Things have gotten better for the Chicago Bulls.
Right?
This season certainly feels better than the last. No cataclysmic losing streak. No rumblings of trade requests. The offense runs faster and punches harder. The defense has slowly developed into something almost passable over the last 10 games. Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević are playing some of the best basketball of their careers.
But those positive vibes don’t mean much in actuality. After their 138-105 win against the Washington Wizards on Friday night at the United Center, the Bulls sit 21st in the league with an 18-20 record. The same day last year, the Bulls were two places higher in the standings with an 18-21 record. And the year before that was almost identical: 19-22 record, 21st in the league.
It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. And as the Bulls play out the same pace for yet another season — despite the departure of key players and the disruption of their offensive style — it’s hard not to feel that this team is getting stuck in the amber of repetition.
“We don’t want to be just stuck in the middle,” coach Billy Donovan said. “I don’t think there’s a question about that.”
The consistency of these results has been paired with inaction as executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas has opted not to make trades or disrupt the roster for three consecutive seasons. If this year is the fourth it would represent a catastrophic failure to react reasonably to the reality of the team’s inability to compete in a weak Eastern Conference or establish relevance in the NBA at large.
For this reason, the next four weeks of the season leading to the Feb. 6 trade deadline will be the most pivotal period of Karnišovas’ tenure with the Bulls.
So far, silence is the status quo in Chicago. The Bulls have yet to engage in serious trade conversations for LaVine or Vučević. The front office is open to hearing offers for every player on the roster, per a league source, but even promising young players such as Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu aren’t drawing much attention on the trade market.
Donovan trusts that Karnišovas will inform him when — or if — any major decisions are made to change the roster. But so far, Donovan said no trade conversation has escalated to a level that required the coach to be tapped into the conversation.
“With the number of games that are coming, (Karnišovas) is not inundating me with a lot of conversations that are — I don’t want to use the word meaningless, they’re all probably important — but they’re nothing of substance, right?” Donovan said. “I think he’s going to be looking at everything like he always does to try and figure out ways to get our group to be better. He’s listening to everything.”
The tasks at hand are simple — but not easy. The Bulls need to fully commit to the business of recouping losses. This means utilizing the trade window to loosen up cap space and acquire value geared around long-term roster construction, whether via picks or a younger star.
The emphasis on picks has been a tricky tactic in Chicago. Donovan shares a familiar concern about the ethos of maneuvering away from immediate success to secure a draft pick: “How do you know the pick is going to be any good?”
This is the common refrain of the nonbeliever. Many draft picks are not good. Many lottery picks are not good. For every No. 1 pick who lives up to the hype, there are a handful of Nos. 3 and 4 picks who fade deep into the wallpaper of the league. Talent identification is not a perfect science. Injuries and physical durability are unpredictable. This whole thing, in short, is a crapshoot.
But that doesn’t negate the fact that asset acquisition is a proven path to success in the league. Sometimes things don’t work. That doesn’t mean it’s worthless to acquire picks, whether to select top talent through the draft or to acquire players via trades.
None of this is news to Karnišovas. He has been facing pleas to trade players and acquire picks for years. And at least in theory, the executive has stated he understands asset allocations to be a primary priority this season.
So what’s the issue? It could be that the rest of the league isn’t buying what Karnišovas is selling. It’s hard to believe that LaVine and Vučević aren’t garnering some level of attention, although their contracts are prohibitive for some teams. It’s even harder to believe that cheaper talent like White or Dosunmu isn’t catching anyone’s eye.
A more likely prognosis could be a lack of bargaining power for Karnišovas. The Bulls have allowed themselves to be outmaneuvered into poor trades — most recently swapping Alex Caruso for Josh Giddey in a player-for-player deal that immediately downgraded the roster without providing any future asset value.
The Bulls have suffered from a range of issues in approaching trades: overvaluing players, hanging on to assets for too long, allowing players to walk in free agency. And this season, the Bulls have hit a clear wall — they can’t afford another trade window to close on a series of missteps.
Despite all of this history, Karnišovas still echoes his familiar emphasis of wanting to be aggressive on the market. The next four weeks will prove whether that is all talk — and, even more crucially, whether Karnišovas is actually equipped to make any serious impact on the future of basketball in Chicago.