Some teams work as a grand idea, as a theory, as a vision in someone’s fevered imagination, but don’t work in real life. The Bulls are one of those teams.
Put Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic together and you have dynamite. That was the belief, at least. It takes a Big Three to win in the NBA, and the Bulls had theirs. What team vice president Arturas Karnisovas apparently failed to consider was that a trio of talented players would be incapable of bringing out the best in each other and creating a team that was greater than its parts.
LaVine gets 30 points anytime he wants. So does DeRozan. Vucevic gets a double-double anytime he wants. They don’t get victories anytime they want. The Bulls are every bit an under-.500 team.
This is a two-year working draft that has gone nowhere and is going nowhere.
It gets worse: There are no good solutions.
The first option is to try to add talent before the Feb. 9 trade deadline. That would imply that a new player or two can put an end to the up-and-down cycle the Bulls have been on all season, a cycle the Big Three and coach Billy Donovan seem incapable of stopping. Who is this magical player and why would another team want to give him up?
The second option is starting over. That would be an extremely tough sell to a fanbase that was told several years back that a rebuild would bring success. It’s midway through Year 3 of the Karnisovas era, and the guy wants to go back to Square 1? If so, he must really be into inflicting pain on himself and others.
The third option is standing pat and hoping things get better. Hope is not a strategy. It’s a prayer. If you’ve watched the Bulls this season, you know that no one up there is listening.
A season and a half of evidence suggests this team is missing the unquantifiable something that great teams have. Last year’s group was good (46-36) but couldn’t beat opponents with better records, a weakness that was perfectly illustrated by a 30-point home loss to the Bucks in the first round of the playoffs. Milwaukee won the series 4-1.
This year’s team (22-26) is having trouble beating opponents with worse records. You have to give the Bulls credit for mixing it up in the how-to-lose category. After a loss to the lowly Hornets on Thursday night, Donovan talked about the character of his players. Character: the last refuge of a losing team.
“There’s too much substance of good guys that want to do the right things and care,” he said.
If this team was as chock full of character as Donovan thinks it is, he and the players would not be talking about the need for “desperation” and “the right mentality,” as they were after Thursday’s loss. Tough players don’t have an on/off switch for those things. To them, every game is desperate, even if that game is Go Fish. To them, the right mentality isn’t a choice. It doesn’t need to be conjured up. It doesn’t require a team meeting or a seance. It’s always there.
The Bulls have three very good players who can’t be great together. That’s almost hard to do. It’s almost as if the team is working not to meld on the court. Karnisovas, the man who put this together, has to answer for that.
If there’s one culprit on the court, it’s LaVine. He’s a product of his basketball upbringing. He’s every kid who came up through the summer basketball circuit and was told he had to get his shots, his touches. He’s every kid who was told he needed to showcase his talents. That’s what his game looks like. It’s very hard to build a winner around that. See James Harden.
You can’t argue with LaVine’s statistics this season (23.6 points, 4.7 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 37.3% three-point shooting). You can argue with the lack of team success. He’s making $37 million, as part of the five-year, $215.2 million contract Karnisovas gave him last summer. That’s supposed to translate into victories. It hasn’t, no matter who’s on the floor with him.
(Whoever says, “If only the Bulls had a healthy Lonzo Ball,” will be asked what they want for their last meal.)
This is The Team That Doesn’t Work. You can say no one could have envisioned three such talented players not succeeding together, but envisioning is kind of Karnisovas’ job, isn’t it? Building a team isn’t just about amassing talent. It’s about assessing it. There’s nuance involved. This Bulls team has none of it. They hit you over the head with exciting individual efforts and very little in the way of substance.
Some big ideas work. Some don’t.