Chicago Bulls vs. Milwaukee Bucks Takeaways: Giannis Shows Out, Butler Disappears

Where From Here?

Things are dark right now. The loss on Friday night is easily one of the worst losses that most of us can remember. Not just this season, but in many years. For me, it probably hasn’t quite felt this way since after the Bulls struggled through a losing series after the first Derrick Rose injury.

We know that Rajon Rondo is a massive liability. He’s bad at basketball, he’s had at least one run-in with the coaching staff, and he seems to try less and less with each new game. His contract is bad and was foolish from the start.

Wade isn’t capable of carrying a team and was a poor signing in my opinion. He’s taking up a ton of cap and probably not adding any wins the rest of the way. However, if he does add wins, it won’t be any wins that are going to be useful.

Butler had his worst game of the season, scoring just seven points, getting in foul trouble early and looking generally the lesser player in his matchup against Parker.

Look at the defense, being picked apart by a merely average Bucks team.

Also, notice the personnel on the floor. Rondo and Lopez were the starters kept on the floor the longer to start the game. Butler was a necessity because of fouls, but why is Rondo out on the court with Denzel Valentine, McDermott and Bobby Portis? I’m not looking at the numbers, but that just feels like a defense that doesn’t exist.

Let’s jump right into another potential argument from the last paragraph. McDermott is on the court for his offense. Okay. This offense?

McDermott has been a great scorer at moments during his time in the league. It’s been rare. He’s a liability on defense and when his shot isn’t falling, which is often, he’s a negative addition to lineups. That reminds me of another streaky Bull, Nikola Mirotic. Mirotic has now logged two consecutive DNP-CDs. He sat on the bench while Paul Zipser, Cristiano Felicio, Jerian Grant and Isaiah Canaan made their way into the blowout.

Mirotic can still be a useful NBA player, but there is no way that happens in Chicago. He’s been a very poor shooter this season, so I get why he doesn’t play. However, he shouldn’t be back next season so why not keep running him and then flip him before the trade deadline? Honestly, the Bulls are losing Taj Gibson and Mirotic during the offseason unless they have money to blow and even in that scenario, I don’t believe Taj wants to stick with a team that kept him on the bench during his prime years, only to start him at the last moment.

Oh, and Gibson left Friday night’s game injured. It probably isn’t serious, but he could miss some time. That makes it fair to speculate that Mirotic will return to the rotation, though in what capacity is unclear.

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And everything about Chicago’s future is unclear right now. I called for a rebuild on the fly before the season and that is dangerous and problematic, but this team isn’t going to challenge anyone in the playoffs. So if you’re going to linger around the eight or nine spot in the conference with moveable assets, but don’t make any moves, what are you really doing?

What are the Bulls doing? What are they going to do? It was painful loss, but maybe some true growth is going to come out of this.