The Bulls’ season has been reduced to wondering where Zach LaVine will be traded and debating who should or shouldn’t be on the team’s new Ring of Honor.
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It’s not what you’d call much-watch basketball, but we’re used to that with the Bulls. They haven’t been excellent in a long time. They’re not broken. They’re not fighting with each other or with the coaching staff. It’s simply that the pieces that came in the box don’t fit. It’s bad meets boring. At this point, I’d take the drama of brokenness over the tedium of round holes and square pegs.
Doesn’t it figure that just when the Bulls are welcoming trade inquiries for LaVine — and tacitly acknowledging that they can’t win with him — he goes down with a foot injury and is out three to four weeks? This being the Bulls, it would surprise no one if LaVine’s foot simply fell off. And doesn’t it figure that the Bulls start winning with LaVine sidelined? That has somewhat quieted the fans who think that everybody beside LaVine is to blame for the futility of LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic.
The problem we’re confronted with here is the same exasperating problem we’ve had with the Bulls for much of the past 25 years: The same people who likely will be responsible for making this right are the same people who made it wrong in the first place. This time around, that’s Bulls vice president Artūras Karnišovas and his staff.
Here’s a one-sentence defense of Karnišovas: It’s still surprising that what looked so good on paper — LaVine, DeRozan and Vucevic — is so below-average in reality.
You’d think it would have worked. It didn’t, and that’s on the guy making the personnel decisions. LaVine’s fondness for having the ball in his hands isn’t conducive to winning. That’s it. Show’s over. Thanks for coming, folks. Some other team will find that out, eventually. But it was Karnišovas’ job to know it in the first place. Hindsight doesn’t matter now. What we’ve seen in LaVine’s time here matters. Great individual talent. Can’t win with this version of him.
And now we’re supposed to trust that Karnišovas is going to take whatever players and draft picks he gets for LaVine — and maybe for DeRozan and Vucevic, too — and win? If you say so.
For emotional protection, Bulls fans might want to hope for the best and don body armor in anticipation of the worst. It’s worked for Bears fans.
In sports, the Chicago Way has nothing to do with Sean Connery talking about Al Capone. It has to do with Chicago teams’ habit of celebrating the past as a way of obscuring the fact that the present and the future are so unattractive. It’s a way of life with the Bears. If you ask them for an NFC North title for Christmas, you’ll find a Walter Payton jersey under the tree instead.
The Bulls recently announced their new Ring of Honor. The team’s record stands at a slump-shouldered 9-16. They’ll probably call that a coincidence, but they could have honored the past when they were winning with Tom Thibodeau and Derrick Rose. But they chose now, with hope in short supply. They know that nothing brightens up a dark day like Michael Jordan-generated warm and fuzzy feelings. He gave the Bulls six NBA titles and several lifetimes of cover.
There’s nothing wrong with the inaugural Ring of Honor. It hits most of the right notes: Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Phil Jackson, Artis Gilmore, Johnny “Red” Kerr, Dick Klein, Jerry Krause, Toni Kukoc, Bob Love, Dennis Rodman, Jerry Sloan, Chet Walker and Tex Winter. It also will include the entire 1995-96 team, which won 72 regular-season games and an NBA championship.
The problem with the honor roll will become obvious going forward. The Bulls plan to add to the list every two years. That means they’re going to run out of worthy candidates at some point. Rose deserves to be there. So do Luol Deng, Joakim Noah and Jimmy Butler. Jerry Reinsdorf will get his due. So will LaVine.
What about Reggie Theus? Tom Boerwinkle? Kirk Hinrich? Norm Van Lier? Do they belong?
Are Bulls fans really going to see Carlos Boozer’s name on the same United Center shrine as Jordan’s?
Are we going to celebrate the two-year Elton Brand era?
The Ring of Honor eventually could turn into the Ring of Pretty Good, the Ring of We Hardly Knew Ye and the Ring of John “Crash” Mengelt.
Unless Karnišovas gets busy.
