it’s important to have a half-court bucket getter in those situations. But for the Bulls to maintain this style of play, they need to integrate everyone into the offense.

“It’s just fun being able to find guys give me guys confidence and it makes it makes my job easier,” DeRozan said.

One of the guys who has made DeRozan’s job easier is Patrick Williams, who is finally starting to look like the best version of himself. He’s averaging 13.8 points, 5.5 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.1 steals and a block on 55 percent shooting from the field and 44.8 percent from three over his past seven games.

“It’s all emotional for him,” DeRozan said. “Pat has always been a quiet type of person, on the court demeanor. I forgot what game it was, you kind of seen him get pissed off and you know, with that type of energy and that vibe that come out, everything else gonna follow with it.”

DeRozan thinks that newfound fiery attitude bleeds into Williams’ game. He’s seen a more willing driver, a more aggressive transition player, a more heady cutter.

We’ve been winning,” Williams said. “So whatever I’m doing or whatever we’re doing as a team, I guess it’s working.”

Those “role player” tendencies are things Williams can and should be doing whenever he’s on the court. Not just when he has to step up because the team is vacant 25 points per game in LaVine’s absence. But the fact that the ball is pinging around with more energy makes life easier on players and much harder on defenses.

“In the game when the ball finds you or you’re running the floor, you’ve got to just instinctively play,” Donovan said. “I think there is a perfectionist part of Patrick that he wants to do everything at an elite level. But when you get so consumed with doing that and you overthink it, you miss out the opportunities to be aggressive.”

“He’s been more aggressive in terms of picking those spots, and going when the opportunities are there,” he continued.

With the ball moving more smoothly, the on-court connections are growing.

“I think everybody kind of has a feel now of how to play off with each other,” Williams said. “We’re kind of getting that chemistry going. I think backdoor cuts are a direct correlation to chemistry.”

Continuity!

The Bulls aren’t going to be a seven-seconds-or-less offense, but they’re learning to strike a balance where they have more opportunities to create an easier and more dynamic offensive environment.

“I think makes it easier, it the sense of, there’s a lot more actions,” Williams said. “It’s not just one action, and the ball gets stagnant, which is a challenge for us…It makes it easier when the ball is moving. It’s a lot harder for the defense to scout that and guard that.”

The Bulls are finally starting to find some offensive success, and it stems from the faster pace.

And they’re planning to ride that wave as long as they can.

LaVine spoke to the media Thursday morning to address the injury, the team’s success without him and how all of that ties into the recent reports that both he and the team are open to exploring trades.

LaVine calls his injury inflammation of the lateral side of his right foot: “It’s bony prominent area where you really don’t want to start messing around with that fifth metatarsal area and it gets more and more irritated.”

His rehab plan is to stay off of it and get Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Injections to facilitate healing and letting the inflammation calm down.

“It’s pretty much just is just rest,” LaVine said. “You gotta be able to you stay off of it. I’ve been trying to train and do active, you know, rehab to get back out there.”

“So rest for a little bit, get some PRP,” he continued. “Hopefully that will do some good things for it and continue to promote that healing. And then check back in in a week or two and see where you’re at.”

LaVine says he wanted to play Wednesday against the Hornets, but ran into trouble while ramping up.

“I don’t pull punches,” he said. “I try to play through everything.”

Meanwhile, the Bulls are winning, and playing their best ball, with LaVine off the court. They’re 3-1 since he left the game against the Celtics, fueling the narrative that the team is fine without him.

“I’m happy for the team,” he said. “If I’m not happy for the team, that would be saying something about me. But you know, I’m the first guy out there. However you gotta get a win, get a win. We were in a spot where, early, we weren’t looking very good. And whatever may sparked it, you know, if it was me off the court, that’s a narrative that people will run with. But we’ve won three games and I’m happy for it.”

In fact, LaVine believes he fits right back in with the way the team is playing now, if and when he does return.

“This last 3-game winning streak shows what we were trying to do at training camp, what we were working on,” he said. “Whenever I do get back out there, it’s not hard to implement myself into something that we’ve been working on all summer.”

Of course, the ‘if’ is a big piece. Most players who signed as free agents this past offseason become trade eligible on December 15. Those who received salary increases of over 20 percent re-signing with their incumbent teams are trade eligible January 15.

It’s quite possible LaVine has played his last game as a Bull. But he’s not thinking about it that way.

“I don’t think of anything like that,” he said. “The main thing I’m thinking about is getting my foot right and hopefully getting back out there helping those guys.”

LaVine says that as long as he is on the team, he’s committed to the team.

“The storylines that are out there right now about me is on both something that wasn’t said completely verbally to the media,” he said. “It’s something that is behind closed doors that a bunch of narratives can get spun around and said about me and things and stories will be portrayed. It’s part of the business, that comes with it.

“Am I still a part of this team and very committed? Yeah,” he continued. “I’ve got a Bulls jersey on and committed here and for as long as I’ll be here I’ll still support and love Chicago and go out there and play my heart out for these guys. That’s never gonna change.”

With Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Alex Caruso missing time over the past few weeks, including LaVine missing Wednesday night’s 111-100 win over the Charlotte Hornets, Phillips has gotten a shot at legitimate rotation minutes (not just garbage time).

For now, it’s just flashes. In his short six minute stint, Phillips took off for a transition layup. He’s had other opportunities of late to show off his athleticism, and while the game is moving fast, he’s showing signs of life.

He’s not putting up numbers just yet, but when he’s out there, his presence is palpable.

Phillips has blown up in four games at the G League level, averaging 19.3 points, 9.8 rebounds and two assists on 48.1 percent shooting from the field and 52.2 percent on threes.

Phillips projected more as an athlete and defender than a scoring option, but his numbers speak for themselves.

“In college, I played with a lot of great guys,” Phillips told CHGO ahead of Saturday’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans. “On that team we had almost four or five people close to double figures in that like 9-11 point range. So there was a lot of ball for everybody. But I definitely think it’s something I’ve been able to do throughout my career.”

Phillips didn’t get the chance to get into his own offense as much during college, but he’s been doing exactly that at the G League level, and that’s helped usher him into more of a role with the big league team.

“The speed of the game is a little faster, guys are bigger, stronger,” Phillips said. “But just trying to play, find everything I could do for the team to help. Whatever that role is for me, I try to do that at a high level.”

For now, that role is defending, running in transition, and getting the ball up when it comes to him on the perimeter.

Phillips hasn’t shot the ball well, but his mechanics are fluid and lightning quick. He’s getting the ball up without hesitation, and shooting at high volume with Windy City (5.8 three-pointers attempted per game).

“It’s not too much tweaking, just really fundamental with the shot,” Phillips said of working with Bulls new shooting coach and Director of Player Development Peter Patton. “When you catch it, have your wrist cocked, follow through, hold your elbow after. He harps on the fundamentals.”

The volume has been perhaps the most impressive.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s another part,” he continued. “You got to shoot ’em. So I’m definitely getting up volume when I can.”

The Phillips experience is a work in progress. He’s an ultra-twitchy athlete jittering around the court, still clearly learning the NBA game.

But he’s new and he’s exciting. Hopefully he continues to carve out a role for himself while he has the chance.

“It’s hard to find those kind of minutes,” Billy Donovan said ahead of Wednesday’s game against the Charlotte Hornets. “But I also think guys have earned their way in, and I think Julian’s done a good job considering the fact that he’s had to step into a role where guys had been out.”

Until then, Phillips is doing what he can to prove he can be productive.

“They just want me to do what I do,” he said of how he can earn more minutes. “Be all over the floor. Show my athleticism. Bring a lot of energy. Play as hard as I can. Make the right plays. I just try to do that at a high level.”

The Bulls are now 15th in the league in three-pointers attempted per game — a 4.5 per game increase that has rocketed them up from the bottom of the league. The rate at which they attempt the long-ball has also dramatically improved, rising to 15th in percentage of shots from three and ninth in percentage of offense generated by corner threes — among the most valuable real estate in the game.

Despite the Bulls remaining slightly below league average in three-point percentage, opposing defenses are beginning to change how they guard in the halfcourt. More frequently than prior seasons, the Bulls are drawing two defenders to the ball, opening up shots around the perimeter. They just need to be aware that those shots are available, and ready to take them.

“It’s a lot easier for me when I’m watching film and I can stop and rewind it 15 times, and make a decision of what would have been the best decision,” said Billy Donovan. “These guys are having to make split second decisions.”

It’s been a process, but the Bulls are improving in those areas. The increase in corner three-point attempt frequency is proof.

“When guys are below the free throw line defensively, those are shots you have to shoot,” Donovan said. “They’re not closing out from the free throw line to the three-point line quick enough. Guys that are above the free throw line that are long and athletic, those are a bit different. But just to encourage guys, give guys confidence, like look, ‘you need to shoot the ball here. What are you doing? We’re not getting a better shot than this from anyone on our team. Shoot the ball’.”

Increasing three-point volume is only possible if the players are comfortable launching up shots.

After scoring 31 points against the Pelicans, Coby White revealed that Donovan had been pausing film to show him that, not only were shots available to him at times, in not taking them, it hurts the rest of the offense. Those untaken shots, which to White, may have felt like bad looks, were actually good, productive sources of offense for the team.

“I tell Coby this too, when we get full court pressure and he beats the pressure and gets downhill and sprays it out, that’s better than any play I can run or call,” Donovan said. “You need to be in a mindset of being ready to play, getting your eyes on the rim, and being decisive with your decisions.”

This is the definition of playing with “randomness”. Finding areas to attack that are unscripted, unprescribed and unpredictable. Scouting in the NBA is too good — if the Bulls are slowing it down and running plays every time down, they’re easy to guard.

So it’s not that the Bulls are just launching up more threes to add variance to their shot profile and offensive potential. They’re understanding how to generate better offense, and the result is more threes. This is a huge distinction, and it all stems from understanding how to beat the defense.

“The two hardest things to do in the NBA is closing out to guard the ball and getting back in transition,” Donovan said. “Those are the two hardest things to do defensively. We can’t let teams off the hook when we create those situations. We’ve got to be able to capitalize a little bit better.”

As young players like White, Ayo Dosunmu and Patrick Williams are put in more positions to attack closeouts, they’ll develop a better understanding of their options and progressions in these situations, which, in turn, will lead to better decision making.

“The IQ piece is just that, it’s the split second decision making where younger players are going to take some time to get better,” Donovan said of his young core growing in these areas.

That is player development. And it’s exactly what the Bulls need to continue stringing these exciting games and encouraging wins together.

Following their Thursday night victory over Milwaukee, they follow up with a win against the New Orleans Pelicans 124-118 at home on Saturday night. Back-t0-back 120+ point nights. Back-to-back 30+ assist games. Back-to-back 37+ three point attempt games.

Back-to-back wins.

“Now we need to get back-to-back-to-back wins,” DeMar DeRozan insisted after the game.

DeRozan chipped in an efficient 24 points on 10-of-18 shooting, but was dominant as a facilitator. He had 10 assists to two turnovers. The Bulls ruthlessly targeted the Pelicans smaller defenders, forcing them to switch and double the ball. DeRozan was quick on the kickout and the Bulls were playing with much better pace and tempo, moving the ball around the perimeter and finding open shooters.

The primary beneficiary was Coby White, who scored 31 points (28 in the second half) on 10-of-17 shooting, 8-of-13 threes. He also added nine rebounds and six assists.

“He was ultra-aggressive, ultra-confident, decisive,” DeRozan said of White. “You know, he was big, you know, Cob was Cob tonight. Without him tonight, I don’t think we feed off his energy, we don’t get the win without him.”

White was excellent defensively. He heroically took a charge from Zion Williamson. He had a late-game steal that led to a clutch three from Torrey Craig. He hustled for 40 minutes, executed rotations and generated some open looks, including a game-sealing lob to Patrick Williams.

But of course, the shooting grabs the headlines.

Three of DeRozan’s assists went to White for three-pointers, and all of them were products of the Bulls quickly getting into their action, White relocating and hitting catch-and-shoot threes.

It’s a simple game.

White is now 39-of-78 on threes over the last eight games, that’s fifty percent for the all the fellow nerds out there. Pretty good.

After shooting a hair below 30 percent during his first 13 games of the season, White cited help from new Director of Player Development and shooting coach Peter Patton as part of the reason for the upward swing.

“Not really tweaks, but I finally started to learn my shot,” White explained. “Before everybody just said I could really shoot, but nobody ever taught me how to learn my shot. I kind of just shot the ball. And he’s been a big help in like helping me learn my shot.”

“Learn my shot”. What does that mean?

“Why I miss, when I miss, why did it go this way, why did it go that way?” he said.

“The main thing for me was getting back round, squaring my body up to the rim,” White continued. “And then holding my release, holding my follow through in the basket. I had a tendency to either snatch my follow through or follow through to the right. And a lot of those times my ball would go right. And most of the times when I miss, those were big three things.”

White is a rhythm shooter and Billy Donovan said prior to the game that, although he continues to operate as the point guard, getting him off the ball to open up those catch-and-shoot opportunities has been a point of emphasis to get him cleaner looks.

“I’ve talked to him a lot about getting off the ball some — not in terms of he needs to be off the point —  he gets the offense started with a pass, it kind of gets him off the ball moving a little bit,” Donovan explained. “He can find those creases and cracks in the offense when there’s ball movement.”

When White struggled shooting the ball earlier in the year, he was attempting 5.5 threes per game. In the most recent eight games, he’s up to 9.75 per. When asked about the stark increase, he was clear:

“Oh, well because I was getting in trouble,” White laughed. “I was getting in trouble a lot for not taking them.”

White said Donovan called him out during a few film sessions to point out spots where he should have let it fly.

“I don’t think I wasn’t not shooting, I think I it was a couple of times where I thought a guy was closing hard at me and he did a good job on the closeout…Probably some of the shots I took wasn’t, to me, probably wasn’t the best shot, but they went in so and they keep encouraging me.”

Shooters shoot. And the Bulls need White to do exactly that.

For now, Karnisovas is reportedly focused on evaluating the roster after a LaVine trade, rather than immediately looking to tear things down. But with LaVine out for at least another week as his right foot injury heals, Karnisovas gets an additional grace period to gather more data. An overwhelming positive byproduct in the wake of the unfortunate injury news.

(Side note: many assume LaVine will net more than Bradley Beal did in the trade that sent him to the Suns because LaVine, unlike Beal, doesn’t have a no-trade clause. But if there’s “not a market for LaVine right now”, as ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting, it doesn’t matter whether he has the no-trade clause. If no one wants him, no one will be willing to give up anything of value for him.)

Still, it’s probably safe to predict that the Bulls view LaVine as the first domino to fall, and will end up moving him before the deadline. But let’s assume it takes until the league fully opens for business on January 15 for a trade to materialize. If true, Karnisovas would have only three weeks (10 games) before the deadline to re-evaluate. And that assumes a deal is done the minute the trade restrictions lift on January 15.

If Karnisovas doesn’t feel comfortable making further moves before taking some time to re-evaluate the new-look roster, it behooves him to get a LaVine deal done as quickly as possible to maximize the evaluation window. But he needs to also get it done right. And using this window while LaVine is out injured to gather data can help Karnisovas make those decisions.

That leaves DeRozan’s unrestricted free agency as the first big question the Bulls must answer after LaVine is traded.

Should the franchise trade him for whatever you can get at the deadline? Let him walk for nothing in the summer? Re-sign him and continue on course with the post-LaVine iteration of the team?

Reports are percolating that DeRozan is “considered very likely” to be moved by the deadline. This is probably the best thing for the Bulls ahead of his unrestricted free agency.

So the real decision comes down to whether the Bulls will move on from Alex Caruso.

There’s an argument to be made that Caruso’s presence, leadership, player-coaching and game-winning/saving three-point shooting will help whichever young players are around develop an understanding of how to play the right way. He’s one of the most productive defenders in the league. He hits clutch shots when called upon. He embodies the style the Bulls want to play, and having him for another year-and-change may prove to be more valuable than whatever they get for him on the trade market.

The Bulls are reportedly “setting the price tag high” on Caruso, and perhaps Karnisovas values Caruso’s presence more than anything a practical trade could return.

One league source said the Bulls should be able to acquire a pick and a young player with upside for Caruso.

That’s more than what they should be willing to pass on.

Especially considering his value will never be higher — Caruso has two playoff runs left on his contract, is nearing 30-years of age and is a major injury risk. The Bulls can’t wait a year too late to trade their most-prized asset and watch his value decline, just as they’ve allowed to occur with LaVine and DeRozan.

It’s true, the Bulls should prioritize keeping productive veterans around during their next phase to help sheppard the next group and keep them on the right path — something they failed to do during their last shot at a rebuild.

But that can’t be the priority over long-term growth, especially when it comes to capitalizing on Caruso’s sky-high value.

Nikola Vucevic, not Caruso, can and should be the veteran the Bulls build with.

In Thursday’s refreshing win, Vucevic threw back to his Orlando days. He proved he can still be a dominant offensive threat, and if the Bulls are going to roster a ton of raw, toolsy, energy guys, it’s important to have an established presence who can act as a reliable scoring hub. The Bulls current problem with pace is that their top-three players rarely push tempo. But having one slow-it-down option would open up some new doors without closing all of the old ones.

