Chicago Bulls: LaVine-Boylen dynamic boiling over after loss

The losses keep piling up for the Chicago Bulls and shooting guard Zach LaVine and head coach Jim Boylen don’t seem to be on the same page.

A loss for the Chicago Bulls at the hand of the Oklahoma City Thunder at home at the United Center on Feb. 25 by the final score of 124-122 saw head coach Jim Boylen have another poor dynamic with one of his players. One of his rookies had a career-night on Tuesday in that bad two-point loss, but Boylen and the Bulls couldn’t get it done.

As the Bulls star the dynamic scoring guard combo of shooting guard Zach LaVine and rookie point guard Coby White had a big night against the Thunder, one of the bigger storylines remained the dynamic with Boylen. When the Bulls were trying to fight and claw back into the game late in the fourth quarter, LaVine pulled up for a three-pointer from the logo that sank. He had some choice words for what looked to be directed at Boylen during the game’s broadcast.

It took a hefty amount of postgame quotes from LaVine to get the attention from his rant away from Boylen. According to a report from ESPN, LaVine didn’t have this rant directed to Boylen when he drained that impressive shot from the logo in the fourth quarter.

Here’s what that report from ESPN’s Eric Woodyard had to say on the matter.

"“You get into the heat of the battle and between players when you guys are talking, you talk smack sometimes, right? And that’s all it was,” LaVine told ESPN, after finishing with 41 points.“We were still down. Dude was talking a little mess to me and I just let him know, ‘Look, I’ve got 40, I don’t know why you’re talking to me,'” he added. “I don’t know why they said they thought I was talking to Jim, but it was just people being competitive in the game talking.”It was LaVine’s sixth 40-point game of the season. The only Bulls player with more in a season was Michael Jordan, who posted at least seven in 11 seasons, per ESPN Stats & Information research. Despite the Bulls’ 20-39 record, LaVine is averaging a career-best 25.5 points per game, which he feels has heightened his media attention."

There has to be some level of dysfunction going on in the Bulls locker room to have this storyline escalate to such an extreme degree. This made national news, and even got on ESPN during the daytime show “The Jump”.

However, LaVine still had a big game in the loss to the Thunder on Tuesday night. He registered 41 points on 19-of-35 shooting from the field, four assists, five rebounds, and one steal. He and White combined for more than 75 points on the night.

The Bulls moved their record of a measly 20-39 on the season after the loss to the Thunder. That makes it a 1-3 record that the Bulls own since the end of the All-Star Break. They had a few winnable games out of the All-Star Break and the Bulls completely squandered it.