After four seasons of pain, the Chicago Bulls clinched a spot in the playoffs on Tuesday night. While the Bulls suffered yet another ugly loss to an elite team in the Milwaukee Bucks, they clinched a top-six seed by virtue of the Cleveland Cavaliers losing to the lowly Orlando Magic.
It's a major accomplishment for Chicago to return to the playoffs. The Bulls had the worst cumulative record in the NBA over the last four seasons after trading Jimmy Butler, so making a leap up to top-six status makes for a successful campaign.
However, as great as it is that there will be playoff basketball back in Chicago, this comes with the caveat that the Bulls have been one of the NBA's worst teams since the All-Star break. Plus, in general, this team has been atrocious against the NBA's elite:
I gave this note on the @BernsteinShow.
Since 03-04, these #Bulls have the WORST record and WORST net rating of a top 6 seed, against top 10 net rating teams (per @cleantheglass).
The Bulls are 4-21, with a -11.9 net rating. pic.twitter.com/JPsyzu5eYk
— Rick Camp (@RickCCamp) April 6, 2022
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Injuries have hurt, but there's also a roster construction problem because the top three on this team have still played a lot of minutes together. In 1,165 minutes, the DeMar DeRozan-Zach LaVine-Nikola Vucevic trio has barely broken even. While a talented offensive group, they have major flaws on defense that have been exposed by the injuries to Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso and Patrick Williams. LaVine's own knee injury hasn't helped, though he has mostly been playing through it.
The Bulls will likely be a first-round exit, and then they'll turn to the offseason. Mostly running it back with some changes on the margins wouldn't be the worst thing in the world because this group is good when healthy, but there are some notable injury questions about this core. If a couple injuries to role players just totally blows everything up, that's a problem.
With this in mind, Chicago should be open to big changes. DeRozan isn't going anywhere, while LaVine will likely be back on a max contract. Assuming those two are indeed back, a trade of Nikola Vucevic must be explored. Vucevic is still a good player, but he has declined this season and has come up small too often against top competition. Given the weaknesses of DeRozan and LaVine, the Bulls could use more of a defensive presence in the middle while trying to add more size and shooting to the rest of the roster.
We discussed the Vucevic situation and the general state of the Bulls now that they're back in the playoffs on the latest episode of Blue Wire's Cash Considerations podcast:
It's unclear just what kind of trade market Vucevic would have, and it could be difficult to get a player who's actually better in terms of pure talent. However, Chicago could get a worse player who's a better fit for the rest of the core, and perhaps that helps them improve. This will be something to monitor heading into the offseason.
Cash Considerations: A Chicago Bulls Podcast is part of the Blue Wire Podcast Network. The pod can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts.
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