CHICAGO — Since their first-round exit from the 2017 NBA playoffs, the Chicago Bulls have posted win totals of 27, 22, 22, (COVID-shortened season) and 31 in the seasons that followed.
With the final week of the NBA’s 75th regular season underway, the organization has already achieved 45 wins, with three games left to play. And although they will be headed back to the postseason for the first time in five years, there is cause for concern in the Windy City.
Chicago currently holds the sixth seed in the Eastern conference. If the playoffs started today, they would face the Milwaukee Bucks who served the Bulls a 127-106 blowout loss on Tuesday.
That defeat marked a Bucks’ season series sweep of their divisional foes.
Alarmingly, Chicago’s record against the top four teams in the Eastern Conference is a combined 1-13. Their post All-Star break record is a mediocre 7-13.
Further, with their 0-6 mark against the top three teams in the West, the team will need to do some course correction before they face the league’s upper echelon of clubs in the playoffs.
“I’m hopeful that these experiences will harden us and we’ll get tougher and more resilient and battle-tested. I do think this is good because it shines a light on what you have to do and where you have to get to,” said Coach Billy Donovan
On January 1st, the Bulls sat atop the Conference thanks to a suffocating defense which ranked eighth in the league and show-stopping rim runs that embodied the leagues sixth ranked team in offensive rating.
Now three months later, the team has a defensive rating of 112.7 – the second worst of any of the twenty playoff/play-in tournament teams.
Prior to the All-Star break, The Bulls shot a league-leading 48.3% from the field. Since the break, they’re shooting 47.3% (13th in NBA). Pre-break, the team shot 37.6% (2nd) from 3-point range; Post-break they are shooting 35.1% (19th). Also, the ball movement has been lacking. Before the break, they averaged 24.5 assists per game (13th); post-break they are averaging 22.5 APG (25th)
In part, the regressions can be attributed to a team Covid-19 outbreak earlier this year as well as a slew of injuries that have kept defensive stoppers out of the lineup. Alex Caruso and Patrick Williams have both played only a couple of weeks’ worth of games after finally returning from long absences. Meanwhile, Zach Lavine has been in and out of the lineup as he deals with his nagging knee.
Chicago has been hoping for Lonzo Ball to get healthy, but he was ruled out for the rest of the regular season prior to Tuesday’s tipoff.
The team will have to swallow the tough pill of being without their point guard in the postseason. Demar Derozan spoke to Ball’s importance as the floor general: “He brings a different type of swagger to us when he plays…From his passing, his IQ, his capability to knock down shots…the whole dynamic of the game changes with ‘Zo out there.”
In the organization’s first season with the core of Lavine, Derozan, Nikola Vucevic, and Ball, there has certainly been an absence of continuity. At regular season’s end, that core four will have only played in 26 of 82 games – less than a third of the contests.
What doesn’t help the Bulls’ cause going forward is the fact that key rotational players do not have playoff experience. Derozan, Caruso and Vucevic will lead postseason first timers Williams, Coby White, Lavine and others through the perilous waters of April and May basketball.
In a hoops town as tough and as decorated as Chicago, the current roster knows better than to make any excuses going into playoff basketball. Coach Donovan will use the remaining contests against Boston, Charlotte, and Minnesota as tune ups to prepare his squad for what Chi-town hopes to be an exciting postseason run.