So even if Vucevic does command the ball more than he should, it would take a lot of the burden off the younger players the Bulls are trying to develop. They can learn to create without being overtasked and overwhelmed.

My perspective on the matter is clear: the Bulls need a full-blown rebuild. We’ve seen what happens when teams wait too long to sell on their assets, while teams like the Oklahoma Ciry Thunder (9 incoming firsts), Utah Jazz (8 incoming firsts) and San Antonio Spurs (7 incoming firsts) sold high and will have a surplus of future draft concessions the Bulls — and the rest of the league — will struggle to replicate.

Draft picks are like three-pointers. If your volume is low, you better make a high percentage. But the more you take, the better chance of scoring in volume, even if the percentage dips.

So if the Bulls can begin to accumulate assets — ideally three future-firsts and two interesting prospects in exchange for the combination of Caruso, LaVine and DeRozan — it will set them up well for the future.

Still, that plan requires landing a high pick in the 2024 draft, acquiring a bevy of future picks and a finding some interesting prospects on the margins. Those are critical boxes to check. But if done well, it will be the formula for a more exciting and fruitful rebuild.

Maybe things aren’t as bleak as some dumb idiots online have suggested.

This was a full-throttle, full-team effort. A game in which the team actually played with a sense of urgency for 48 minutes rather than trying to flip the switch down 17 at the start of the fourth quarter.

Instead, they went on a 10-0 run to start the fourth quarter, Caruso hit a buzzer-beating three to send the game to overtime, and the Bulls pulled out a tremendous win without their two best players.

Refreshing.

Eight Bulls scored in double figures, led by Nikola Vucevic’s 29 points on 11-0f-21 shooting. Coby White had 23 points on 7-of-20. The team generated a season-high 32 assists and 14 steals. They shot 35 percent on a good volume of threes. They managed to win the free throw and offensive rebound battle while pushing in effective field goal and turnover percentage.

“I give our guys credit,” Billy Donovan said following the game.”We just kept we kept hanging in the game and just kept playing the next possession and there was some resiliency.”

As is true with most teams, the best players set the style. For the Bulls, that means DeRozan and LaVine’s methodic, mid-range oriented games become the default. And without them, the team had to assume a different identity.

Bulls rank last in the league in pace — an estimate of possessions per 48 minutes — averaging 95.5 possessions per game. Even after improving their offensive rebounding (a strategy designed to help them win the possession battle), the Bulls are generating roughly three fewer possessions per 48 minutes than last season. That tells you there has been a lot of dribbling, winding down of shot clocks and deliberate basketball being played.

Typically, the Bulls aspire to be a low turnover, high free throw attempt team to make up for their lack of three point shooting. Without their top talent, they need to add as much variance to the game as possible to give themselves a chance. If they get up a higher volume of threes, they have a chance to score more points, even at the expense of accuracy (and probably some turnovers).

Strategically, that makes sense. More threes, more possessions lead to more variance. In a game featuring fewer possessions, the value of each one grows. With their top talent in the lineup, the Bulls figure they can score efficiently each time down and force opponents to keep pace.

To add that variance, they needed to play fast. While that is usually not the case, it was against the Bucks on Thursday night, when their pace eclipsed the 100 marker for just the second time this season.

Pace only measures possessions, which paints the broad strokes, but doesn’t tell the whole story. The Bulls were zipping the ball around the court, attacking closeouts, moving quickly and intentionally into sets, and it resulted in some of the most enjoyable basketball we’ve seen from this group all year.

The question becomes, can they sustain this speed when DeRozan and LaVine return to the rotation or does their deliberate style hold them back?

“Nah that has nothing to do with it,” Vucevic said. “Those are our two best players. If we want to achieve anything big, we need them.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Caruso said when asked whether they can continue playing at this pace when LaVine and DeRozan return to the lineup. “I think we’ve shown it in spurts this year. I think sometimes you have that heightened sense of urgency when you’ve got two of your best players out.”

There is something to be said for this group having to solve their way to this win, and using pace and movement to do so. Whereas they can normally rely on DeRozan to bail them out of a failed progression of actions, they had to cut and dribble-handoff their way into points without that safety valve.

And though it was just one game, there is a sense of pride in the fact that they can do it themselves, without the help from the All-Star wings.

“[Playing faster] was something that that we had already been talking about as a solution for us as a team, before we even knew that those guys were out,” Patrick Williams claimed. “So that was that was already gonna be an emphasis of ours coming into this game. If those with those guys would have played, there would have been a lot of open shots for Zach, a lot of open shots for DeMar.”

“So, happy to get those guys back whenever they can and implement them into this offense that we’re trying to kind of starting to build,” he continued. “It’s only gonna make us that much better.”

The Chicago Bulls are selling neither.

At 5-14, the Bulls are off to their worst start since the 22-win Jim Boylen-led Bulls of 2019-20.

When things are this bad, everyone gets a piece of the blame.

The players haven’t been good enough. The coaching hasn’t been good enough. And that’s all problematic.

But it misses the point.

This disaster is owned and operated by Arturas Karnisovas, the architect of it all. Prior to Tuesday’s embarrassing 124-97 rout at the hands of the Boston Celtics, he reached the final stage of grief — acceptance.

“We see what everyone is seeing and are just as frustrated,’’ Karnisovas told traveling beat reporters. “We’re disappointed, but I’m not running from it. It’s my responsibility.’’

Of course it’s his responsibility, that’s the whole job description.

But the larger question has yet to be addressed: What will Karnisovas do about it?

According to reporting by KC Johnson, Billy Donovan and management are safe in their jobs, having recently been given contract extensions. Ownership won’t pay them to leave.

That means personnel will have to change.

This should not be unexpected. Everyone saw where things were heading a long time ago. So too could have Karnisovas. 

In fact, it was his responsibility to know that.

That he didn’t recognize it at the 2023 trade deadline or the most recent offseason leaves the team in a notably worse position with each passing day.

It’s not just his responsibility to fix this, it’s his decision-making that has gotten the franchise to this point. The Bulls have bad money on the books moving forward with no flexibility to make improvements. Their self-imposed hard cap, the dreaded luxury tax, is a nose hair away.

The Nikola Vucevic trade is the defining move of Karnisovas’ career with the Bulls and the one that is perhaps most responsible for the current calamity. The Magic are reaping the benefits of that deal as they climb the East standings while the Bulls continue to plummet.

After losing negotiations on Vucevic’s extension, the team is married to that contract for three more years. Karnisovas faces the same situation with DeMar DeRozan in the coming months.

Karnisovas came up short with his top-four draft pick, Patrick Williams, passing on multiple future stars. He found a rotation player in Ayo Dosunmu, but struck out on Dalen Terry and Marko Simonovic.

He traded future picks for the rights to outbid an empty marketplace and overpay DeRozan. He made no meaningful attempts to find solutions at the point guard position after Lonzo Ball was injured. Instead, he made hope his strategy while waiting on three knee surgeries to heal.

Karnisovas’ one free agency home run was Alex Caruso. But over the last two offseasons, trade deadlines, and buy out periods, his only additions were low-impact role players including Jevon Carter, Torrey Craig, Patrick Beverley, Goran Dragic, Andre Drummond and Tristan Thompson.

Handing Zach LaVine a max contract was a necessary move given his level of play and importance to the franchise. But now, with LaVine’s pending exit a matter of when, not if, Karnisovas will be charged with navigating the choppy waters of the trade market.

Whether or not the moves were justifiable at the time, the results matter. He’s lost almost every deal he has made. He not only doubled down, but tripled down on a broken product.

Karnisovas has been unwilling to make changes to a broken roster. Doing so allowed the Bulls to waste away for the last two seasons. In standing still, the Bulls have allowed the rest of the league to pass them by.

More importantly, as time has come and gone, those few remaining assets within the Bulls’ war chest have diminished in value, leaving the pending rebuild with little recourse to maximize itself.

With the green light from ownership to fix this mess by any means necessary, Karnisovas can tear it down to the studs and start from scratch.

The Bulls are in a holding pattern until the league opens up for trading business ahead of the February 8 trade deadline. Whatever comes next is his choice. More decisions he must be prepared to own.

Karnisovas wanted no part of a rebuild when he took over as Executive VP of Basketball Operations in Chicago. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t undertake one now. A lot of losing and disappointment has happened since then. And his team is left in a worse position with fewer options.

Frankly, whether or not he has the stomach to tear it down shouldn’t matter.

The time for tweaks and alterations was last year — moving forward without LaVine won’t result in winning.

This season is already lost. Now the future is on the line.

Karnisovas is not selling wins. It’s time for him to position himself to try selling hope.

If he truly sees what everyone else sees, he’ll see that a full scale rebuild is the only way forward.

The Bulls are now 5-13 on the year, having lost seven of their last eight games.

Here are my takeaways from the game:

1. Alex Caruso and Zach LaVine both popped up on the injury report — Caruso dealing with a left ankle sprain he sustained Friday against the Raptors and LaVine with foot soreness dating back to the game against Miami on November 20.

Caruso was held out while LaVine played and scored 20 points on 8-of-18 shooting with six rebounds and four assists.

2. The Bulls got off to an electric start, making eight of their first 10 three-point attempts, including three from each of Patrick Williams and Coby White.

They started 7-0. Nets timeout. 22-3. 30-9.

Building up a 21-point lead, the Bulls ultimately won the first quarter 36-19.

3. The Nets started making everything in the second quarter. After going just 5-of-14 on threes in the first quarter, the Nets shot an incredible 11-of-16 on threes in the second quarter.

The Bulls have made 11 or fewer threes in a game 10 times this year. Out of 17 games.

The Nets scored 44 points in the second quarter, the most points the Bulls have allowed in a quarter all year.

The Nets made 25 threes, the most ever in a game against the Bulls. They took 53 threes. They had only 16 two-point makes with eight coming at the rim. One of the weirdest shot charts ever, but for a team that has a lot of great 3-and-D players and no stars, that’s probably the best way to live.

4. Zone in the second quarter started throwing off the Bulls rhythm. They had a point of attack defender working to get over screens while the rest of the defense pinched into the gaps to take away the middle and the paint.

Much of the Bulls offense is predicated on drive and kick. Getting into the paint, drawing help and making the right read. Without those driving avenues, they needed to shoot over the top, and that just didn’t go well for them. Never does.

After hitting 8-of-10 to start the game, they proceeded to go 4-of-22 for the rest of the game.

5. The Bulls usually switch everything one through four, but not five. They want to keep Nikola Vucevic out of situations where he is switched onto a guard on the perimeter.

With the Nets employing a stretch five, the Bulls moved away from their base defense to try to quell the hot shooting.

For a stretch during the third quarter, Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie drew Vucevic on a switch almost every time down the court. After being called for an offensive foul on a replay challenge, Dinwiddie started passing out of the advantage situation and putting the Nets in bad situations.

6. As soon as the Bulls shots stopped falling and their lead turned into a deficit, DeRozan took charge to try to keep the Bulls alive. As professional a scorer as he is, DeRozan mid-range jumpers aren’t going to get the Bulls back into games.

He finished with 27 points on 11-of-22 shooting. But the fact that the Bulls went away from the things that worked in the first quarter to the things that have proven over the last three seasons not to work, is concerning. They are unable to overcome adversity, a problem they have faced since the inception of this team

7. Patrick Williams was one of the four Bulls scoring at least 20 points. He put up a season-high 20 points on 7-of-9 shooting, including 11 in the first quarter.

Williams numbers were boosted by the hot shooting. But he also had some nice drives.

His handles, though, are in serious need of work. He continues to mishandle the ball on rebounds, dribble it off his leg or get stripped on almost every drive.

8. Given that the Bulls lost the three-point battle by 39 points, they must win the four factors to keep themselves in games.

• The Nets won the effective field goal percentage 64.5 to 55.4
• The Bulls won the turnover percentage 12 to 12.1
• The Bulls win the offensive rebounding battle 29.5 to 20.9
• The Bulls won the free throw rate battle 20.5 to 13.3

Though it wasn’t enough to overcome the incredible three-point deficit, but it would have been a much bigger loss had they not kept themselves competitive in those four categories.

9. The Bulls now fall to 5-13 on the season.

Through 18 games, this is the Bulls worst start to a season since Fred Hoiberg was coach in 2018-19 Even the 22-win 2019-20 Bulls coached by Jim Boylen started better (6-12)

Their next nine games are at Boston, home vs. Bucks and Pelicans, at Milwaukee, vs. Nuggets, at Miami, at Miami, at 76ers, vs. Lakers.

Yikes.

Up Next: The Bulls finish out their road trip, and their In-Season Tournament games, on Tuesday against the number one team in the East, the Boston Celtics

Here’s 11 takeaways from the team’s latest loss …

1. After missing the last game with right foot soreness, Zach LaVine was back on the injury report prior to the game. Coby White (left ankle) was also listed as questionable. Both were game-time decisions, but they ultimately made the start. Would have been real ugly without them.

2. Alex Caruso left the game at the 7:35 mark in the third quarter and did not return. Billy Donovan said he wasn’t sure whether or not Caruso was able to come back into the game, so he played it safe.

Caruso played just 18 minutes and scored seven points on 2-of-3 shooting.

3. There were a handful of head scratching plays in that game, but this one was one of the worst.

Here are the questions I have about this play:

• First of all, the Bulls have LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Coby White on the floor, why is Caruso running pick-and-rolls?
• It was a nice pass to the corner, why is Nikola Vucevic rolling into the driving lanes and planting his flag on the block? He’s completely clogged up the paint and prevented LaVine’s ability to attack the closeout
• LaVine enters to Vucevic, fine. Why are the floor spacers around him not opening up any kick out windows, cutting back door or giving Vucevic outlets for spot up threes?
• Jakob Poeltl is not a mismatch. Why is a baseline 16-foot, turnaround jumper the best they can do?

4. Coby White continued his hot shooting streak, making 4-of-7 threes. He was 15-of-30 in his last three games coming into Friday’s tilt with the Raptors. He was the reason the Bulls were in the game in the first quarter.

He finished with 14 points, three rebounds and three assists.

5. Zach LaVine was one of the only good things about the Bulls in this game. After taking 19 field goals in his previous two games combined, LaVine went 16-of-23 from the field en route to 36 points.

LaVine went hero mode, taking some incredibly high degree of difficulty shots. At times, he is too talented for his own good. LaVine likes to operate with his feet set. He likes to survey the floor and understand where he is in relation to the defenders.

This can cause him to eliminate the advantage the Bulls have worked to create, leaving themselves with a harder, more contested shot, or having to reset the offense from scratch.

Observe the difference between the first two plays in the following clip against the third. The first two were open looks that turned into contested shots. The third was a wide open shot coming off a screen. Makes a world of difference.

6. Julian Phillips, who had 29 points and 11 rebounds for the Windy City Bulls on Wednesday night, got minutes in the third quarter when the Bulls went down 17.

The game moves extremely fast for a irregular contributor and second round rookie like Phillips, but he had a nice driving layup attacking a closeout, narrowly missed a corner three and had some good defensive stands during his four minute stint.

7. At one point in the fourth quarter, Mark Schanowski, filling for Adam Amin on the NBC Broadcast, said “Patrick Williams, with his first rebound.”

That is all.

8. To be fair, Williams did come alive in the fourth quarter. He had a nice dunk in transition and a few garbage time threes. Also finished with five rebounds.

9. The Bulls attempted only 16 shots at the rim compared to the Raptors 27. The Bulls shot 56 percent at the rim, the Raptors shot 81.5 percent.

The Raptors are a long, active, scrambling team. They’re all over the place trying to run shooters off the line, rotate to cut off drives and repeat. When in doubt, they have Jakob Poeltl at the rim to block and deter shots.

Since the Bulls couldn’t get to the rim and still lost the free throw and three-point battle, it’s a surprise they kept the game as close as they did.

10. If the Bulls want to win games as a low volume three-point team, they have to win the Four Factors game. That means shooting efficiency, turnovers, offensive rebounding and free throws. The Bulls only won one of the four.

• The Raptors beat the Bulls in the effective field goal percentage battle 60.8 to 58.5.
• The Raptors beat the Bulls in the free throw battle 20-of-27 to 12-of-19
• The Raptors beat the Bulls in the offensive rebounding battle 13-10
• The Bulls beat the Raptors in the turnover battle 12-14

Spoiler: the Raptors also beat the Bulls in the three-point battle 13-of-39 to 12-of-27.

12. With their loss, the Bulls are officially eliminated from the NBA’s inaugural In-Season Tournament.

Raptors Pascal Siakam could have dribbled out the clock at the end of the game, but made a three to extend the lead. DeRozan didn’t like it and earned himself a second technical and was thrown out of the game.

For In-Season Tournament play, point differential can be a tie-breaker, so teams have been “running up the score” at times. Little did Siakam know, the Raptors had also been eliminated by that point, so it didn’t matter.

