There are a number of different paths that the Chicago Bulls could take moving forward. They’re currently 24-25, clinging to the edge of the playoffs with no indication of a plan to become a contender or to plunge to the bottom into the lottery, what gives?
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Chicago is having the most average of all seasons you could have. Not only have they hovered around .500 for a large portion of the season, they’re even for the season on point differential as Nick Friedell of ESPN points out.
With the win, the Bulls now have a point differential of 0.0. Averaging 101.6 a game and giving up 101.6 a game.
— Nick Friedell (@NickFriedell) January 30, 2017
Of course, there’s always more to it for this team.
Looking at the record is one thing; the point differential is another. They both tell us that this year’s squad is mediocre. The Bulls occupy the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference, half a game ahead of the Charlotte Hornets and two games ahead of the Milwaukee Bucks. That’s a small margin of error for a team that has demonstrated plenty of error this season.
If things were to hold as they are now, Chicago would match up with the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs. It might be a decent series, not a sweep, but Boston wins that series. If they slip to the eighth seed, they’ll match up with the Cleveland Cavaliers – presumptuous, perhaps, but duh – and they would absolutely get run right out of the playoffs in that scenario.
There’s also the possibility that they move up a spot and get the Toronto Raptors, a team they’ve dominated in the regular season for the past several years. Couldn’t you just see Gar Forman and John Paxson talking themselves into believing that the Bulls are the better team and could sweep the Raptors? Making the playoffs isn’t much to shout about for Chicago, but sneaking into the second round would be considered a success for this team.
Things have been rough for the Hornets, so who knows what the rest of the season holds for them. They have Kemba Walker and head coach Steve Clifford, one of the best in the business. And then there’s the Bucks. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jabari Parker, Greg Monroe, and a soon-to-be-healthy Khris Middleton – sounds like a squad that could easily make up two games on the Bulls over the next 30 or so games.
Things aren’t dire for the Bulls, we can see that. What we can’t see is the future trajectory beyond this ho-hum season that everyone will look to forget as soon as possible.
Gar Forman hasn’t done a good enough job to keep his position, but he doesn’t seem to be on any kind of hot seat. He’s built a team that’s high on salary and low on talent. They lucked into Jimmy Butler, drastically overpaid Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo, and drafted themselves out of a future. And all of this was done while claiming they would get younger and more athletic. The only way that they have fulfilled this promise was when Joakim Noah and Pau Gasol left the team and were replaced by Robin Lopez, acquired via trade from the New York Knicks. He’s both younger and more athletic than the two departed players. That’s all they’ve got going for them on that front.
That doesn’t paint the greatest picture and when combined with the unresolved disappointments of a Chicago team that should have been during the Tom Thibodeau era with a healthy Derrick Rose, there is a certain amount of impatience among the fan base. Part of that fan base thinks that it could be time to tank.
Here’s a step-by-step of how the Bulls could tank and potentially get a big return, if that was what the organization were to decide. Of course, as bad an idea as a tanking might be, most of the ideas that we’ve seen manifested by Forman and friends have been equally as bad, or worse, and don’t seem to have a plan for the future.