All in all, the Chicago Bulls failed to meet expectations this past season. That much is obvious. For a team with three players who have been All-Stars in the past three seasons, to miss the playoffs is an unacceptable result. And when extra context gets added in, the season goes from a normal failure to an epic failure.
Elias Schuster of Bleacher Nation penned an article discussing two embarrassing Bulls stats from this past year. One was the 1,642 minutes Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, and Nikola Vucevic played together – the most of any three-player lineup in the NBA. Despite that, the Bulls missed the playoffs.
When the Bulls dropped down to the sixth seed in the 2021-22 season, health was blamed. Yet, despite being infinitely healthier this season, Chicago got worse. Much worse.
“The “big 3” not having the health it needed to gel became Chicago’s main case for running it back,” Schuster wrote. “The primary reason for that was LaVine’s knee, which severely limited him during the second half of the season and required offseason surgery. So while the core still managed to play the 17th-most total minutes of any three-man combo, the hope remained they could improve on a plus-minus of -7 with increased time and health. Instead, they did the opposite.”
Schuster also pointed out that, with how poorly the Bulls performed, “continuity” is not the answer.
“The Bulls’ three best players had all the opportunity in the world to improve on last year’s sixth-place finish. Their inability to do that – in a pretty drastic fashion – should be all the front office needs to realize that “continuity” isn’t going to net better results.”
Arturas Karnisovas wants to keep the current core together, but that could end up being a huge mistake.