Up next: The Bulls road trip continues on Sunday night at the Barclays Center against the Brooklyn Nets

Here are my takeaways from Wednesday’s game.

1. Zach LaVine missed the game with right foot soreness. While that would typically not be headline worthy, considering all the drama surrounding him, it of course sparks some conspiracy theories.

Did the Bulls hold him out because of his poor performance in recent games? Are they trying to prevent serious injury to preserve his trade value?

Probably not. Here’s what Billy Donovan had to say about the late scratch after the game.

2. The slow starts continue. Chicago started 0-of-6 from the field, scoring their first bucket on an offensive rebound put back by Nikola Vucevic at 9:51.

The Bulls trailed by 12 at the end of the first quarter and by as many as 18. They scored 40 points in the first half, marking the fourth game out of their last five in which they have scored 40 or fewer.

3. DeMar DeRozan (25 points on 6-of-17 shooting) was a big part of the Bulls slow start. He didn’t score his first field goal until 1:17 in the 2nd quarter.

The Thunder aggressively trapped DeRozan, unbothered by the Bulls three point shooters. It worked at times, but the Bulls did mount a comeback attempt in the third quarter largely due to DeRozan forcing the issue. The Bulls got him the ball on the left wing, spacing the floor and letting him get to work.

DeRozan, of course, went superhuman in the second half, bringing the Bulls back to life and giving them a real chance to win late.

• First half: Four points on 1-of-8 shooting, 2-of-2 free throws in the first half
• Third quarter: 12 points on 2-of-5 shooting, 8-of-8 free throws in the third quarter
• Fourth quarter: 9 points on 3-of-4 shooting, 3-of-3 free throws

DeRozan crossed the 22,000 points mark in the third quarter, making him one of only 36 players in the history of the game to reach those heights.

More on DeRozan’s role in the late game offense below.

4. Coby White (23 points on 8-of-17 shooting) was the only reason the Bulls were remotely close in the first half. White made six threes in the first half

White shot just 29.6 percent on threes during his first 13 games, but has finally caught fire during his last three. After going 8-for-18 (44.4 percent) during the two games against Miami, before making 7-of-12 on Wednesday night.

5. The Bulls have been a non-threat shooting the basketball for the last few years, but they are becoming slightly more prolific as a three-point shooting team, they just haven’t been making their shots.

The Bulls made 17 threes on 44 attempts, their second highest number in both categories.

6. Starting in place of LaVine, Patrick Williams was invisible in the first half, but came alive after a monster dunk in the third quarter. He finished with 10 points, 7 rebounds on 3-of-9 shooting.

The turnovers continue to be a big problem for Williams, whose ball handling, footwork and touch all need a ton of work. It feels like every time he puts the ball on the floor, he’s going to dribble it off his foot. Mark K is all over the Pat can’t dribble beat.

7. The Bulls went back to their go-to play for late game offense. DeRozan comes off of a stagger screen from the weak side block to an empty strong side wing. He then calls for a screen, bringing one of the opponent’s worst defenders up to draw a switch.

Then, he goes to work.

The Bulls have spammed this action in late game scenarios all year and the Thunder were prepared. They sent two to DeRozan and forced him to give the ball up. The Bulls scored only five points in the final three minutes of the game.

8. Four Factors

The Bulls continue their struggles shooting the ball — their 49.4 effective field goal percentage is in line with their season numbers. The biggest difference in the game was the free throws — the Thunder shooting 31-of-38 to the Bulls 17-of-17.

Even though the Bulls won the three-point battle by 18 total points, between the poor shooting from the field, and the free throws, the Bulls couldn’t overcome.

Up next: Bulls road trip continues with a In-Season Tournament game in Toronto on Friday

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The season on the whole is still in its infancy — 15 games is just under 20 percent of the way through. But whether or not teams are ready, their identities are starting to crystalize.

As for the Chicago Bulls, their identity is still a work in progress. Billy Donovan has mentioned multiple times that teams continue to improve over the course of the season and that the new elements he wanted to implement into the offense will take time. But the Bulls are 5-10 and 12th place in the East. They’re closer to a stop-four lottery spot than the Play-In Tournament. And with all the noise and drama, what the team is actually doing on the court has been lost in frustration.

But the Zach LaVine trade drama will likely not be resolved until January 15 or even the February 8 NBA Trade Deadline. There’s a lot of basketball to be played between now and then, so it’s going to be interesting to see how the Bulls continue to evolve going forward.

So far, the Bulls are ranked 26th in the NBA in offensive rating, off to a worse start than last season. Why are things manifesting the way they are through 15 games?

This is going to be a high level overview of the Bulls offense that details how the Bulls are getting their offense and whether it’s as bad, better, or worse than it should be.

Before we get there, let’s take a look at what the team is doing to generate shots and whether it’s leading to them taking shots from more premium real estate.

Shot generation

How are the Bulls creating their shots?

Dating back to training camp, head coach Billy Donovan has advocated for a more diverse shot profile, and the way he planned on getting there was getting more paint touches.

An active focus on the paint generates more shots at the rim, which will draw more fouls and earn trips to the free throw line. Furthermore, playing at the rim allows for more offensive rebounding opportunities — one of their biggest weaknesses last season — and perhaps most importantly, creates more open looks from behind the arc.

The Bulls, to their credit, have gotten much better at getting into the paint — one of Billy Donovan’s top stated priorities heading into the season. Up from 28th last season with only 17.8 paint touches per game, they are now getting paint touches 20.4 times per game, 21st in the league.

The Bulls are also risen to 12th in drives per game this season, up from 25th last season. So in that sense, they are doing the things they need to in order to generate better offense. But interestingly, there aren’t any real indicators from a play type perspective that put this into context.

The Bulls are running just as much pick-and-roll as last year. Their isolations have gone up marginally. They’re cutting less, running slightly more handoffs, but for the most part, none of their play types have changed all that much year over year.

Transition is the one area they wanted to improve and haven’t. They’re 29th in pace and 28th in frequency of offense coming in transition.

It was always going to be difficult to overhaul an offense without changing the personnel. So if the team is largely unchanged, and the rest of the league is improving around them, the output will be worse.

Shot profile

Where on the court are the Bulls taking their shots?

Shooting percentages are volatile game-to-game, but how the Bulls generate their shots, and where on the floor they are taking them, is something which they have control.

Here is a comparison of the shot profile from 2023-24 (top row) and 2022-23 (bottom row). The percent figure is the frequency of total offense from each shot zone, while the figure in the colored tile is the rank 1-30. For example, the Bulls are 11th in the league, with 34 percent their total shots that come at the rim.

By driving more rather than settling for mid-range jumpers, the Bulls have been able to boost their overall three-point volume from 29th last season to 20th so far this season. A pretty incredible feat given the lack of roster change.

The Bulls are way down in mid-range attempt, going from top-five last season to 15th so far in 2023-24. They’ve redistributed those to threes, where they have shown small improvements from the corner, but a significant one on above the break threes.

However, the frequency of attempts within the two most important and efficient areas of the court — at rim and corner threes — are roughly the same. While the rank appears more promising, the percentages have changed by less than half of a percent. This suggests the Bulls haven’t evolved, but the rest of the league is taking more mid-range attempts.

The above is a step forward, to be sure, but not something the Bulls will really feel as it relates to their offensive production on a game-to-game basis.

Offensive production

Is the offense better, worse, or as good as it should be?

By leaning into continuity, the Bulls argued they adjust and improve their offense. So far, that has yet to materialize.

Here is a comparison of the offensive four factors — Pts/Poss or offensive rating, effective field goal percentage, turnover percentage, offensive rebounding percentage and free throw rate — from the 2023-24 season (top row) and 2022-23 season (bottom row).

With a 109.5 offensive rating this season, the Bulls are worse, both by rank (-2 spots) and efficiency (-3.5 points per 100 possessions) than last season.

Still, there are a few positives.

The Bulls have done a tremendous job all season — and really since DeMar DeRozan arrived in town — at taking care of the basketball. No one is better so far this year. They have also followed through on their commitment to offensive rebounding, improving from 28th last season to 20th this season.

Both of those areas have helped give the Bulls a chance to win the possession battle on a nightly basis. If they generate more possessions and shot attempts than their opponent, any in-built deficits from the three-point line can be negated.

Despite the improvement in getting inside and attempting shots at the rim, the Bulls have not been able to draw fouls at the same rate they did last season. Slippage there has really hurt, as free throws, especially for mid-to-high 80s shooters like LaVine and DeRozan, are the most efficient source of offense the Bulls can find.

But perhaps the most staggering statistic is the Bulls effective field goal percentage (eFG%)— field goal percentage adjusted for the additional point on three-pointers. Where the Bulls were slightly above league average last year, they have fallen all the way to 29th, 4.4 percent lower than last year.

Cleaning the Glass allows you to adjust a team’s eFG% to league average, and based on where the Bulls are taking their shots, they’d be 54.8 eFG%, much closer to their marker from last season.

So if the Bulls are attempting to alter their game, and slowly reconfiguring the way they generate shots, but simply aren’t making them, you have to think the offense would improve greatly if the ball started going in.

Based on their current stats, the Bulls are projected to win 29 games by Cleaning the Glass and 32 by ESPN. Their -4.8 point differential translates to roughly 28 wins. Their pythagorean win percentage is 37 percent which equates to 30 wins over a full season.

However you slice it, the Bulls offense has been bad. And while they’re trying to do some of the right things, the output hasn’t been to the level required.

Unfortunately, they weren’t able to secure the set. Falling to the Heat 118-100, the Bulls weren’t able to dig themselves out of another hole early, and the Heat’s game plan thwarted any comeback attempt the Bulls had in them.

Here are my takeaways from the game.

Another day, another slow start

Again, the Bulls got themselves in a 10-point hole just 2.5 minutes into the game. They were 1-of-2 from the field with two turnovers on their first four possessions. Meanwhile, the Heat were 5-of-5 with a pair of Duncan Robinson threes forcing Billy Donovan to call a timeout.

Meanwhile, the Bulls couldn’t really get anything going for themselves even after they began chipping away at the Miami lead.

LaVine took just four shots in the first half, after taking three in the first half of Saturday’s tilt with Miami.

He barely looked at the basket, quickly moving off the ball, force feeding Nikola Vucevic in the post or dribbling out the clock to end the first half.

“I’m just trying to read the play that’s in front of me,” LaVine said after the game. “Each play, each game is different. Obviously, we want to be out there and score the ball and put the ball in the basket. But every play and every game is different.”

“There’s really never, ever a bad shot when he shoots the basketball,” said Billy Donovan.

LaVine finished with 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting. He had five assists to one turnover, but only had one free throw attempt — a technical foul shot.

DeRozan wasn’t much help either. He scored 15 on 6-of-10 with only one free throw attempt.

The Heat were zoning up the Bulls quite a bit, removing driving lanes and forcing the Bulls to either shoot over the zone or play through the middle. The Bulls shot 11-of-37 for 29.7 percent on threes and 15-0f-16 from the line, but lost the attempts battle by four.

Good White Hunting

The Heat were relentlessly picking on Coby White throughout the game. Whoever White was guarding, the Heat would send up to screen for the ball handler, mostly Jimmy Butler, where he would then escort White to the post.

In the third quarter, they attacked him five straight possessions, and many more throughout the night.

“He’s 6’7 and strong,” White said. “Out of the people on the court, I’m probably the smallest one out there. My teammates helped me out a lot and I tried to fight. Obviously I wasn’t happy about having to double and putting us in rotation. But he’s a good player. We defend with five.”

To his credit, White fought extremely hard on those plays, but he just gives up too much size.

When asked whether the Bulls give up those switches a little too easily, he replied,”Small-small red. Every time. You get hit, red. That’s our principles and that’s what we play to.”

Essentially, that means if you get hit on a screen, you’re switching every time one-through-four. These post ups required the Bulls to send help, opening up kick out passes to spot up shooters. The Bulls are willing to live and die with their rotations and scrambling out to shooters, but the Heat’s quick ball movement got the best of them tonight.

Shooting 17-of-35 for 48.6 percent, getting outscored by 18 from beyond the arc was the difference in this one.

Other notes

— White led the team in scoring with 20 points on 7-of-11 shooting, 4-of-8 on threes, six rebounds, three assists, a steal and a block. Despite being targeted on defense, it was his best game of the year offensively.

— Butler didn’t play the entire fourth quarter, but still managed to score 16 points on 4-of-11 shooting with nine free throw attempts. He had a skyhook in the first half and had some fun with that. He also got a foul call on a touch foul against Zach LaVine which drew some comedic moments later in the game, when Butler jokingly re-enacted the situation with DeRozan during a free throw break.

— The Bulls now fall to 5-10 on the season. ESPN’s BPI projection has them finishing 32.5 wins, the 25th record in the league. Buckle up.

Up Next: The Bulls depart for a four-game road trip starting Wednesday in Oklahoma City for a revenge match with the Thunder.

But don’t let that lull you into a false sense of security.

“I’m with you. I’m with you,” Billy Donovan said pre-game, when asked about the team’s slow starts.

We’re all watching the same thing.

“What I see is a feeling out process of the game. However you want to say that. And either you’re going to come out of the ring like Mike Tyson or you’re going to come out bobbing and weaving. And we’ve got to come out that way. We have to come out that way,” Donovan said, of course referring to the former.

So how did they start?

9-1 Heat at the 9:15 mark. Bulls timeout.

20-1 at the 5:48 mark. Bulls timeout.

The Miami Heat opened the game on a 22-1 run over the first 7:12 of the game. The Bulls scored their first field goal at 4:48 in the first quarter.

This has been a problem all season long. The Bulls lay out the runway for their opponent to go up 15 or more, only to start digging themselves out of their hole when the subs come in.

“It’s almost like the game starts, we see how the game’s going,” Donovan explained. “Whatever word; urgency, desperation, whatever it may be. But all of a sudden, we shift. We’ve got to be able to do that.”

Their first quarter net rating reflects it — they’re -16.3 is bottom three in the league.

“I don’t know what the answer is quite honestly,” Donovan said. “It’s something we do talk about and try to show, about like here’s the contrast. Here’s where we do it good, here’s where we don’t…That’s the challenge.”

The Bulls were able to come back, in large part because they won the math battle. Though they attempted four fewer free throws, the Bulls shot a season high 45 threes, and made 35.6 percent of them. They won the offensive rebounding battle 10-5. They won the turnover battle 12-15 and shot much more efficiently than the Heat.

But it all misses the point.

Many fans have pointed the finger at Donovan. He deserves a piece. But he’s far from the root of all problems. The Bulls are quietly a top-seven defense in their last seven games, holding opponents to fewer points than their top-five defense did last year. Donovan has adjusted lineups — swapping Torrey Craig in for Patrick Williams after five games and Alex Caruso for Craig after seven more. He’s put in new sets, through which the Bulls players sleepwalk. He’s somehow gotten the Bulls into the top-20 in corner three-point attempt rate.

He’s trying everything. Grasping at straws. No matter what he does with this roster, it just hasn’t been good, let alone good enough.

It’s not helped by the fact that the players appear to be done playing with one another.

After the win, as in, not after a loss, LaVine brushed a Bulls staff member off en route to the locker room while the rest of the team celebrated on the court. He called it a “miscommunication for us and our PR team. We’re all fine.”

“I’m not ticked at all,” LaVine said. “I’m happy we got a win. We play these guys in a couple days. You don’t want to sit around and celebrate. I’d rather celebrate in locker room.”

It’s strange because LaVine was fantastic in this game. Despite scoring only 13 points, he had a pair of huge threes to bring the game within reach in the fourth quarter. He had eight rebounds and six assists. Three steals, a block and only one turnover. He defended well and forced Jimmy Butler into a clutch miss. If anything, he showed the roundedness of his game that Bulls fans have been yearning for since he arrived.

To be fair, everything he does will now be heavily scrutinized good or bad. He is typically accommodating with the media. He’s been a true professional through his Bulls tenure and this certainly wasn’t a violent outburst or anything of the sort.

But after the trade smoke from earlier this week and the quality of play from the team ever since, the post-game behavior is a bad look. One that is, unfortunately, symbolic of the state of the organization.

Wins and losses are irrelevant. Wins only delay the inevitable and worsen the Bulls draft position. Losses compound on the emotional wellbeing of the team and fanbase. Whatever happens, the Bulls are in a lose-lose.

The slow starts are a symptom of the bigger picture. That’s last year’s problem. Saturday’s win might be a nice reprieve, but the root cause persists.

As much as the players and coaches can deny it, the emotional toll of an accumulation of losses is hanging over this team. 5-9 on the season. 12th place in the Eastern Conference.

The Bulls have let this situation get the best of them. LaVine now has three feet out the door.

This is their reality.

After their late surge, the Bulls had a chance to tie or take the lead, down two with 20.6 seconds left. Taking the ball out from the sideline, the Bulls had the chance to go to one of their pet late game actions: the Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan pick-and-pop.

Ultimately, the ball ended up in Nikola Vucevic’s hands for a corner three, which he missed, inspiring some consternation around Billy Donovan’s play calling.

