With the arrival of Victor Wembanyama, Scoot Henderson, and the rest of the 2023 NBA Draft Class on the horizon, the allure of losing as many games as possible and tanking to secure a high draft pick is at an all-time high for several teams around the NBA. Although the Chicago Bulls are certainly not in the business of intentionally losing games, the thought of maximizing this team’s future potential has doubtlessly crossed the minds of the front office.
The Bulls now find themselves entangled in an awkward position where they’re much too good to tank, not quite good enough to be a contender, and are lacking much in the way of young assets, draft capital, and financial flexibility. Given these unfortunate truths, it’s hard to say for sure just what Chicago’s best course of action may be in the long term. Should they continue down this path, or give up now while their players still have immense trade value?
In a poll of over 650 Chicago Bulls fans on Reddit, we were given a decisive answer to this tricky situation. At the time of this writing, 40.6% of voters in the poll supported the idea of trading away Patrick Williams, Coby White, and other assets that could help this team genuinely contend. Another 29.4% advocated for the team to do nothing for now, while 29.9% elected to choose the option where the Bulls would sell their assets and head toward a rebuild.
Given the pessimistic nature of Chicago sports fans, I’m not all that surprised the idea of a rebuild gained a bit of traction, but it’s still telling that over 70% of fans in the poll are committed to the current core. Despite a rough start to this season and an even rough end to last year’s, there remains hope the Bulls could genuinely contend when Lonzo Ball makes his long-anticipated return to the court.
Regardless of this team’s perceived ceiling, it’s far too early for the Chicago Bulls to blow it all up and begin another rebuild.
To truly gauge where the hearts of Bulls were at, we conducted a second test of our own to certify whether or not fans truly believed in this current core’s ability to win now.
If you were GM of the Chicago Bulls, what do you believe would be the best direction for the franchise to take?
— Pippen Ain't Easy (@BullsBeatBlog) October 23, 2022
Unsurprisingly, the votes in our Twitter poll have produced similar results and reflected the general consensus from the previous poll. If anything, this group of voters was even less over-reactionary to the team’s recent struggles. Only 16.8% voted to take the necessary steps to rebuild, with the promise of improving via trade being an overwhelmingly favorable outcome, receiving over 60% of all votes.
I still believe there’s plenty of time for the Bulls’ young core to prove themselves before they find themselves on the trade block, but the more impatient the fanbase grows, the shorter their leash will be as a real piece of this team’s future moving forward.