The Chicago Bulls got mauled by the Miami Heat on Friday night, falling behind 34-17 after the first quarter in an eventual 112-91 loss. This happenedx in a win-and-in contest to determine the eighth and final Eastern Conference team in the NBA Playoffs.
Despite the fact Miami was without Jimmy Butler, and despite the typically late-arriving crowd in South Florida, Chicago never had a chance and missed the playoffs for the second straight year
Or as Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf would call it: A job well done.
There is a very specific reason why Chicago has won just three playoff games total since 2015-16 and why one of the NBA’s most-famous franchises hasn’t reached The Finals since 1998. It’s all by design. Winning titles and hanging banners is cool and all, but for a billionaire who cares more about his own pockets than his product, Reinsdorf’s singular focus has been on avoiding spending on anything so long as his team is competitive in the last month of a given season.
Reinsdorf explained as much almost exactly a year ago to the Milken Institute Global Conference panel called Game Changers: The New Business of Sports.
Well, let’s see how happy Bulls fans are after Friday’s flop:
We want change.
Sell the #Bulls, Reinsdorf. pic.twitter.com/Mg0g3zeae9
— Die-Hard Chicago Bulls Fans (@DieHardCBfans) April 20, 2024
Correct. To take it a step further, it’s PURE LUCK the Bulls have done anything since Jordan in 1998. Landing the D Rose pick was LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE. 1.7% chance to get the 1st pick. Luck is why anything positive has happened to the Bulls in 26 years.
The Reinsdorf family… https://t.co/bRaNZitRYO
— Sean Little (@ChicagoFlow) April 20, 2024
Will this change anytime soon? Probably not. The Bulls led the league in attendance in 2023-2024 with an average of 20,624 fans per night. The same as it was the year before and the year before that and a bunch of other recent seasons with the exception of the pandemic years.
There is simply no incentive for Reinsdorf to act any other way.
Perhaps every once in awhile there are a few seemingly seismic moves up top. Firing Gar Forman and John Paxson, for instance. But nothing changes because the overall philosophy remains the same.
Why pay a luxury tax to win more games when you’re already selling out every night? Why develop better player development and coaching staffs when you won’t go after the right players to win titles, anyways? Why hang onto players like Jimmy Butler when trotting out Michael Jordan-era players every few years sells just as many tickets?
The Bulls are stuck in the mud by design, and as long as Reinsdorf is calling the shots there won’t be any help coming. It’s not that he doesn’t want to win. It’s that he thinks anyone who tries to win doesn’t understand what it means to own a franchise.
“[Sports] is different than any other business,” Reinsdorf said at the Milken conference. “For example, your competitors are your partners. You earn probably half of your income in conjunction with your competitors. At the same time, you are at the mercy of your dumbest competitors.”
Bulls fans can say the same about their chairman.