But this is one of the most effective actions the Bulls have at their disposal and all parties involved made the right reads and executed it perfectly. Sometimes, the ball just doesn’t go in.

“It had a couple options on it,” Donovan said. “DeMar was on the top and Zach sprinted into a screen. Tried to set it or slip out of it. DeMar drove downhill and they pulled away off the corner and I feel like we got Vooch a really good shot.”

“DeMar actually turned the corner, I felt like he was gonna get to the rim from my angle, but when they pulled across I think he made a great pass and got a corner three,” he continued.

“Great play,” LaVine said after the game. “Me in DeMar in action. Able to get him down, I slipped out. They went with me and DeMar was able to get downhill and made a great pass. We’ll take that shot every day of the week with Vooch taking an uncontested three. I think we got the best shot at at that time, couldn’t ask for more.”

One of the pros with having a shooting center is that you can take the opposing rim protector out of the paint. With Jonathan Isaac guarding Vucevic in the corner, he is faced with the decision to try to help cut off the drive or leave his man, a 47 percent corner three-point shooter last season, wide open. Can’t do both at the same time.

Isaac chose to cut off the drive, and he made the right gamble. Make or miss league. That doesn’t mean it was the wrong shot, the wrong decision, the wrong play or the wrong execution.

Donovan spoke recently with Nekias Duncan and Steve Jones about this very action, and went into great detail about how dangerous it can be. I have also advocated that the Bulls should look to put LaVine and DeRozan in the same actions as well, as they are typically able to get a good look by forcing opponents to mess up.

The Bulls had another chance, after a pair of Magic free throws, to keep the game alive on another sideline out play.

In this play, the ball is entered across the court to DeRozan on the weak side block. LaVine sprints up to go get a handoff, ideally drawing a switch or a double on the screen, which would have opened up a look at a clean three.

“I didn’t feel like we executed that quite correctly,” said Donovan.

“Tried to get DeMar the ball, and then I came across trying to get a three off,” LaVine explained. “At that point, you’re just trying to get a shot off. He’s a good defender, got a hand on it, not a lot you can do about it.”

Up Next: Another home-home set against the streaking Miami Heat, who have won seven-straight

To be fair, it’s hard to win games when you shoot less than 40 percent from the field.

Credit the Chicago Bulls for pulling themselves out of yet another 20-point deficit (ok fine, it was only 19). Despite starting the game on one of the more repulsive shooting streaks you’ll ever see, the Bulls clawed their way back to tie the game with two massive three-pointers by Zach LaVine, before ultimately losing 96-94 at the hands of a Paolo Banchero game-winning shot.

When Thursday’s last two-minute report comes out, we may see an ‘incorrect no-call’ at the three-second mark, as the refs missed what appears to be a pretty clear traveling violation.

What they may also identify, is Nikola Vucevic signaling for a timeout when the Bulls had no timeouts remaining. Maybe it all comes out in the wash.

“He made a tough shot,” said Alex Caruso after the game. “The ball bounced like four times on the rim and went in. I think that, without saying too much, we’ll be looking at a two-minute report and see what happened with foot movement down there for Paolo. But overall, I tried to make it tough on him. He made a tough shot.”

“I think the biggest thing is probably don’t put ourselves in a position to leave it to chance when it was played again,” he said.

There’s the real key.

There were misses and miscues on the final possessions. Caruso missed an open corner three on a beautiful find from LaVine with 32 seconds remaining. Vucevic could have provided better support and gotten a hand up to contest Banchero. Patrick Williams didn’t even get a shot up with no timeouts and 1.5 seconds left following Banchero’s shot.

It’s hard to be perfect in late-game scenarios. The margin for error is already too thin. Better to not have to scratch and claw yourself back into a very winnable game after putting up a paltry 67.3 first half offensive rating.

With no DeMar DeRozan in the lineup for personal reasons, the Bulls offense was incredibly stagnant. Again, they could not make a layup. They were 9-0f-33 from deep, for 27 percent. They lost the free throw attempts battle 30-22 and had a season-worst 25 turnovers.

“The ball just wasn’t going in the hoop,” LaVine said. “I’ve got to do a better job of making layups and making wide open dunks. You guys saw me smile a couple of times, at a certain point I was just missing everything.”

It’s a make or miss league, but the Bulls need to do a better job controlling the things they can control. Defending in transition. Turnovers. Second chance opportunities. If they can do a better job there, they’ll be able to survive cold spells.

None of that is made easy without DeRozan. In his absence, Williams drew the start at small forward and much of what he did was not pretty. Though he showed some assertiveness with the ball, drawing six free throw attempts, he had some wild finished, was blocked several times and ultimately shot just 2-of-7 for a total of nine points.

Seven of his points and all of his free throw attempts came in the first half. He had another disappearing act on that end in the second half.

Fortunately, his defense was solid throughout. He had two blocks and a steal and a few defining possessions against Banchero. He attacked the glass, grabbing a season-high 9 rebounds. He closed both halves with the starters and it was, at the very least, nice to see him looking for his own shot.

Nothing overly impressive, but a good stepping stone.

LaVine said that trade rumors would not affect his play prior to the game, followed that sentiment after the game, despite a pretty lousy performance, at least through three quarters. LaVine was 2-of-11 from the field with eight points and three turnovers after the third period and did not look engaged or excited about being out there.

When asked after the game if those trade rumors impacted his play, he said it’s nothing new:

“I’ve had this news for three years. It’s nothing new to me. It’s a regular Wednesday.”

He picked things up in the fourth quarter, shooting 4-of-5 for 11 points, including those two triples that tied the game. His statline looks a lot better than his production for the first 42 minutes.

The Bulls continue to get off to slow starts, play without a sense of urgency and the losses are piling up. The Bulls are now 4-8 to start the year, currently sitting at 12th in the Eastern Conference standings, already 1.5 games out of the 10th seed.

“I sound like a broken record, but it’s just about consistency,” Caruso said. “This team has pieces to be a good team, has pieces to win games. We’ve just got to do it on a more consistent basis.”

We’re going on year three of this and it’s still the same question. Still no answers.

Up Next: The Bulls second In-Season Tournament game on Friday night against the Orlando Magic (again)

But in spite the trade report with regards to Zach LaVine, Billy Donovan doesn’t think things are at that level.

“I think you just try to come in every single day and you go to work,” Donovan said pre-game. “He’s got a job to do, just like I do, and the rest of the team does, everybody else and you’ve got to put your best foot forward.”

The Bulls still have a job to do, and it’s Donovan’s priority to make sure things stay on track, even if roster turnover is imminent.

“What you try to do is make sure that everybody’s been playing in a way that is going to give us the best opportunity to be successful,” Donovan said pre-game. “I think he’s done that up to this point, I haven’t seen anything other than that. He’s always been coachable. He’s been a guy that you can go to and talk to.”

Despite reports that LaVine has not forgotten last year’s benching against the Orlando Magic in a 1-of-14 shooting game, none of this is to say that the coach and star player’s relationship is broken beyond repair. Donovan said he visited LaVine multiple times this past summer in Los Angeles and that each party has put in the work to their relationship.

“I spent quite a bit of time with Zach this summer, and went out two different times to LA and visited with him,” he said. “He’s great. He’s always been very welcoming when I’ve come out there. We’ve always had really, really good conversations. He’s always responsive to text messages and phone calls and things like that. So I’ve not seen anything where it’s like, okay, this guy has really pushed himself all the way over here and he’s just totally disconnected from everybody. I have not seen that at all.”

Donovan said LaVine did not come to him and ask for a trade. So until then, it’s one foot in front of the other. Both parties will continue to have to coexist, problem solve and confront issues as they arise. It’s what’s best for the team, and LaVine as his play and attitude will now surely be under the keen eye of potential suitors.

“Arturas and I talk all the time,” Donovan said. “When stuff like that comes up that’s like really, really, really important is something that’s potentially going to happen, he’s always been great about getting my opinion on it. Everything else for us has been for going forward, it’s been like what we can do to help the team.”

Any potential trade could take months to resolve. The Bulls could be in for an rough stretch here if they succumb to the awkwardness rather than showing up for work every day.

So for now, the path forward is trying to win ball games. Based on Donovan and LaVine’s response to questioning following the trade news, it does not seem that LaVine will coast through his last weeks on the job after putting in his two weeks notice.

With two games against the Magic on the schedule, we’ll have a good chance to see whether the Bulls are seriously able to take a step forward despite the drama.

But since Tuesday’s report that both the Bulls and LaVine have become open to a trade, his tune has changed.

LaVine did not deny that the “agreement between both parties” is coming from his camp during his first media availability session.

“That’s why I have representatives like Rich Paul,” LaVine said on Wednesday. “If he speaks on my behalf, that’s my agent. That’s who I obviously have my camp with. They talk to Arturas and them. My job is to go out here and play. Simple as that.”

We all know the Bulls have shopped LaVine around without success dating back to last year’s trade deadline. If both parties are now in agreement and the Bulls side has already been seeking out trade partners, that means this must be coming from his camp.

LaVine declined to comment on whether there was a list of teams he would like to be sent to, and instead suggested he would discuss that topic if and when that becomes news.

“If we need to talk about that at a time, you know … right now is not that time to really talk about that,” he said. “We play the Orlando Magic tonight, try and get a win. If something comes obviously out later on that will be the time I talk about it.’’

Maybe it’s a surprise that this has been put into the ether only 11 games into the season. Maybe it’s surprising that it took seven years of losing basketball to get to this point. Whether it’s the 4-7 record to start the year or one Playoff appearance in his tenure with the Bulls, the frustration with losing has finally boiled over.

And that’s why we are where we are.

“If you’re in a winning situation, a lot of rumors and trade things don’t come up,” LaVine said.

Perhaps this situation is still salvageable. If the Bulls’ shooting efficiency goes from the bottom three where it has been to middle-of-the-pack as it was the year prior, maybe the wins start piling up.

But maybe the situation has gotten to this point because this isn’t just a one-year issue.

“It’s an upsetting thing when we’ve been trying to do the right thing for the last three or four years. It seems like we’re in the same place,” he continued.

Still, don’t expect this situation to resolve itself any time in the immediate future. Most free agents who signed with teams over the summer won’t be eligible to be traded for another month. For those who re-signed with their own teams using bird rights, and received a pay increase of over 20 percent, they won’t be trade eligible until January 15.

For now, the Bulls have to continue to go out there and play and LaVine does not believe the rumors/request will bleed into his or the team’s performance. He will continue to show up to work every day and play to the best of his ability.

“If I don’t have any beliefs, there’s no reason for me to go out there and play,” he said. “As long as I put that Chicago Bulls jersey on, I’m going out there to win and play my heart out.”

A typical line from LaVine. But it hits a bit different knowing a trade is on the way.

It certainly feels like the end is near.

“My time has been great,” LaVine said. “I don’t take anything for granted. My time here has been nothing but wonderful. I’ve grown up here. I’ve raised a family here. Had some great memories. Hopefully, people understand that, how much I care about Chicago.”

The Bulls should be viewing this as an opportunity to right the ship and set course for a better future.

For now, we’ll have to wait and see what becomes available before the Bulls can pick a direction.

According to Tuesday’s report, there is an “increased openness” from both the Chicago Bulls and Zach LaVine about “exploring a trade.”

LaVine has been through a lot in his seven years with the Bulls. He came to Chicago in the Jimmy Butler trade while recovering from an ACL injury. He turned himself into a two-time All-Star despite facing losing seasons in all but the 2021-22 campaign. He has been a hard worker, a true professional who has been approachable and open with the media.

But it’s time.

After a predictable 4-7 start to the season, it’s abundantly clear this iteration of Bulls basketball is no longer viable. LaVine deserves a chance to play for a winning team and permanently put to rest the ’empty calories’ narrative. The Bulls can finally move on from the team destined for mediocrity and try to build a better future for themselves.

It’s a win-win.

As long as the Bulls do the right thing.

Still, we may have a few weeks to wait before anything materializes. It’s early in the season and teams are still in the process of finding themselves.

Players signed this summer aren’t trade-eligible until December 15 — or January 15 in some cases. Packages from most teams won’t fully crystallize until closer to the deadline, and the Bulls should not rush to get this done if it comes at the expense of evaluating all options.

Potential trade destinations for Zach LaVine?

There will be up-and-coming teams, like the Indiana Pacers, Orlando Magic, Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets who are perhaps ahead of schedule and want to strike while they can. Those with cap space who aren’t free agent destinations should be salivating at the chance to trade for a locked-in All-Star player to add to their young cores.

Teams that have gotten off to disappointing starts, like the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks and Sacramento Kings should be ready to strike if given the opportunity.

Successful teams that want to distance themselves from the pack, like the Philadelphia 76ers, Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks should still have enough in the way of picks and young players to get a deal done if they want.

The biggest mistake the Bulls can make with a potential LaVine deal is thinking short term. Looking for win-now veteran pieces to supplement DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic would be a disaster. Not only would they be worse off for it in the present, it would set them back another decade in the team-building process and reinforce the theory that a push for the eighth seed is more important than a sustainable future.

There are no guarantees with draft picks and potential. But the Bulls can’t afford to think so narrowly. According to the report, there is still internal interest in keeping DeRozan long term. It would be irresponsible not to trade a 34-year-old, free agent to be, now rather than let him walk for nothing or re-sign him again.

They can’t seriously think there is a real future there.

Who else could be traded by the Bulls?

Alex Caruso is perhaps the Bulls most valuable trade chip at the moment, with two playoff runs left on his contract at a bargain $9.4 million contract. The time to leverage his value into return is now.

If Nikola Vucevic has suitors, the Bulls need to be willing to move off of their newly signed center.

The priority for the rest of the season should be putting themselves in the best position to land a top-five pick in the draft and giving Patrick Williams as much runway as they can to determine whether he is worth keeping around past this year.

With four extremely expensive seasons left on his deal, LaVine will likely not fetch the same caliber of youth and draft capital as some of his All-Star predecessors, but the Bulls must do whatever they can to set themselves up for the future. Even if they can’t get what they think is fair value, even if they can’t get a potential star back for theirs, they must settle for the best they can get as long as the package is oriented around the upside.

As they did when they traded Butler, the Bulls had a chance to rebuild the right way and build a future for themselves. When they missed on some picks, they got impatient, skipped steps and sped up the process.

Look where it led them.

This rebuild should have started at the last trade deadline or last offseason at the very latest. But they still have a chance to right the ship. They can do so as long as they have learned from past mistakes.

Otherwise, we’re going to be staring down the barrel of another mediocre-at-best team for the next five or 10 years.

Again, the Bulls got off to a slow start, going scoreless on their first eight possessions. It was not until the second unit came in and kicked the energy into high gear that they started to close the gap.

Down nine at the start of the fourth quarter, the Bulls lack of energy bled into their execution on both ends. They had moments of success on both sides, but didn’t take the game seriously enough for the first 42 minutes to truly give themselves a chance.

The Bulls got no help from their stars, Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan, who halfway through the fourth quarter, combined for just 16 points on 3-of-23 shooting. LaVine got it going late, scoring eight points on three shots in the final 3:02, at which point the game was all but decided. He finished with 20 points on 5-of-19 shooting. DeRozan chipped in 11 points on 3-of-14 shooting.

Nikola Vucevic was the only one of the big three who provided efficient offense — he scored 26 points on 11-of-24 shooting, with 12 rebounds as he wrestled for post position and cleaned up a ton of missed layups.

Why can’t the Bulls finish at the rim?

Coming into the game, the Bulls were shooting 61.9 percent at the rim, 25th overall and 3.5 percent worse than average.

Against the Bucks, they took 26 shots at the rim and made only 13. Coby White, Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan each had a reel of lowlights. LaVine was 0-of-5 at the rim. DeRozan was 0-of-4. White was 2-of-5.

Perhaps it could be explained by a higher percentage of shooting fouls drawn at the rim? They’re down in free throw attempt rate from 20.3 last year (20th) to 17.9 percent this year (23rd).

Finishing last season right in the middle of the pack, one would expect the percentage to bump back up. But for now, it’s just a bit strange they are struggling so much in this area.

Turnover differential

The Bulls have been the best team in the league this year at taking care of the basketball. By far. They average only 11.4 turnovers per game.

The Bulls have been a top-ten turnover team since DeRozan’s arrival, but they’ve been even more judicious with the ball this year, and that’s been keeping them alive in many of these games amid slow starts or opponent droughts.

Meanwhile, they are forcing opponents into 17.2 turnovers per game, which is the third best rank in the league.

Part of this is the brilliance of the second unit. Even without Caruso, lineups with Ayo Dosunmu, Jevon Carter and Andre Drummond are forcing opponents into a 21.7 percent turnover rate, which ranks in the 100th percentile.

Considering the Bulls haven’t followed through on their commitment to closing the three-point gap nor juicing their offense with additional free throws, the turnover swing has been a huge one for the Bulls.

They’re scoring 21.8 points off turnovers per game, second in the league and allowing only 12.9 to their opponents, the best in the league.

