CHICAGO — The Chicago White Sox spent the first four months of the 2022 season trying to get to the .500 mark, then passed up an opportunity to make a major acquisition at the trade deadline.
The 2022-23 Bulls have been running on parallel tracks through the first four-plus months of their season and on Thursday stood pat the NBA trade deadline.
Any similarity between Sox general manager Rick Hahn and Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas is purely coincidental, though both executives are fluent in corporate-speak and ultimately report to the same boss, White Sox and Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.
That doesn’t mean they share the same philosophy or that Reinsdorf put the kibosh on any potentially big moves this week.
We don’t know what conversations went on between Reinsdorf and his two execs or if he let his son, Bulls President Michael Reinsdorf, deal exclusively with Karnišovas without any interference. We do know they all understand where this Bulls team stands right now.
“Mediocrity and average is not OK with us,” Karnišovas said before Thursday’s road game against the Brooklyn Nets while providing no real evidence that the future will be any different than the present.
At least he didn’t pull out the vintage “mired in mediocrity” quote from Hahn in summer 2016 that signaled the start of the Sox rebuild.
“The next step is what’s going to happen for the rest of the season and how we can address in the draft and free agency the shortcomings,” Karnišovas said.
In other words, it’s basically on the Big Three of DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević, and to a lesser extent Alex Caruso, to prove the core was deserving of another chance.
It’s easy pickings now for Bulls fans, who can point to the Sox’s lack of urgency last summer as a harbinger of what’s in store. After the Sox failed to reel in any players besides left-handed middle reliever Jake Diekman at the August trade deadline, Hahn expressed “disappointment” that he wasn’t able to get more done.
“Anyone out there who is feeling a level of frustration or disappointment, I’m there with you,” Hahn said. “Second, and probably more important, the fact of the matter is we still very much believe in this group that’s inside this clubhouse right now. We feel they are very much capable of playing better baseball than we’ve seen over the first few months and that there’s a makings of a potential championship team in there should they get to their accustomed levels of performance.”
The Sox finished at .500 and out of the postseason, then doubled down and made only a couple of free-agent signings in the offseason.
Like Hahn, Karnišovas on Thursday tried to ingratiate himself with the team’s fans.
He feels your pain.
“I’m like (the) fan base,” he said. “Hate to lose, and a lot of those (were) close games. But a lot of those games we were in it. It’s just disappointing to see that our record doesn’t show we improved in a lot of those games. ... After a busy couple days, we came to the conclusion this was the best group for us to give us the best chance to win.”
The Bulls weren’t expected to make any big moves before Thursday’s deadline, so the lack of action wasn’t a surprise. But Karnišovas’s insistence that the current group is capable of making a deep playoff run despite its obvious deficiencies remains a head-scratcher to anyone who has been paying close attention since Lonzo Ball’s fateful injury 13 months ago.
Karnišovas told reporters he made a lot of calls and talked about “a lot of deals” but felt it was “prudent to stick to this group” until the end.
The source of his confidence is difficult to fathom. The Bulls have yet to finish above .500 in a calendar month and with their 116-105 loss to the Nets on Thursday fell to 10-18 on the road. They’re at the bottom of the league in 3-point attempts in an era in which long-range shooting is considered a must for any contending team.
And in clutch game situations — with a point differential of five points or fewer in the final five minutes — the Bulls are 10-17, a paltry .370 winning percentage.
What will change from here on out with the same core?
The level of frustration among Bulls fans hasn’t reached Sox-ian proportions yet, but it’s getting close. Every small step forward is met with a roadblock. The Bulls won three straight before Tuesday night’s game in Memphis, Tenn., and with no DeRozan in the lineup they turned in their worst offensive performance of the season, failing to reach the .500 mark again.
The Bulls probably can make the postseason as a play-in team even with only slight improvement. They are ninth in the Eastern Conference and have shown in wins over the Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat that they can hang with the big dogs when they’re at their best.
But a play-in spot would be considered regression after being a No. 6 seed last season. They have 27 regular-season games remaining to get their act together, though it looks as if they won’t be getting any help from Ball. Karnišovas said the point guard has made “small improvements” and the team would have more to announce after the All-Star break.
“I still have confidence in this group right now,” Karnišovas reiterated. “If we would’ve pulled it out (in Memphis) we’d have been in the eighth spot. There is still wiggle room. There is some parity in the East. The trade deadline shifted some quality more towards (the) West.”
But the only significant “shift” of quality was the Nets sending Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks and Kevin Durant to the Phoenix Suns. The Celtics, Bucks, 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers remain head and shoulders above the Bulls.
Karnišovas still can add a veteran player who is bought out by his new team, and there figure to be a few available after the busy deadline day of salary dumps, with second-round draft picks flying from team to team like Frisbees. But adding someone like Utah Jazz guard Russell Westbrook, as one rumor suggested, might be a chemistry experiment that proves disastrous.
Hopefully Karnišovas won’t have to give a sad postmortem in April.
But if he does, at least he can Google Hahn’s postseason address from October.
