When the Chicago Bulls traded for Nikola Vucevic at the trade deadline last March, it signified that the team was going all out to make the playoffs. However, a month and half later, the Windy City franchise failed to even make it to the play-in tournament.
After they have been officially eliminated heading to the final day of the regular season, Vucevic addressed what went wrong for the Bulls after the huge midseason acquisition. For the All-Star big man, they simply didn't have the time to mesh well and develop chemistry enough to propel Chicago.
Not to mention that the Bulls were already in 10th place when they made the acquisition, which meant there was no room and opportunity for them to experiment and make mistakes. It didn't help that Zach LaVine missed 11 straight games from late April to early May due to the league's health and safety protocols.
“There were definitely things we could have done better,” the Bulls center said on their failed playoff bid, per Rob Schaefer of NBC Sports Chicago. “When you make a trade midseason a lot of things change and sometimes it takes more time, and unfortunately we didn’t have that. It is disappointing we didn’t achieve our goal, so we have to be realistic and say we failed at that. But the only thing we can do is move forward and hopefully use that as motivation going into next year.”
It remains to be seen what the Bulls will do in the offseason. Nikola Vucevic is under contract until 2023 and still has a lot of value at just 30 years old, so they can probably recoup some quality players and picks should they opt to move on to another direction without him
However, a case can be made that the Bulls should run it back after what has been a weird season. Should things get back to normal and the NBA return to an 82-game schedule, it is undoubtedly worth looking at how their current roster will fare with more time together. Besides, LaVine has one more year in his contract before hitting free agency in 2022.
Follow Us
Subscribe