Other notes:

• DeRozan threw one of the craziest passes you will ever see, a spiraling assist to White for a corner three

• Patrick Williams had a solid game with 13 points on 4-of-7 shooting with three threes, three rebounds, two assists, two steals and three blocks. He closed the half and the fourth quarter with the starting group and had an incredible defensive sequence that kept the game within reach.

Up Next: Bulls face the Magic on Wednesday and Friday. Both games at home. Friday game is their second In-Season Tournament game.

In the back end of the 2010s, teams opted to get their five best, most skilled and often times, best shooting players on the floor to open up space and optimize for offense.

But as bigger players have developed more and more skill, size with that level of skill remain supreme. Teams, like the Detroit Pistons, who the Chicago Bulls beat 119-108 on Sunday night, start two burly bigs in Isaiah Stewart and James Wiseman (filling in for injured Jalen Duren).

After allowing seven offensive rebounds in the first quarter, the Bulls were in a nine-point hole. They allowed two offensive boards in the second quarter and entered halftime with a five-point lead. Coincidence? Probably not.

For the same reason the Bulls wanted to be more of an offensive rebounding threat heading into the season, so too have most teams around the league. They understand that the team winning the possessions battle has a great chance of winning each game.

“You try to get as many extra possessions as you can and offensive rebounding is a way to do that,” Pistons coach Monty Williams said before Sunday night’s game.

Last year, the Bulls were one of the best defensive-rebounding teams in the league. Holding opponents to a 25.1 offensive rebounding percentage, a figure that put the Bulls among the top three teams in the league.

This season, it has been the opposite story.

“It needs to be a lot better,” said Billy Donovan pre-game.

It sure does.

Through 10 games this season, the Bulls are allowing their opponents to grab 31.2 percent of their own misses. That’s 28th in the league.

“We’ve gotten hurt, quite honestly, in some rotational stuff where Vooch has had to come or Drum has had to come to protect the rim,” Donovan explained. “We need a ‘sink and fill’ on the backside, someone to kind of crack back down.”

Of course, the Bulls often play small with Alex Caruso closing games at power forward. So there will be times when defensive rebounding becomes difficult.

It’s a five-man job. The goal is to secure the blocks and lane lines. With two of the elite rebounders — Nikola Vucevic and Andre Drummond — down there at all times, if they can get bodies around the perimeter of the paint, they’ll have a good chance to come down with the rebound.

But that’s all best case scenario. With a lot of movement and motion, finding a man to box out can be a difficult task. Especially on drives, when the low man has to come over and help protect the rim.

With the Bulls giving up as many threes as they are, they also tend to sink too far into the lane and let those long rebounds go over their heads.

“And then the other thing too, when threes go up, we’ve got to get out of the habit of running towards the basket,” Donovan explained. “Because most of those shots are going to be kicked out a little bit higher and those are the ones that go over your head and they get extra possessions on.”

With as many teams crashing the glass this year (league average is 27.5 percent opponent offensive rebounding, up from 26.8 percent last year), this also affects transition.

“We don’t want to send five guys, but most teams in the NBA are sending three, sometimes four,” Williams said. “And there’s a tendency to flatten out the offensive team in transition, because they’ve got to box out.”

If teams are sending more guys to offensive rebound, you’d better be blocking out or you’ll give up second-chance points. If you’re forced to send four or five guys to block out, it will limit your transition opportunities.

The problem for the Bulls is that the failure to secure offensive rebounds hasn’t been a result of them trying to leak out in transition — they’re down from 20th to 29th this year.

So while the Bulls have made huge strides offensive rebounding their own misses, the rest of the league is improving in that area faster. They’ll survive against teams like the lowly Pistons, but need to quickly return to form before things start to get out of hand.

Turning the page

With Alex Caruso (toe) on the sideline, Donovan tightened his rotation from 10 down to nine. In doing so, it opened up space for Ayo Dosunmu to spark the team and earn some extra minutes off the bench, and he did exactly that.

Dosunmu finished with 13 points on 6-of-7 shooting, with four steals. He said he found out Caruso wasn’t going to play 40 minutes before the game, and was ready to seize the moment.

DeMar DeRozan said he pulled Dosunmu aside after his stint to tell him, “that quarter wouldn’t happen,” without his play.

“Any time you can help give some energy to our team, it’s always positive,” Dosunmu said. “Coming off the bench, I have a unique way of viewing the game because I can see what the game needs. That’s something I’ve really taken from coming off the bench, being able to read the game, see what needs to be done and what’s lacking.”

The Bulls have now gotten back in the win column, and in spite of a difficult stretch coming up, they’re feeling better about who they’re becoming as a team.

“On the outside, I know a lot of people look at it like it’s a lot of chaos,” DeRozan said. “This and that. The whole team meeting thing. Every guy in this locker room want to win. Everyone wants the best for one another. It’s just about us honing in and kind of finding that balance of bringing it every single night. But for me, what I’m most happy about is just every single guy in here just having that passion and wanting to win.”

Up Next: Bulls head to Milwaukee for their second game in as many days.

The Bulls got off to a horrid start, unable to react quickly enough to the swift Suns passing. Playing off of Jusuf Nurkic as a passing hub from the top of the key, the Suns were able to generate easy layups and threes via back cuts, extra ball movement and shooting coming off of screens.

With Nurkic drawing Vucevic away from the paint, and the Suns shooters stretching the Bulls defense out, the back side rotations were nowhere to be found. The Suns had a nice two-man game between Nurkic and Kevin Durant that resulted in easy dunks for each party.

Alex Caruso entered the game earlier than usual, but the Bulls were down 18-4 and Billy Donovan needed to get him in before things spiraled out of hand. The Suns went on to score on their next two possessions, pushing the lead up to 22-4.

But then the Bulls tightened the screws.

With Caruso, Jevon Carter, Andre Drummond, Patrick Williams and Zach LaVine on the court, the Bulls cut the lead from 23-6 at 5:52 to 27-20 at 4:05.

This was the second-straight game in which Donovan went to this lineup, with the group going +20 points per 100 possessions against the Jazz on Monday night.

The Bulls got up the floor quickly, even on made baskets, which helped them get into their offense early, space the floor and rattle off some points to get the game back within reach.

LaVine is prone to going black hole mode, but when he’s collapsing the defense and looking to spray the ball out, good things happen.

Caruso doesn’t always contribute to this level on the offensive end, but he finished with 19 points (7-of-9 shooting, 4-of-5 threes), 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals, 2 blocks. But of course, it was the defense that changed the game the most.

The First Team All-Defender has a stretch or two like this every game that may show up in the box score as a steal or block, but never fully capture the impact it has on momentum.

It’s a flawed stat, but in a one point loss, with every single starter in the negative (DeRozan -3, Craig -24, Vucevic -16, White -11, LaVine -14) in plus-minus, Caruso was a +24.

“I think he really understands passing angles and part of that is understanding like where the wall is, where Kevin, or whoever is guarding is posting up and then kind of like cutting down the angle with the past becomes a lot more riskier to make,” Donovan said.

Down the stretch, Caruso locked in as the primary Durant defender and did as well as anyone could. He would strip Durant when he got beat. Take charges. Push him off his spots while trying to get post position. Fight over screens to prevent against being switched off Durant.

“They were really trying to screen him to get him off Durant,” Donovan continued.”I mean that was clearly they were trying to like change the matchup and I give Alex an enormous amount of credit, refusing to get the matchup changed.”

“I tried,” Caruso said of trying to frustrate Durant.”I don’t know. I mean, even on some of those ones, like the one the ones late, he gets the shots off when he wants, you know, it’s not like I can stop him from shooting. I’ve got to try and get deflections when he brings the ball down. So just trying to be physical, make him catch it at different spots, not in the rhythm of their their offense. So I try to do my job. That’s one of those guys where you just hope they miss.”

And with the game tied with one possession remaining in regulation, he had a chance to guard Durant one-on-one. He came away on top.

“I joked about that with (Bulls assistant coach) Mo Cheeks on the sideline after the end of regulation,” Caruso said of getting the chance to get the game saving stop. “I was like, ‘if you told young Alex Caruso you get Kevin Durant one-on-one for game, I’d be pretty excited. Probably a little scared, but but pretty excited.”

Durant praised Caruso after the game. DeMar DeRozan compared him to Tony Allen.

There’s a difference between elite defensive role players and defensive superstars that automatically make the team an elite defense. Caruso is the latter. The value of good offense will always outweigh the value of good defense, but Caruso’s impact is as big as anyone on this Bulls team.

“I’m a hell of a defensive player,” he said.

And the Bulls would be far worse if not for him.

Offensive keys

The Bulls have plans to overhaul their offense by offensive rebounding, getting out in transition and getting into the paint to generate kickout threes, layups and free throw attempts. Here’s how they performed in each of those categories:

• Free throw attempt rate: 18.3% (47th)
• Offensive rebound rate: 20.8% (20th)
• Rim frequency: 33% (50th)
• Three-point attempt frequency: 30% (15th)
• Transition frequency: 12.1% (15th)

Up Next: Bulls have three days off before kicking off a stretch of five games in seven days against the Pistons on Sunday

After three ugly losses, the Bulls get back in the win column with their best basketball game of the season. Downing the Jazz 130-113, the Bulls shot 18-for-34 from deep and finally outscored a team from three.

Everyone was getting a piece of the action. Coby White finally got hot and hit 4-of-6 en route to 18 points. Zach LaVine chipped in 2-of-5 and 24 points. Jevon Carter hit 4-of-8. Patrick Williams was 2-of-4. Alex Caruso was 2-of-2. Ayo Dosunmu was 2-of-2.

The three-point disparity has been well-documented ten times over, and sadly, this game isn’t the launching pad for a nightly three-point barrage. They certainly won’t shoot 53 percent on average and likely won’t outscore their opponents from deep either.

But there is an element of Monday’s shooting performance that the team should dog ear for later. That is one of the under discussed elements within the three-point umbrella: movement threes.

Coming off of screens or handoffs can provide a shooter with additional air space that can better put them in a position to fire away. But according to Synergy, those two play type categories make up the smallest portion of the Bulls offense.

At Media Day and during training camp, the Bulls claimed to wanted to play off of Nikola Vucevic at the top of the key and elbows to add a passing, play making, dribble-handoff hub to their offense. And while we haven’t seen much of that to this point, the Bulls did have a couple of actions to create movement threes in the first half.

Jevon Carter, who scored all 12 of his points from beyond the arc, was key for the Bulls as he was able to shake loose of defenders with off-ball movement and high-octane three-point shooting.

“If guys drive then my job is just to find open window, give them an outlet,” Carter said. “And if I feel like I got enough time to get it off, then I’m gonna shoot it.”

The value of these movement shots goes beyond simply increasing their three-point volume. On the above play, Carter sets a screen for DeRozan, who takes both defenders with him. That’s what leaves Carter open for a three.

“He’s a very active mover off the ball,” Billy Donovan said. “We tried to get him off the ball where we can kind of free him up for some of that stuff, because he’s got good speed coming off screens. He gets it off really quick. And even a lot of times guys are penetrating and he’s moving into open areas of the floor and we can find him.”

But now, if the defense knows they can’t afford to send two to DeRozan for fear of an open Carter three, DeRozan has single coverage on the block. That’s ideal for the Bulls offense.

“Just how much is he backing up,” Carter explained when he is looking for those opportunities. “When does he stop his feet, if he keeps backing up while I’m moving forward, I’m gonna pull.”

The Bulls were 29th in transition frequency prior to Monday’s game and 27th in transition efficiency. Tacking on a few extra Carter transition three specials is going to be a huge boost to the Bulls overall offensive efficiency.

“We’ve talked to Jevon about him taking those,” Donovan said. “He’s got to take those shots. He’s he’s worked incredibly hard on his shooting to become the shooter he is and he doesn’t need to bypass any.”

Spacing out to the perimeter opens up the floor for whoever has the ball in transition. Defenders need to decide whether to stop the ball and leave the shooter open, or try to eliminate the outlet pass, but potentially give up a layup.

One of the most common sentiments from Donovan and the players over the past few weeks has been the idea that the team is still trying to figure things out. It’s easier to know what shots to take when there is more movement in the offense. Carter is helping to create some of that movement.

“When the ball was moving, and it’s flowing around, just playing in rhythm it’s easy to tell [when to pull up],” Carter said. “It’s kind of hard when the ball kind of sticks and the game gets stagnant then that’s when it gets tough to tell. When should I shoot and when should I not. But when we when we get stops, when we run it is easy to tell.”

So much of the problem during the first seven games was simply missing shots. Coming into the game, they were 28th in effective field goal percentage at 47 percent. That was six percent below where they were last year and was never going to sustain. And it didn’t — their effective field goal percentage against the Jazz was 63.3 percent.

Their 18-of-34 three-point shooting night won’t sustain either. But maybe they have stumbled into something that does — creating easier scoring opportunities through a bit more movement and a lot more willingness to shoot.

On the second night of a home-away back-to-back, going into the Champs house, in altitude, this was probably a schedule loss. But the way it happened was quite discouraging.

Here are my takeaways from the game.

Zach LaVine’s struggles continue

Aside from his 51-point game against the Pistons, LaVine has been wholly inefficient and that trend continued Saturday. His 48.3 effective field goal percentage is the worst since the year he returned from his ACL injury.

LaVine scored 12 points on 4-of-12 shooting with four assists, three turnovers and tied for a team-worst -27.

His poor shot selection, low effort on defense and inability/unwillingness to fit into the team structure and help create easier offense for the group at large stood out in this game more than any other in recent memory.

This play stands out: attacking one-on-four with no plan, turning it over and then jogging back on defense only to see the Nuggets extend their lead to 16 with a triple.

As the highest paid player and best offensive weapon the Bulls have, he can’t afford to have games like this. And he needs to be the one that leads the charge in turning this thing around before it really begins to spiral.

Nikola Jokic is good at basketball

Nikola Jokic finished +33, and every time he touched the ball, it felt like the Nuggets got an open shot. He put pressure on the rim and his buddy Nikola Vucevic in the basket on multiple occasions in the third quarter to spark the Nuggets run.

Jokic seemingly coasted through the first half, but then, in ten third quarter minutes, he scored 13 points, grabbed nine rebounds and dished out three assists, and effectively terminated the Bulls. His ability to get to whatever spot on the court he wants with the touch to softly float the ball into the basket is a remarkable combination.

With Jamal Murray leaving the game in the first half with a hamstring injury, he finished with a cool 28 points, 16 boards and nine assists. Light work.

Protect Alex Caruso

Coming into the game, he was listed as questionable with a shoulder strain and multiple times throughout the course of the game, he seemed to injure it further.

Caruso came down hard after getting fouled on a runout dunk. He stayed in the game despite wincing and holding his arm. A few trips down the court later, Aaron Gordon put a shoulder into his chest leaving Caruso grabbing his arm yet again.

Caruso returned to the game in the third quarter wearing a full compression sleeve on his arm. He played only 4:15 in the second half, and I would be surprised if he didn’t show up on the injury report ahead of Monday’s game.

The Jevon Carter experience

With much of the attention geared towards the power forward battle and starting Torrey Craig over Patrick Williams, the other Bulls free agent acquisition hasn’t gotten much shine. But Jevon Carter had quietly put together some nice games, scoring back-to-back games in double figures against the Pacers and Mavericks, and came out firing on Saturday night.

Carter immediately made his presence felt, putting up a pair of threes to bring the Bulls back to within one point by the end of the first quarter. He was attacking gaps off the dribble, pulling up in the mid-range and even got to the rim for a nifty reverse layup.

Carter played to his reputation, picking opposing guards up full court, cutting the Nuggets’ shot clock in half.

He ended up scoring 16 points on 6-of-9 shooting and accounted for 4 of the Bulls 7 made three pointers.

Math!

The Bulls shot 7-of-26 on three pointers. The Nuggets were 16-of-36. They were outscored by 27 points on threes. They have been outscored from deep in every. single. game. this. year.

It’s not all about threes, though they do play a massive role in determining the outcome of these games. Free throws are another indicator — the Bulls lost the free throw battle 16-of-23 to the Nuggets 23-of-30. The key to unlocking both of those types of shots is getting into the paint. The Bulls lost the points in the paint battle 48-46.

The Nuggets are an impossibly hard team to beat, but it’s going to be impossibly hard to beat any team if they can’t win those battles.

Up next: Bulls are back home on Monday to face off against the Utah Jazz

Aside from the court, which was part blood spilling out of the elevator doors in ‘The Shining’ and part Kramer’s chicken roaster sign, the biggest storyline of the game was Patrick Williams getting pulled out of the starting lineup in favor of Torrey Craig.

[Read more on the NBA’s In-Season Tournament]

It felt like an inevitability. Billy Donovan even tipped his hand pre-game.

“We need Patrick,” Donovan said. “So whatever role he is in, he’s got to help our team, whether he’s starting or coming off the bench. I still think he’s an important piece and component to our team.”

Williams has severely underperformed and seems to be regressing rather than taking the step forward the team and fans had hoped for.

Coming into Friday’s game, he averaged just four points per game shooting 26.7 percent. The career-40 percent three-point shooter was just 2-of-16 on the season.

