CHICAGO — With each step they take toward the playoffs, the Chicago Bulls provide less confidence to the most important postseason question: Can they beat the best teams in the NBA?
The Bulls have a fairly simple Achilles’ heel: They can’t beat the top competition in either conference. Monday’s grueling 112-99 beatdown courtesy of the Miami Heat reflected growing concern about the Bulls’ inability to execute against the best.
With 20 games remaining in the season, the Bulls are 0-11 against the five teams with a .615 winning percentage or higher: the Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors, Memphis Grizzlies, Heat and Utah Jazz.
That record doesn’t spell immediate disaster for the Bulls in the playoffs — four of those teams compete in the Western Conference, posing problems only if the Bulls reach the NBA Finals. But although the Bulls are second in the East and have a 24-14 conference record, only two of those wins were against the other top-six teams in the conference.
The Bulls are 0-3 against the Heat and Philadelphia 76ers, dropped their only game against the Milwaukee Bucks and split a pair against the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics. Thirteen of the Bulls’ 24 conference wins came against teams that currently would miss the playoffs.
So what’s holding the Bulls back from beating their top competition?
Inexperience shows in key moments
After the loss to the Heat, coach Billy Donovan emphasized the Bulls’ inexperience as the cornerstone of their inability to compete with top teams. DeMar DeRozan has 58 playoff games under his belt, but the remainder of the roster lacks experience on a contending team.
Zach LaVine remains the heartbeat of the Bulls, but he labored through the first seven seasons of his career without a playoff berth. Rookie Ayo Dosunmu is currently tasked with handling the ball in his first season primarily playing the point. Even center Nikola Vučević, a two-time All-Star, has played in only 11 playoff games through his first 10 seasons.
Inexperience can be a silver lining for a franchise still in the building process — for instance, Dosunmu’s growth this season will likely pay dividends in future years. But for a Bulls team ready to win now, the growth process needs to happen in a hurry.
“We have to get battle-tested in some of these games,” Donovan said. “You just don’t have a lot of guys that have gone into this kind of experience, and I think it’s really, really good for us. ... When you’re playing against good teams, you’ve got to have that consistency. We haven’t been consistent.”
Injuries impact the defense — but how much?
The Bulls are open about how much they miss injured guards Lonzo Ball (knee) and Alex Caruso (wrist). For months, the concept of “getting whole” has been chanted by players and coaches as a sort of healing mantra for a team desperate to return game-changing players to the lineup.
This isn’t untrue. The Bulls need their entire roster to compete at the highest level, particularly in the postseason. Without Ball and Caruso, the Bulls have been overly reliant on third-stringers to log empty minutes off the bench just to give the starters rest. Dosunmu has been a breakout player stepping in as the starting point guard, but few franchises would feel comfortable placing the ball in the hands of a rookie to lead them through the playoffs.
But the Heat game showed that Caruso and Ball won’t be a magic fix. The Bulls were sluggish in transition, sometimes failing to contest wide-open passes into the paint. Players bit on shot fakes and fouled unnecessarily, while Vučević and Tristan Thompson struggled to physically match Bam Adebayo’s strength in the paint.
Still, DeRozan said the team feels the return of its injured defensive stars will be a turning point — even if it’s at the end of the season.
“Being able to get guys back, that’s going to be another second wind for us emotionally and physically,” DeRozan said. “Even before those guys come back, I’m not worried. The energy in this team will definitely heighten just to have those guys back. I’m not just leaning on those guys to get back. Even before then I have the utmost confidence in those guys.”
The final 20 games offer a chance to toughen up
The good news for the Bulls: Things only get harder from here. The Bulls face the second-hardest schedule in the NBA over their final 20 games behind only the Bucks. Nine games are against top-six teams from either conference, including one more each against the Heat and 76ers and three more against the Bucks.
The Bulls need this for a variety of reasons. The schedule offers the Bulls extra looks at their best competition in the East, creating more chances for Donovan and his team to figure out how to counter their matchups. Younger players such as Dosunmu and Coby White will continue to navigate their learning curves. And the competition also will toss returning players such as Ball, Caruso and potentially Patrick Williams directly into the fire, which Donovan hopes will expedite the process of molding them back into the team dynamic.
It might seem hyperbolic to say this stretch could make or break the Bulls’ postseason — after all, once you make the playoffs, nothing else really matters. But the next six weeks are the Bulls’ final chance to become, as Donovan and DeRozan put it, “battle-tested.”
Their answer to that challenge could prove whether this Bulls team is truly ready to contend for the Eastern Conference title.
