It’s important to set appropriate expectations for the Chicago Bulls as we approach the new NBA season. Here are five for the five core members.
Chicago Bulls basketball is upon us almost without warning in part because we wrapped the previous season just over two months ago. COVID-19 has changed so much but we still need to know what to expect from our favorite team. A new front office and coaching staff bring renewed hope after years of futility.
If we think back to last season, we’ll remember dreams of making the playoffs as the eight-seed with little in mind beyond that. No one in their right minds thought the Bulls were a championship contender last season and that bore out as the season went on.
Hiring Billy Donovan won’t change that all on its own.
Players are going to need to step up and prove their worth. What they do will not only impact what the Bulls do this season but also going forward. Chicago expects to be flush with cash in the 2021 offseason, set to be rife with top-shelf talent. But before they get there, the Bulls are (wisely) going to evaluate what they currently have.
We all went into last season with expectations for this squad that proved to be unreasonable. And to avoid that this time, we aren’t setting the bar based on the results of the process as much as the process.
It really isn’t as deep as it sounds.
If we look at the preseason as a more competitive practice than we get a pretty good idea of what the team wants to do. As we learned last year, that doesn’t always translate into production.
But last season was different in that the biggest change from the end of the previous season and last summer was the Bulls hitting more shots. Even that wasn’t all that surprising once you remembered Jim Boylen had been with the franchise since 2015.
This year with Donovan, though, has been refreshing. Again, it’s just preseason. So the Bulls 3-1 record means little. Them being 13th in scoring means little. They were 15th last preseason before plummeting to 27th in the regular season. Oh, they’re 13th in assists? 10th in the 2019 preseason, 23rd once the real games began.
But we can still set expectations and goals for the individual players, basing them off of what we’ve seen the Bulls try to accomplish and establish as their identity this preseason.
First up is the Bulls scoring-dynamo wing man.