Worse, he dragged down the starting group, who had a -16 net rating in over 125 possessions together.

But as much as the change needed to take place to put a more productive power forward alongside Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic, the Bulls needed to mix it up and try something new with Williams, who was at risk of spiraling.

Perhaps the move to the bench was the boost he needed. Williams turned in his best performance of the young season, scoring 10 points on 4-of-6 shooting. He finally got it going from deep, hitting two threes, matching his season total. He also grabbed a season-high five rebounds.

“I mean, I always carry a chip on my shoulder,” Williams said after his demotion. “Any chance I get, I attack it. It kind of gets you going in a sense.”

Williams must now use this performance as a launching pad for similar, more consistent play. And that needs to come from within him, rather than relying on someone else lighting a fire under him.

That is where the frustration lies. He has proven he is capable of doing the things he needs to to be the player that maximizes the big three. These grab-and-go rebounds, for example, are there for the taking whether he’s starting or not.

The Bulls’ goal is to win games and make the playoffs. To do that, their best players need to dominate the ball because it gives the team the best chance to win. It’s Donovan’s responsibility to put the best support players around the Bulls’ big three to make them the best versions of themselves.

Williams needs to be better in those situations, and take advantage of the opportunities available to him while playing alongside those guys.

He has not done so, so the demotion is more than warranted.

At the same point, there is pressure associated with being put in a box. There is no template for developing players — each one may need a different environment to truly thrive. For Williams, having the scope to make mistakes and play through them might help him.

“Naturally, you know they are who they are,” Williams said. “We know when they have the ball we need them to make plays. Obviously, in the second unit, when one of [DeRozan or LaVine] is out there and the other isn’t, there’s a little bit more opportunity for everybody else.”

With that second unit, there are more opportunities for Williams to stretch his legs. He has more opportunity to do things with the ball in his hands, and there’s less pressure on him not to do the wrong thing when every possession next to DeRozan, LaVine and Vucevic needs to be executed to maximize them.

“Just being able to do both,” Williams said. “When it’s my time to step up and make plays and be more ball dominant, I can do that. There’s gonna be mistakes. There’ll be turnovers and it’s all about learning to fail and getting better from it.”

“When those guys have it going, just being a complimentary piece,” he continued. “Doing what I can defensively again, hitting open shots, cutting, offensive rebounds, things like that. I don’t want to lock myself into one type of role. I feel like I can do both pretty well.”

When asked about the environment most conducive to his development, Williams said he feels good about the one he’s in.

“To be honest, what I have,” he said. “I completely have the support of teammates, coaches, that’s all you can ask for, to be honest. It kind of sucks when you’re not playing the way you want to play. But I think I’ve kind of spoke to that to you guys just about taking the challenge of how are you when you’re not playing well? What kind of teammate are you? What’s your body language like? Are you sitting and sulking or trying to find a creative solution to still be effective? So that’s kind of how I looked at it. As a challenge. Who can I be when I’m going through a tough stretch? Knowing it’s not going to be my last tough stretch for me in this league.”

Williams has struggled, made mistakes, taken his lumps, regressed and been straight up bad for much of this season. But the lack of nuance in the discourse is toxic. Yes, he has struggled. He needs to be better. But he is still a big part of this team’s success, present and future.

He has to be.

So it’s on the Bulls organization, from management to coaches to Williams to come together and find those creative solutions that help him grow.

Up Next: The Bulls head to Denver on Saturday for a difficult back-to-back against the reigning NBA champion Nuggets.

Enter the NBA’s inaugural In-Season Tournament. Corny name? Yes. But hopefully it leads to a little more regular season excitement.

“It’s an exciting opportunity,” Billy Donovan said. “I think for every team in the league to play in this. We’ll see how it goes. I know league’s invested a lot. We certainly have put a lot of importance on it and feel it’s important. And it’s a great opportunity in one of these games that you know to to advance and accumulate points to to get to Vegas.”

Here’s how it works.

Teams are broken up into six groups, three per conference, based on record from the previous year. The Chicago Bulls are in a group with the Orlando Magic, Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors and Brooklyn Nets, against whom they kick things off tonight.

In this ‘Group Stage’, the Bulls will face each of these teams one on Tuesdays and Fridays in November.

At the end of the month, the team with the best record, along with the other group leaders and two wildcard teams, advance to the ‘Knockout’ round. The wildcard teams are the two teams in each conference with the next best record in their groups.

The ‘Knockout’ round is single-elimination, with winning teams advancing to the Semifinals and Finals. The latter two games will be played in Las Vegas in December.

As part of the Tournament, teams will wear their City Edition jerseys.

And of course, each team has a special court they will use in home games throughout the tournament.

“Has Chicago had a different court as a franchise? I don’t think it has so it’s gonna be really cool to go out there and see,” Zach LaVine said after Friday morning’s shoot around.

As the Play-In turned from theory into reality, there has been more buzz and excitement around the games. With the introduction of the jerseys and courts, there is a clear emphasis by the league to make these games feel as special as possible.

“I’m excited to see the court,” LaVine said. “All the guys were excited when they saw the pictures come out. It’s cool. It’s another opportunity for the NBA to create more fans, different type of buzz, and it’s the first of its kind. So, to go out there and figure out what it’s like for the first year is gonna be fun.”

Any Playoff team can get hot at the right time and win the World Series. Any given Sunday, a football team can knock off their division rival. The single-elimination nature of the NCAA tournament allows for extreme variance. But one of the unique things about the NBA is that the best teams typically win it all.

That’s what makes this In-Season Tournament just a bit more exciting. The one-game nature of these games offers a lot more room for the improbable.

“It’s a definitely a different type of bracketed tournament. Only thing I’m familiar with is probably the NCAA Tournament, where I bet they got a little piece of it from that too. It’s something different, you see how much people love the Play-In Tournament. Hopefully, it gives people the same type of buzz.”

And how about that monetary prize?

“I mean, no one, no one ever turns down money,” LaVine cracked.

The NBA announced that players of teams who advance to the Quarterfinals will each get $50,000. Players on the losing team in the Semifinals will each get $100,000. Players on the losing team of the Championship game will each get $200,000 and the players on the team who win it all will each make $500,000.

The NBA also announced that head coach of winning team will earn $500,000, and that the assistant coaches will earn an additional share. The coach of the runner-up will win $200,000, the coach of the the Semifinalist will earn $100,000 and the Quarterfinalist will land $50,000.

Ultimately, it comes down to buy in. The monetary incentive is great, but for players like LaVine who are less concerned about a few extra hundred thousand, and much more concerned about the Playoffs.

“I don’t know if it will have the same type of effect, like a playoff game will but it should be something different and fun and exciting,” LaVine said. “And we’ll see that tonight. I know guys will play hard, like usual. But, you know, with added things to it. I think it would give a different type of excitement.”

To do that, there is a shift in approach, understanding that there is added value in showing up for these games, even if it doesn’t count any more towards your potential Playoff berth than any of the other games.

“The game still count part of the 82, so it’s not an added like extra games,” LaVine said. “But you know it’s a different mindset and I think guys gonna be playing really hard like you said you almost have to get into a different type of mindset where it’s just like this isn’t just another game on a Tuesday.”

“This means something down the road so you got to get your mind for that.”

…again.

Instead of waiting for Punxsutawney Phil to tell us how much more winter is coming, I feel like Bulls fans are sitting here waiting for Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley to tell us how much more not-quite-.500 basketball we can expect.

#CONTINUITY, amiright?

I hate it here.

Here are the Top 5 things driving me crazy through the first five Bulls games this season. It’s the Pecking Order.

5. Starting Lineup / Rotation

We spent the offseason, training camp and preseason discussing the options Billy Donovan had when making his starting lineup. Who would fill out the two spots surrounding the “Big 3” of Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic? Would newcomers Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig challenge the Bulls’ homegrown talent of Coby White and Patrick Williams? Should reigning First Team All-Defense member Alex Caruso be considered?

Billy chose the young guys. And, despite very concerning results thus far, he continues to ride the same starting lineup. Other than juggling DeMar and Zach as the primary star to stagger with the second unit, he hasn’t changed much else in his rotation. Our guy Mark K highlighted the issue with this chart after the loss to Dallas:

The starting unit has a net rating of NEGATIVE SIXTEEN through five games. Why not try something else? And how the hell have we not seen any minutes yet of Carter and Craig — or even Caruso and Craig — with the Big 3? I don’t get it. It’s like getting an awesome new pair of Jordans, but refusing to wear them with your Bulls fan outfit that would compliment them and vice versa.

4. Chicago Bulls City Edition uniforms

Speaking of Bulls outfits, the team officially launched their City Edition jerseys and merch for this season on Thursday. The early leaks of the jerseys were not flattering, and they look much better now that we see the real thing being worn by the players.

These definitely aren’t my favorite in the pool of City jerseys we’ve gotten over the past several years. I do appreciate that their design gives a nod to the old Chicago Stadium. But that’s also what drives me crazy.

This organization continues to profit off the fanbase’s nostalgic obsession with the dynasty while toiling in mediocrity or worse for most of the 25 years since. And I’m not innocent of that. I spend my hard-earned dollars on Bulls merch because I love my team and love repping them with cool gear.

[Author’s note: Yes, the phrase “hard-earned” is a joke. I get paid to watch basketball and then talk about it. Crazy, right? But SOME people actually DO work hard, and still choose to spend that money on the Bulls.]

As I scrolled through all the City Edition merch on the team’s online store, I kept saying to myself, “Oooh! I want that! …and that! …need that, too!”

Then I scolded myself for being a dope just like so many others. We aren’t satisfied with the product on the floor. We want winning basketball. We want to remember what championship glory feels like. But as that feeling sinks further into the deep recesses of our memory, we still throw our money at the organization for the products they put on the shelves.

I hate myself for falling prey to it. But it underscores the thing I love most about my fellow Bulls fans: we are BLINDINGLY loyal. This team means so damn much to us, we can’t help it. It’s admirable, while also bordering on insane. For the sake of our collective mental health, let’s stick with admirable.

Still, I don’t like these reminders that the people who own and operate this team can so easily take advantage of our loyalty while failing to give us a team that’s a) worth spending our money on or b) worth being proud of.

3. Patrick Williams

I have tried SO hard, but I’m just about finished believing in and defending this guy. We are five games in, and we’ve already seen TWO zeroes in Pat’s point column. In another, he managed three points before Billy told him to grab some bench after playing just 13 minutes. Just LOOK at this. LOOK AT IT.

If I had to look at it, then so do you. I know there are several layers of context around individual performances, and we’re still dealing with a small sample size in Pat’s fourth season. Sure, his defense still looks solid. Sure, he’s a better three-point shooter than these early numbers suggest. But it’s the fact that he looks like the same low-motor, DGAF kind of player we’ve seen since Day 1.

This man is playing in a contract year, because he didn’t get an extension off his rookie deal. He sure as hell doesn’t look like someone who “wants a big contract” as he himself said.

I’m not even driving myself crazy thinking about the dreaded “what if” scenario of Pat leaving the Bulls and blossoming with some other team. What is there to blossom? By all evidence, this is a fake plant you stick in the corner of the waiting room at a dentist’s office. Just put it there and let it collect dust, because it ain’t never blooming into jack sh*t.

You can tell by my willing usage of that grammatical nightmare just how bothered I am by this. I had such high hopes for Pat. I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you. Tyra was rooting for you. Sigh.

2. Three’s a Problem

We heard all about it from Karnisovas and Donovan in the offseason, and again on Media Day. We need to change this team’s offense and shot profile. We need to generate more good looks from beyond the arc, by getting into the paint and distributing. Other than a few short glimpses, all that talk hasn’t produced any results.

Well, I guess you can give the Bulls *some* credit. They’re tied for 23rd in three-point attempts per game, as opposed to dead last where they finished each of the past two seasons. Progress! Unfortunately, they’re not seeing the modest increase in attempts pay off, with their 30.2% efficiency ranking 28th in the NBA. In the two games the Bulls have managed to win, their opponents shot 25% (Toronto) and 26% (Indiana) from deep. Great winning formula right there!

So that’s…fun. And by fun, I mean *Matt repeatedly slams his head into a hard surface*.

1. #Continuity

“We like our group.”

“Just wait until you see what we do in free agency before you judge.”

“Well, when Lonzo went down…”

“Let’s go to Nashville for team bonding! That will help.”

“We need to have the difficult conversations.”

I’m paraphrasing on some of those, but this is what we’ve heard for the better part of two years now. That last one, to me, is the most telling.

Billy said something along those lines during training camp, and again at Media Day. He was — as far as I can tell — trying to articulate the importance of communication with this group. And that sometimes, they’re guilty of not having the “difficult” conversations where teammates, coaches and anyone else committed to this team hold each other accountable.

Torrey Craig, who’s been here for a few months, already observed that this is “one of the quietest teams [he’s] been on.” When Donovan was asked why his team doesn’t communicate more, his answer was, “I don’t know. I don’t know what the reason is.”

Awesome.

Look, I think the whole “players only meeting” thing has gotten a bit overblown. LaVine explained it as best he could in a chat with Vinnie Goodwill, just the latest attempt by the team to correct the narrative that’s spun out of control after their season-opening clunker against the Thunder. Donovan said he was glad to see the players having a discussion like that after a bad loss. Vucevic said it was healthy and productive. Cool.

While Billy and his players may finally be starting to have some of those conversations, I’m sitting here wondering when their bosses will finally have the most difficult conversation. You know, the one where they admit to themselves that this team they’ve constructed ain’t it. [There I go again with the improper grammar. I’m clearly unwell.]

I don’t know about you, Bulls Nation. But I’ve reached the point where I’m sick of wondering. Is this front office gaslighting us fans, refusing to admit this isn’t good enough? Continuously saying “we believe in our group” while secretly having lost that belief, but unsure of what to do next? Or, do they actually still believe in this team’s capabilities to be legitimately competitive? Playoffs competitive?

It will probably be awhile longer before we learn whether it’s deception or delusion causing this malpractice. Either way, I don’t like it. Because we’re stuck here in the meantime with this milquetoast team regardless.

Now, who’s ready for another Friday/Saturday back to back?! You better get ready. Because it’s Groundhog Day.

Again.

Thanks for reading. See Red. Be Good.

-Peck

Even though the Mavs outgunned the Bulls from deep, they were solid from beyond the arc (11-of-33). The problem is, when you’re getting outscored by 28 points from three, you need to make up for that with free throws and offensive boards, and they weren’t able to win either battle.

And then of course, there’s the element of defense, something that has dropped off for the Bulls this year. Against the Mavericks, they needed to be locked in.

Prior to Wednesday, Luka Doncic was averaging 39 points on 55.6 shooting and 48.6 percent on threes. He was absolutely dismantling everyone in his path, either scoring for himself or diming up one of his teammates 9.7 times per game.

In that timeframe, the Bulls were 17th in defense, allowing 111.1 points to opponents, per 100 possessions. Having given up some huge games to the Pistons and Thunder and getting the benefit of some ugly shooting numbers in their wins against the Pacers and Raptors, it was curious to know how they would defend Doncic and the Mavericks, who were atop the league in offensive rating ahead of their matchup.

Interestingly enough, Doncic only averaged 22.8 points on 41.4 percent shooting, his lowest scoring average against any opponent. Hardly pedestrian, but quite a bit worse than his regular figures.

The Bulls took an aggressive approach with Doncic, switching initial pick-and-roll actions before sending late help if he didn’t get off the ball quickly. They made sure to pick him up full court to try to drain some clock and did pretty well to contain Doncic early.

Doncic took only three shots during his first quarter stint.

But after seeing too much of the same defense, it becomes easy to pick apart, so the Bulls switched things up, starting the second quarter with aggressive blitzes to try to trap him at half court and force a turnover.

Unfortunately, that left the Bulls pretty vulnerable on the back end, which gave up some easy shots to the support players. The Bulls had to give this method up pretty quickly as Doncic started finding teammates for easy shots, or would just beat the trap himself if it wasn’t executed well enough, where he could get all the way to the rim and start doing damage at the foul line.

Still, the Bulls contained him well enough by the half, allowing him only 2-of-9 shooting.

Ultimately the Bulls settled back into something that looked more like their first half defense down the stretch, but they weren’t able to get stops. Credit to Patrick Williams, Alex Caruso and Torrey Craig for picking Doncic up full court, making sure the offense was initiated on the other side and trying to drain as much clock as possible.

Though they slowed his scoring as much as possible (18 points on 5-of-16 shooting), Doncic was just too good as a passer, finding his teammates the instant one of the Bulls help defender sank in or took even a half step to come double.

As a whole, the Mavericks shot 20-of-48 on threes (41.7 percent). Removing Doncic’s 1-of-8 night, the rest of the team was 47.5 percent. If you give up shooting nights like that, it’s incredibly difficult to win.

