The Chicago Bulls were eliminated in the play-in tournament this season by the Miami Heat, who are now in the NBA Finals as the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference. To add insult to injury, the Heat are led by former Bulls star Jimmy Butler, who Chicago traded away in 2017.
Since then, Butler and Miami have gone on to have great success. They are about to appear in their second NBA Finals together. Meanwhile, the Bulls went through a rebuild and are a middle-of-the-pack team. KC Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago thinks Butler’s success should be enlightening, and that the Bulls cannot settle for mediocrity.
With how much parity there is in the NBA, the Bulls may be tempted to simply field a competitive roster and push for the playoffs. However, Johnson doesn’t think that’s good enough.
“The disparity between Butler’s postseason path and the Bulls’ since that 2017 trade should be enlightening,” Johnson wrote. “In fact, the worst thing Bulls management could do is rationalize a close play-in loss to the Heat and the current state of NBA parity as justification for a complacent offseason.”
For the past two years, the core of Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic has blazed the trail in Chicago, but the harsh reality is they aren’t a championship-caliber core.
Arturas Karnisovas seems intent on keeping them together and running it back, but a complacent offseason should be the last thing on Chicago’s mind. That would be a one-way ticket to another season of struggles.
