The stats you’re about to see are not fabricated for the sake of this writer’s argument. They are real. They are accurate. Fair warning: they aren’t pretty. But before we get to the stats, how about a little summary for those of you who tuned out of Bulls Nation after they missed the playoffs last season.
Halfway Down A Dead End Road
The Bulls have reached the halfway point of the 2016-17 NBA season. Lots of questions faced this group in October, mostly because the group itself was very different from last season’s squad. Fred Hoiberg, Jimmy Butler, Taj Gibson, Doug McDermott, Nikola Mirotic, Bobby Portis and Cristiano Felicio are still here. But the era of Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah came to an unceremonious end. Pau Gasol moved on to get regularly posterized in a Spurs uniform. E’Twaun Moore and Aaron Brooks signed elsewhere in free agency. Tony Snell got swapped for Michael Carter-Williams in a trade with the Milwaukee Bucks. Mike Dunleavy got traded to Cleveland in a salary dump so Gar Forman and John Paxson could finally sign Dwyane Wade, the Chicago native whom they’ve stalked since he came to the NBA in 2003. Before that happened, they triumphantly announced the signing of veteran point guard Rajon Rondo.
In classic Gar-speak, the team’s general manager explained the signings of the two aging veterans. The goal for the Bulls this season was to remain relevant while getting “younger and more athletic.” The arrival of Rondo and Wade, and the money spent to make that happen, appeared to mark the opposite of actually carrying out that plan. But the Bulls front office wanted quality veterans on their roster to mentor the younger guys. Veterans who’ve reached the NBA mountaintop and know what it takes to get there. Positive role models on and off the court. Etc, etc, etc. Gar and Paxson both noted the importance of young players experiencing a winning environment while developing their skills. As they saw it, going full-on rebuild would hurt the spirits of their younger players if it meant losing lots of games.
There might be some truth to that, but it leaves the Bulls exactly where they are now. To quote a different front office guy who works for Jerry Reinsdorf, his basketball team is “mired in mediocrity.” That’s two of your two franchises, Jerry. Well done. The White Sox recognized that as a problem, and spent the past month of baseball’s offseason proactively making changes. The rebuild is on in the South Side, and it seems like most of their fanbase is happy about that choice and the wealth of prospects they’ve recently collected. But no such movement is evident for Reinsdorf’s other team.
Will GarPax (who should be on hot seats but aren’t) get any kind of sign from Reinsdorf about his wishes for the upcoming NBA trade deadline? Will the Bulls pull a White Sox move and sell off some of their older assets to continue (or begin, rather) a rebuild focused on youth? Taj Gibson and Robin Lopez are both on team-friendly contracts and could draw legimitate packages of younger players or draft picks. Jimmy Butler is playing at a superstar level and would undoubtedly bring a monster haul in return if they shopped him. His current contract is also ridiculously cheap compared to the star players who signed after this season’s cap spike. If GarPax really want to rebuild, there’s no better time to sell Butler than right now.
They won’t, though. It’s not their style to make huge moves at the deadline. Also, at just 27 years old, Butler is a valuable piece to keep around for several more years. And I’m not saying they should trade Butler. I’m merely pointing out that the in-between “retool” strategy from GarPax fell flat on its face and they’re wasting Butler’s prime with these silly signings of Wade and Rondo. The Bulls might get back to the playoffs this season as a 5-8 seed. If we’re being incredibly optimistic, they might even win the first round depending on the matchup. But they’re not beating Cleveland in a best of seven, and that’s all that matters. (As a side note, if you think that the Bulls’ wins over LeBron James in the regular season mean anything, stop reading here because you’re too simpleminded for the rest of it.)
But that’s not all that matters to Gar, who continuously cites the Bulls’ recent stretch of making the playoffs and winning lots of regular season games. Well, he lost the ability to use that argument last season. I bet he’s dead set on getting that argument back in his pocket as thousands of Bulls fans will be desperately calling for the man to be fired this summer. Even though making the playoffs in the weak Eastern Conference isn’t impressive, Forman will spin like hell to make Chicago (and his boss) believe it is.
And there’s the rub. Forman knows he needs the contributions of Gibson, Lopez and obviously Butler if this team is going to make the playoffs. So he’ll likely keep them on board to finish the season. There’s essentially a 0% chance they trade Wade, and it looks like Rondo is settling into a reserve role as the second unit’s floor general. That means fewer minutes in the back half of a pointless season for young guys like Cristiano Felicio, Bobby Portis, Jerian Grant and Denzel Valentine. Fewer minutes for GarPax to evaluate the young guys and judge their value as potential pieces of the youth movement going forward.
Now, about those ugly stats. They prove just how mediocre the Bulls are through 42 games of an 82 game season. Let’s take a look.
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