Offensive keys

The Bulls have plans to overhaul their offense by offensive rebounding, getting out in transition and getting into the paint to generate kickout threes, layups and free throw attempts. Here’s how they performed in each of those categories:

• Free throw attempt rate: 11.2% (12th)
• Offensive rebound rate: 29.2% (66th)
• Rim frequency: 26% (22nd)
• Three-point attempt frequency: 34% (33rd)
• Transition frequency: 12.8% (15th)

Up Next: Bulls return home after an extended road trip to play the Brooklyn Nets on Friday night in their first In-Season Tournament game

Remarkably, the Bulls won the game attempting only 17 three-pointers, their lowest figure both this season and last. Except for one other game in March of 2022, it would be their lowest three-point volume of any of the past three seasons.

For a team that wanted to improve upon their last ranked three-point attempt per game figure from last season, setting a new low is probably bad process if the goal is better results.

“Identity and for us it starts with the spacing component of it,” Billy Donovan said recently. “And there’s times we’ve just got to be mindful and not be a burden. Create an opportunity where the guy with the ball can make the next best read.”

Last year, the NBA average of three-point attempts per game was about 33.3, so the 17 attempted on Monday night represents a hair above half. The Bulls don’t need to be shooting 42 threes the way they did in the season opener, but with their offseason additions and internal development, they have the shooting talent to emerge somewhere in the 32-36 range.

“We’ve talked about taking more threes, I don’t necessarily have a number,” Donovan said, “but we’re looking to shoot the ball. I think it’s sometimes you have to move on to decision making. We’ve got to get better at and I think some of that is spacing.”

Amping up the three-point volume just for the sake of taking more threes is not necessarily the goal. No, three-point attempts should be a byproduct of paint touches, which Donovan has repeatedly named the measuring stick for success when it comes to upgrading the offense.

Getting paint touches allows for shots at the rim, fouls, offensive rebounds and spray out threes. If the Bulls can improve in those areas, they’re on the right track.

But which comes first, the spacing or the shooting? There needs to be space in order to find those driving lanes, so the Bulls do need to take more threes when they are available.

Even their best shooters pass up open looks to dribble into more difficult ones:

This doesn’t mean DeRozan needs to be taking double-digit threes. Vucevic and LaVine should up the ante, but it really means everyone around them needs to provide more spacing for them to be able to work their magic in the mid-range.

It is possible to improve spacing without necessarily having to shoot more threes, that’s where attacking closeouts, decision making, getting off the ball quickly can still put the defense on a tilt. But often times, shooting when open is the best way to do that:

They can’t just avoid shooting because they’re not good at it. They have to be better. The less scared of the Bulls three-point shooters opposing teams are, the less likely they are to guard the Bulls shooters. Instead, they’ll load up the paint, force the Bulls into contested mid-range shots and pray to the basketball gods they don’t bite on one of DeRozan’s pump fakes.

As good as DeRozan, LaVine and Vucevic are in the mid-range, that is not a recipe for winning games.

“We know if it’s going to be DeMar and Zach and Vooch, as well as they shot the ball, it’s still the 24th-best offense,” Donovan said recently. He has repackaged similar phrasing around this sentiment on many occasions over training camp and the start of the season. They’ve had their DeRozan bailout fourth quarter. They’ve had their LaVine 50-point game.

Monday’s win against the Pacers was a good win. They grabbed 10 offensive rebounds. Took 31 free throws. Only turned it over 13 times. They got a monster line from Vucevic (24 points, 17 rebounds) and a rare game in which each of the big three scored 20 plus. They executed behind some great tactical work from Donovan down the stretch.

But what happens if the Pacers shoot better than 12-of-46 on threes? Or DeRozan and LaVine don’t combine for 19 free throw attempts? Or Vucevic isn’t able to grab five offensive boards that help generate 18 second chance points?

The Bulls plan of diversifying their offensive resources is going to be a work in progress and all of those things will contribute. But if the plan for the year was to improve the offense, I’m not sure we’ve seen the process behind it come to fruition. This is not a situation where ‘if the Bulls don’t shoot threes, they are going to lose’. They’re plenty talented to get this result every other night.

But those heroics will only take the Bulls so far.

How far, you ask? Guess where their offense is ranked after four games.

24th. Same as last year.

And the record is .500.

The Bulls need to increase their three-point shooting to improve their spacing. Even if the ball isn’t falling, they need to stay committed to that process of controlling the elements of the game they can control.

Otherwise, the same long-term results will follow.

But this hasn’t been just three games. It is fair to have a short leash on this team when it’s the exact same product putting out the exact same result as the last season-and-a-half.

“It’s our third year here together,” LaVine told reporters in Detroit. “We know how this business is. We all love each other. DeMar is one of my best friends. We talk all the time. But we have to figure out how to make this thing work”

No matter how the Bulls dress it up, it still isn’t working. That conclusion again came into focus with the Bulls 118-102 loss to the Detroit Pistons.

Neither LaVine’s 51-point career-high, nor Alex Caruso’s game-winning three the day prior can distract from the fact that this team is no different than the disappointment from the year before.

This season is already *so* Bulls. A heated exchange between player and coach in the midst of a 20-point ass-kicking at home on the season opener. A players only meeting. A gutsy comeback win as the Bulls were bailed out by DeMar DeRozan, followed by yet another disappointing loss to a team they needed to beat if they want to be a Playoff team.

There has been no motion or movement or randomness or complexity implemented in the offense. Against the Pistons, they shot just 28 threes and 16 free throws as everyone stood around the perimeter watching LaVine drop in contested mid-range jumpers. It gives 2018 Bulls energy. They scored eight fastbreak points. There was no signs of growth from the young players on the roster — Patrick Williams and Coby White combined for a whopping zero points.

Not the best sign for the ‘blow it up and let the young guys run around’ crowd.

Williams, who has yet to register a shot at the rim or a free throw in three games this year, looked disengaged and disinterested. He’s not going to be afforded opportunities to create on-the-ball, so he needs to maximize what chances he has to impact the game as a role player.

He hasn’t helped himself at all.

The Bulls can’t rely on 34-year-old DeRozan to carry them every night, something Billy Donovan admitted during the preseason of last year. After expressing frustration about the style of offense, Vucevic has scored just 23 points on 9-of-26 shooting in the last two games.

Everything was a slog. And even the players know it.

“Without [Lonzo Ball] we’ve been trying to figure out what works for us,” DeRozan admitted after the game. “We show individual ways of working, but as a collective we’re still working [to find that balance] as a team. We show spurts of it here and there, but it hasn’t been as consistent as we want it to be.”

As of Sunday, it’s been 653 days since Ball suited up for the Bulls. If they haven’t changed or solved any problems over that time, it’s hard to believe they will.

The only difference between this team and last is that the defense is now cause for concern. Having given up a a 128.3 offensive rating (97th percentile) and 48 percent of the Pistons total attempts coming at the rim, the Bulls provided zero resistance whatsoever.

Clearly there is talent on the roster. But after as much time as they’ve had to work things out, they continue to underperform. And it appears to be getting worse as the rest of the league starts to lap them. After three games, the Bulls have a -12.3 point differential. They’re 22nd in offense and 24th in defense. This does not look like a team that has figured things out, let alone laid the groundwork for foundational change.

It looks like the same foundation as last year. Expect the same results to follow. That’s a fair conclusion to come to.

Monday night presents the next challenge in the Indiana Pacers — an up-and-coming team loaded with young talent that the Bulls couldn’t handle last season.

Following the chaotic start to the Bulls season — which included a heated exchange between Nikola Vucevic and Billy Donovan and a players-only meeting after a 20-point loss — coming back from down 19 to beat the Toronto Raptors in overtime 104-103 was exactly the rebound the Bulls needed.

More than anything, it was the way it happened. The Bulls went down 14-2 in the opening minutes of the game, before Donovan tweaked the lineups (aka pulled Patrick Williams in favor of Torrey Craig) and got the Bulls back on track.

The rest of the game was full of twists and turns. The Raptors led by as many as 19, the Bulls by as many as 17. Each team went on a 20-0 run. There were seven lead changes and five ties.

The Bulls had to overcome Zach LaVine’s poor shooting night — he scored just 8 points on 3-of-14 shooting, 0-of-6 on threes with three turnovers. LaVine finished a team-worst -23, and was as bad as -39 at one point. Vucevic also struggled from the field, posting 11 points on 4-of-15 shooting. And though DeMar DeRozan was pedestrian through three quarters, his royal clutchness came to play in the fourth and overtime.

DeRozan had 18 points, including 10-of-13 free throws in the fourth quarter alone. He drew a vintage DeRozan foul on his appetizing pump fake on a three, that gave the Bulls a chance to tie the game. When he missed the third free throw, Caruso was of course there to have his back. Drawing a charge on the inbounds pass, Caruso gave DeRozan another opportunity, this time for a game-winner.

DeRozan again got fouled on a pump fake and had a chance to ice the game at the line. He made the first free throw to tie it, and then missed the second. Overtime.

After a competitive overtime, the Carushow ended the night with a bang — a steal and game-winning three to give the Bulls their first victory of the season.

“We’re playing for a stop, Pascal drove right and just kind of tried to ‘big shoulder’ me it didn’t really get any separation,” Caruso explained. “Put the ball out there, I got a good strip. I saw Zach was was boxing out and got the ball from Boucher or somebody. Then eight seconds left, something like that, I’m just trying to space the floor. Zach made a great read, he had to trust in me to hit me.”

Considering the lane LaVine had going to the rim, this was a selfless, heads up play from a guy labeled a bad decision maker in clutch situations.

“He bailed us out,” DeRozan said in reference to his missed free throw that could have won the game. “He made a hell of a play. Getting that steal. He made some great plays, you know. Getting the steals in the backcourt, getting offensive rebounds, the effort every day to play with shows.”

But none of that would have been possible without Caruso creating plays, making stops, corralling loose balls, drawing charges, getting deflections and offensive rebounds to open up those chances for DeRozan.

“It’s amazing,” DeRozan said. “It’s amazing. The effort that he puts in, the sacrifices he goes out there and plays with, throwing his body around. His instincts. His IQ. It’s amazing to watch. It’s kind of like letting a cheetah out of the cage to run wild. He makes it look pretty.”

Caruso finished with 13 points, 13 rebounds (six offensive), two assists, two steals, and a block and was a team-high +29. His ball pressure got the Bulls back into the game in the first quarter and helped them win it in the fourth and overtime.

After the discouraging start to the season, Caruso’s play alleviated a lot of those concerns for the time being. And it was ideal to see it play out in a clutch scenario, something the Bulls struggled with last season.

The Bulls hope to springboard this moment of karmic justice into the next game.

“We have a good team team chemistry. With our ‘players only meeting’ the other day, it was just frustration of how we came out and played,” Caruso said of the team’s embrace at the final buzzer. “Today, we showed spurts of how we want to play being together. Playing for each other, playing hard. And I think that’s that’s kind of how I embody myself as a basketball player, how we want to play.”

“So they know I play for the team and whenever I make big plays in the game, they show me love.”

Offensive keys

The Bulls have plans to overhaul their offense by offensive rebounding, getting out in transition and getting into the paint to generate kickout threes, layups and free throw attempts. Here’s how they performed in each of those categories:

• Free throw attempt rate: 22.4% (65th)
• Offensive rebound rate: 28.8% (61st)
• Rim frequency: 39% (80th)
• Three-point attempt frequency: 36% (40th)
• Transition frequency: 13.1% (14th)

Up Next: Bulls head to Detroit for their first away game of the season, on a second night of a back-to-back

After a deflating 124-104 season opening loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night, the wheels are already spinning off their gears.

“I don’t feel like we played with enough heart. And that’s on us. It’s unacceptable,” Zach LaVine said after the game.

Despite a shaky, but competitive first half, things began spiraling in the third quarter when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder started cooking. The Bulls offense started to devolve and resort back to the ways from last season.

Then, after coming out of the game, Nikola Vucevic and Billy Donovan got into a heated exchange.

“He felt a certain way and I kind of said what I felt,” Donovan said. “And, you know, he’s probably not wrong, for feeling the way he did. But how do you channel it in a way that kind of galvanized the group and looks them up? You know, and, you know, in the moment you know, maybe I could have handled it better with him, and maybe he could have handled it better. With me, it wasn’t anything disrespectful or anything else. I think he was just kind of frustrated with the way we’re playing. You know, I didn’t blame him. I felt probably in line with him. But there’s got to be a way that we can together solve those issues in his problems.”

Vucevic also chimed in with his perspective on the matter.

“I just wasn’t happy with certain stuff they way we were doing it and expressing a little bit,” Vucevic said. “Maybe a little more aggressive initiative. In a moment of the game, but it has happened in the heat of the moment. You’re trying to win. You’re trying to do what you can to help the team win and sometimes, you know, I didn’t like what was going on.”

Was it about not getting the ball enough?

“It wasn’t so much just my touches, I think stuff that we were running that could have maybe been better for us in the moment,” Vucevic explained. “Some of it was touches, but not necessarily for me.”

After the game, the Bulls players had a conversation in the locker room to discuss what happened, and how to address it.

Donovan said he entered the locker room to the discussion, asked if the players needed space to talk, and when they said yes, he left.

“Very constructive,” Vucevic said of the players only conversation. “I think it was really good for us that we had those. I think it was needed. It was just regular discussions of what needs to be done a lot of guys a lot, a lot of good things, things that need to be said. And I think we can really use this to learn and change some things that we need to change. So it wasn’t nothing crazy. No fighting. Really constructive, I think and it’s may be one of the first times since I’ve been here like this and it’s really needed.”

So maybe there is a positive spin to put on this. These are conversations the Bulls would not have had last year — the types of conversations they need to have if they want to be able to work through any of their problems.

“I will say the one thing I think was good, with some of the heated conversations and confrontation is, that would have never happened last year,” Donovan said. “Ever. So the confrontation piece, I think is a sign that it’s important to them, and that they know that there’s things that we’ve got to do better”

The Bulls biggest challenge this season will be staying committed to the style of offense they want to play, even with things aren’t going their way.

So maybe it’s good to get through this in game one.

Bet on yourself

Patrick Williams started off the game with a drive into a turnaround jumper on the first possession of the game. This comes out of a standard dribble-weave action to get into the set, but Williams aggressively took advantage of the way he was being defended.

Williams finished with 8 points on 4-of-10 shooting, including 0-of-4 threes, 3 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals. While his aggression was present, not all of it showed up in the box score. He attacked the glass well, though he didn’t always end up with the board. He bodied up and stayed down on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, picking up some deflection

Still, the main improvement area for him is going to be getting all the way to the rim. where he can pick up efficient shots and increase his foul drawing ability.

Threes flying

Last season, the Bulls math problem was a fixture of these game recaps.

Maybe this season, the problem will shift from volume to accuracy.

The Bulls launched 42 threes in Wednesday night’s opener, a figure that matched last year’s season high.

Unfortunately, the ball couldn’t find its way in the hole. They made just 12 of those 42 threes, good for 28.6 percent.

“That’s an interesting question,” Donovan said. “Because I’ve been dealing with, the last two years, how we don’t take many threes. Now we take 40 threes now it’s about makes.”

The Bulls three-point problem isn’t going to be solved by DeRozan attempting eight threes per game. His mid-range offense is as efficient as it gets and the Bulls shouldn’t be looking to remove that from their shot profile.

LaVine and Vucevic need to be a part of upping the ante, but the majority of where the Bulls are going to catch up on their math problem is from the role guys.

Offensive keys

The Bulls have plans to overhaul their offense by offensive rebounding, getting out in transition and getting into the paint to generate kickout threes, layups and free throw attempts. Here’s how they performed in each of those categories:

• Free throw attempt rate: 14.0 (26th)
• Offensive rebound rate: 29.1 (60th)
• Rim frequency: 28 (27th)
• Three-point attempt frequency: 42 (69th)
• Transition frequency: 16.2 (37th)

Up Next: Bulls look to bounce back against the Raptors at home on Friday night

This year, it’s spacing and paint touches. Billy Donovan has put together a plan he feels will work to unlock their offense and finally help this group reach its potential. And while there’s buy in for now, none of the season may quickly derail if they don’t stay committed to that plan when adversity inevitably hits.

“That’s everything right there,” Donovan said of commiting to the new offensive principles.

“Everything sounds good when you have a plan,” he continued. “And then all of a sudden, you’re being tested on your beliefs, values and how the game needs to be played. I think we have enough body of work of last year to see if we want to revert back to that, we’re going to get the same results.”

It can be easy for those three in particular to resort to what they know works for them. Zach LaVine is an incredibly gifted scorer at all three levels. DeMar DeRozan is a master of his individual craft, an automatic high-quality shot in the mid-range. Nikola Vucevic didn’t become a two-time All-Star without a versatile offensive skillset.

Those things may work for the individuals, but that didn’t translate to an efficient offense or a winning record. In spite of near career seasons from each of the big three, the Bulls still finished 24th in offense.

“We all want to win,” Coby White said. “We know what it takes to win. Some of that stuff’s not a recipe for winning, because obviously if it was we would have won last year.”

New year, new plan. This season, they want to emphasize paint touches. Getting into the paint will help address three of their biggest weaknesses: shots at the rim, threes and offensive boards. Attacking gaps and generating paint touches help to open up shots at the rim and fouls. If help slides over, it will open up opportunities for spray out threes or closeouts to continue putting pressure on the defense to keep up. That movement also opens up offensive boards — it’s much easier to crash the glass when the defense is scrambling back into place to box out rather than finding their man after watching one of DeRozan or LaVine take an isolation jumper.

That starts with improved spacing, which has to be addressed in a variety of ways, and it starts with shooting more threes. The Bulls brought in high level role shooters in Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig. They’ve moved White into the starting five to help in that arena as well.

“If you’ve got Steph Curry and Klay Thompson running around, there’s a lot of space. I get it. But the spacing part is also giving room to each other to be able to play,” Donovan explained.

Unfortunately for them, the Bulls don’t have those defense warpers. Can they really create the spacing they need without markedly changing the personnel? If not, will they have the requisite space they need to attack the paint the way they want to? You can’t decide how the defense guard you, so it remains to be seen. But they have plans for how to create space on the floor regardless.

“There may be somebody they’re not guarding on the perimeter,” Donovan went on. “When the ball finds that player, that player’s got to make a decision. Whether to shoot it or drive it or get off of it. But what we can’t do is when the ball gets thrown to him, that his space gets cramped and he can’t make the next play where he’s just caught having to shoot it instead of other options he could potentially look to attack.”

But what happens if those driving avenues don’t come? Or the shots don’t fall, even if they are generated “the right way”?

“It could be hit by missing shots, it could be hit by officials, it could be that we’re just struggling as a team,” Donovan explained. “But to me, that’s the true sign of your team is how you handle adversity and how you go through that. And they’ve got to do that together.”

Every team faces adversity over the course of a lengthy, draining, tumultuous 82 game season. What the Bulls cannot do is revert back to the tried and true scoring options if things go poorly. So one of the Bulls biggest challenges will be staying committed to the cause no matter how things go.

Hopeful their team bonding trip to Nashville can help their ability to communicate and hold each other accountable, the Bulls should be better equipped to problem solve on the fly.

“Just the mindset, having that mentality of staying bought in,” White said. “Having the mentality of trusting each other out there on the court, trusting the system, trusting the process.”

“We’ve got to hold each other accountable in those moments. Have that positive self talk, and that positive talk between each other,” White continued.

“The resiliency, the grit, the toughness, the embracing of adversity,” Donovan added. “All that stuff is uncomfortable. And you have to get really comfortable being uncomfortable. What these guys do for a job is abnormal and you need to have an abnormal mindset.”

The Bulls start the season with a brutal stretch, including the opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder. If they can stay the course and buy in to the style of play they believe will lead to winning, and more importantly, stay committed even when things don’t go their way, they’ll have a real chance to surprise the doubters.

“I can’t say right now because we haven’t been in it,” Donovan said of his team’s ability to manage adversity. “We’ll find out more about it. How well we can do it. Those are the challenges. What you want to do is meet the challenge. It doesn’t mean that if you meet the challenge, it’s always going to go your way.”

“But clearly, if we don’t even do the right things to meet the challenge, rest assured it’s not going to go our way,” he continued.

Do the Chicago Bulls do enough of it?

“I’ve played on a lot of teams,” Torrey Craig said. “And this is one of the quietest teams I’ve been on.”

Those are poignant words from one of the Bulls’ new additions.

“First thing is communication,” Craig said of what it takes to become a great team. “I can’t stress it enough. That’s what I’ve learned being on good teams. They communicate at a high level and it makes everything that much easier.”

If the Bulls want to take the step from good to great, they must address one of the intangible issues they face.

‘I don’t know what the reason is’

Craig isn’t the first or only one to note the Bulls’ lack of verbal communication. It has been a common theme from both the veteran players and the coaches, and something the Bulls absolutely must improve upon to improve their fortunes this season.

“I don’t know,” Donovan confessed of why the team doesn’t communicate more. “I don’t. I don’t know what the reason is.”

To be clear, this lack of communication is not to say that the Bulls players don’t like one another, don’t trust one another, don’t play for one another.

“Every single one of these guys, every single one of them, unbelievable guys,” Donovan said. “Great guys. Love working with them, love being around them. Enjoy their company. Would have a great time with every single one of them at dinner. But in between the lines, it’s just a different situation that you have to have and we need.”

Everyone has their own style of communication. Where Craig and Caruso are more verbal from the sidelines or within the game, DeMar DeRozan is more personal — he likes to take players aside to point things out. Coby White has stepped up as more of a vocal leader after realizing his team needs that from him, in spite of his relative age and experience level.

“For someone like [Carter], [Carter] in his own way communicates,” Donovan said. “[Craig] does it too. Maybe that brings some things out. [White] is trying to do more of it. [DeRozan] does it his way in more private settings, with grabbing a guy and talking to him like that. Our group can be quiet.”

“I don’t think it’s always bad, but there are times where we need to be better at it,” Donovan continued.

‘I have some responsibility to talk’

The Bulls know they need to improve their communication skills to be great. It’s part of the reason they went to Nashville for training camp and something players and coaches alike have noted as an area for improvement.

“I’ve always been one of the younger guys on the team and now that I’m one of the older guys, and I would say I’m probably one of the more vocal players,” Caruso said. “So I think it’s just an adjustment period for some guys to realize, ‘alright I’m not a first or second-year player anymore, I have some responsibility to talk and communicate.'”

Caruso has leaned into being the group’s vocal leader, which has rubbed off on some of the younger players, namely White, who has blossomed into a leader on the floor — a tough transition for a young player sharing the court with All-Stars and NBA champions.

“Being a young guy — I’m 23, last year I was 22 — you fall into this thing of like, especially on a team full of older guys that have won, that’s been in the playoffs many times. [Caruso] being a champion. Playing with guys like that, you get that mindset of like, ‘they have more experience than me, they know more than me, my opinion doesn’t matter, my voice doesn’t matter,'” White said recently.

Communication is also one of the reasons the Bulls brought Craig to Chicago. He’s a hard-nosed, veteran presence with experience playing against — and alongside — some of the great players of all time. And in so doing, he’s come to understand the importance of communication on the court.

“[Craig] does not stop talking,” Donovan said of his new veteran. “It’s not like he’s instructing or giving direction, he’s very positive on the bench and he’s constantly communicating on the floor defensively.”

It’s one of the things Craig noted he can offer the Bulls, and part of the impetus behind the trip to Nashville for training camp.

‘You have to practice and turn into a habit and a discipline”

Defense is all about helping each other fill the gaps and that can’t be done without communication. As real a problem as this is, it didn’t prevent them from finishing fifth in defense a season ago.

But both Caruso and Craig have pointed out that it’s not uncommon for younger teams to have relatively low levels of communication.

The problem is, they’re not that young. Last year, according to NBAage.com, the Bulls were the 9th oldest roster with an average age of 27. They were also 9th oldest by average age of minutes played at 27.9.

If the Bulls are going to improve upon their standing from last season, it’s an intangible area that needs work.

“I don’t think there should be a headline saying ‘Bulls have bad communication, they can’t have success this year,'” Caruso said. “I don’t think we have an issue communicating more than an average NBA team. But if you want to be great and win and play in the Playoffs, you’ve got to be an above average communicating team. And that’s something like any skill you have to work on.”

“You have to practice and turn into a habit and a discipline rather than just doing it when it’s comfortable and convenient.”

With plenty at stake for the Bulls this season, our team at CHGO has you covered with everything from daily podcasts and writing to pre-and -post game shows for every game. Starting things off, here is our season preview, predictions and hot takes heading into the 2023-24 NBA Season:

What is something you’re most looking forward to this season?

Matt Peck: Doing 82 Postgame shows with my CHGO Bulls crew, and interacting with our fellow Bulls fans every game night. Cop out answer? Maybe. But it’s genuinely how I feel. This job is insanely fun, and I never let myself forget how lucky I am to do it. I may not feel great about the team’s outlook this upcoming season, but I’ll never not feel great about getting to be a part of the Bulls fan community. It rocks so hard, and I’m awed and humbled by the passion of Bulls fans every day.

Big Dave: Looking forward to watching Coby White as the starting PG. I’ve been championing him and his play on both sides of the ball for years and I’m excited to see him get the opportunity he has wanted for just that long.

Mark Karantzoulis: To no one’s surprise, this one took me some time to come up with a real answer. After spending too long trying to convince myself that something inconsequential could actually be interesting, the obvious answer emerged: I want some resolution and clarity. Nikola Vucevic has alluded to it, but in some respects, this is a make-or-break season. It should be. And I’m looking forward to finding out if this team can get it together. If they rediscover their 2022 selves, there’s real scope for this to be a good and fun season. The reverse is true, too. This could get bad, quickly. Get the popcorn ready, bunker down, and let’s see what unfolds.

Will Gottlieb: On the court, the improvement curve and maturation of Patrick Williams and White. Those two are the key to any present or future success of the team and would completely change the outlook of the year.

How would you define a successful season for the Chicago Bulls?

Peck: This is a tough one. Do I prefer the immediate gratification of a surprisingly overachieving season? By that, I mean something like getting back to a Top 6 seed in the East, and making some noise in the playoffs. Or, do I prefer a season that results in taking steps in a different direction I feel would set the organization on a better path to future success? Because I think those are two different things. And I think the latter requires making serious changes to the current roster, and punting on competing for a playoff spot this year. My Bulls fan heart wants the playoffs. But my Bulls fan brain wants a fresh start (in a lot of ways, wink). In case it wasn’t obvious, my Bulls fan heart and brain often disagree, and they define success differently.

Big Dave: Seeded Playoff team.

Mark K: At minimum, this team needs to be a bonafide playoff team. Not some ‘hey, we won a play-in game’ nonsense. A real playoff team, one which is firmly entrenched in the top-6 in the Eastern Conference. But don’t stop there. You need to give me an actual playoff showing. None of this stuff from 2022, where you make the first round, but were absolutely embarrassed. At minimum, we need a competitive, 7-game series, preferably one that ends with a series win. For a team toting #continuity in the manner the Bulls do, anything less should be considered a failure.

Gottlieb: I’m less concerned with the number of wins and losses and more concerned with the Bulls making an appearance as a real playoff team. Making the play-in, or even getting gentlemen’s swept in the playoffs is not an accomplishment for an aging team in its ‘Last Dance’.

If this group is worth continuing on with, they have to make the second round of the playoffs.

The second round isn’t my expectation, but it should be the goal. That may sound like a lot, but I don’t view losing in the first round as a success. It’s the bare minimum and probably not something I’ll be excited about.

What is your biggest concern heading into the season?

Peck: I’ve been shouting about it for over a year. Shot profile. Three-point shooting. I’m sick of the Bulls losing game after game because of basketball math and a refusal to adapt. Can the Bulls actually change their offense to put a greater emphasis on generating good looks from deep? After their five preseason games — only one of which featured 30+ 3pt attempts in regulation — I’m not convinced. Simultaneously, can they implement this new focus on offensive rebounding without it severely affecting their Top 5 defense from last season? Huge question.

Big Dave: Free throw shooting. They have not been able to get to the line as a team and when they get there they don’t shoot a high percentage. Not getting a bigger opportunity to get free points in the league is a concern.

Mark K: Navigating the toils that come with trying to fundamentally change who you are on offense, and doing so during a brutal stretch of games. The first 25 games of the new season are rough. This is the first hurdle. How the Bulls emerge from this stretch will tell us a lot about who this team will be this season. If they hang tough, get through it all with a .500 record, then this will set everything up nicely. If they lose, and do so by stylistically reverting back to who they’ve always been, then buddy…

Gottlieb: The plan doesn’t work.

The Bulls have said all the right things: revamp the offense, commit to one another, go to Nashville and bond. All of it. We saw the fruits of that for one quarter in the first game of preseason and the rest was slightly better (?) but mostly the same. 

The preseason does have some predictive power and though the sample is small and the results don’t matter, the process was discouraging. After a difficult opening to the season, if the players start to realize things aren’t working and resort back to their old ways, things might begin to spiral.

What is your hottest take for the Chicago Bulls?

Peck: No offense to the Andre Drummond Experience — which we all know can be fun — but I think the Bulls should put an emphasis on small ball in their second unit. Why? Give me ALL the Julian Phillips minutes. I’m already looking down the road, fully aware of this current roster ceiling. And I think one of the best things Billy Donovan and the Bulls development staff can do this season is teach Phillips as much as possible, while playing him as much as possible. He looks like a real potential building block. I know the Bulls front office is in “compete now” mode, as misguided as that might be. I say to hell with that. Play the youngster, and play him a lot.

Big Dave: Zach Lavine 3rd Team All NBA.

Mark K: LaVine and/or DeRozan are wearing a Lakers uniform post the trade deadline.

Gottlieb: LaVine will be an All-Star.

Also, the Bulls end up with a top 5 pick in next year’s draft. 

Maybe they make the play-in, maybe not, but if they miss the playoffs, it’s about time they finally get some lotto luck.

What needs to happen for the Bulls to hit their ceiling?

Peck: LOL soooooo many things. Everyone needs to buy into a new offensive system that relies a bit less on DeMar DeRozan’s isolation scoring and LaVine catching fire, while DeRozan and LaVine still play like stars. I liked a lot of the ball movement we saw in the preseason. Can they stick to that? Can they create more good looks from 3 and actually take a modern NBA number of them most nights? Can they maintain a Top 10 defense? Can a team whose most important players stayed VERY healthy last season have the same luck again this season? Can Williams and White and Ayo Dosunmu all take significant steps in their development, and shine in their respective roles? Can Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig prove to be perfect fits for what this team was missing? If ALL of that happens, and the Bulls get a little luck with other East teams falling short of their own expectations, we might have a playoff team.

Big Dave: Williams being consistently good. Everything starts and ends with his play. If he’s playing consistently well, the Bulls are a problem. 

Mark K: It’s the same thing as last season, and the season prior: Williams taking a real, meaningful leap. It’s nice that White has made strides, and that will definitely help. But there’s no other 6-foot-8 behemoth on this roster who has the potential to be a true, impactful two-way threat. Williams has the ability to shift the Bulls’ trajectory. It’s unfair that, in so many ways, so much rests on his shoulders, but such are the burdens of high lottery picks and the expectations that come with it.

Gottlieb: What is their ceiling? Everyone played well last year and yet the offense was 24th. Everyone was healthy and yet they won 40 games. Their offense-first stars were each top 11 in total minutes last year and they were 5th on defense. At a certain point, your record reflects who you are and though the Bulls should be better offensively, I’m not sure they have the ability to overhaul their offense given the personnel didn’t change. 

Whatever that ceiling is, those same things need to repeat, while also revamping the shot profile and how they get those shots. Williams and White need to grow and they have to power through adversity, commit to the way they need to play and stay bought into the cause.

Preview and predictions: record and standings

Peck: 40-42, 10th in East

I have to be honest with y’all. This is what I see. I see a mid team that didn’t do much to improve this offseason, while other teams in the East got better. Maybe they win a few more of the close games they lost last season. But maybe the wins regress somewhere else. Maybe they’re not as lucky health-wise. I don’t see a team that will get back to 46 wins and a Top 6 seed. And I don’t see ownership and the front office deciding to blow it up midseason and steer toward the bottom if things aren’t going well. Because, well … they’ve had the opportunity to do so in several transaction windows over the past 1.5 years and have stuck to their #CONTINUITY principles. I see them riding this team out for a full season. After all, they went 14-9 after the All Star break last season! They could do it again!

I wish I felt differently, I really do. But I just don’t. I hope they prove me wrong. In either direction.

Big Dave: 46-36 (I now believe it’s 45 -37 but I’ve been saying 46 for months so I’m standing on it).

Mark K: 35-47, 12th in the East

This was an unconvincing preseason showing. Small sample, I know. Still, I haven’t seen enough to think the Bulls will dramatically change their offensive profile. Though I think he can, I don’t think Williams will make the leap. The Indiana Pacers and Orlando Magic are coming. Pressure will be amplified. Predicting that Arturas Karnisovas makes a sweeping move at the deadline is kind of wild given his recent history, but I’m going to do it.

[bold prediction alert]

The Bulls (sort of) blow this thing up, hand the team over to White, Williams and Dosunmu, and look to maximizing the value of 2024 draft pick — an initiative that makes some sense when you consider the Bulls are potentially on the hook to surrender their 2025 first-round pick to the San Antonio Spurs.

Gottlieb: 38-44

Before the preseason I had the Bulls as the ninth seed at 41-41. They are an exceedingly average team on paper, so an average record felt fitting. I wanted to talk myself into an improvement, but after the preseason, I have no problem knocking them down.

The Bulls are not a *bad* team, and there is parity in the East. Anything can happen, but that means missing the Play-In is on the table.

The Bucks and Celtics are the class of the conference. Cavs, 76ers, Knicks, Heat, in some order, are next and a tier above the Bulls. Then it’s the Hawks, Nets and Raptors who I still think are better. The Pacers, Magic and even Hornets (if they can get out of their own way) and Pistons are coming.

I don’t see them as a home Play-In team, so they max out at nine in my eyes. But if things go poorly, they could drop down, or out, of the play-in all together.