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This past offseason, the Chicago Bulls finally faced the music and accepted that a rebuild was necessary after two consecutive years of mediocrity. They facilitated a sign-and-trade that sent DeMar DeRozan to the Sacramento Kings, and then they traded away Alex Caruso in a straight-up deal for Josh Giddey, giving the team another young prospect to build around.
But the necessity level of an act never dictates it difficulty. In fact, the more necessary it is for something to be done, the more likely that is to be more difficult. To that end, Bulls head coach Billy Donovan is already bracing for the challenges that await the team following the loss of DeRozan and Caruso as well as the integration of the team's new young pieces, such as Giddey and rookie Matas Buzelis.
In particular, Donovan is expecting the Bulls to have their fair share of difficulties in preventing their opponents from scoring.
“(Getting stops) are going to be a challenge for us. We're going to have to do it by committee…we're going to have to be creative to cover for each other in certain situations. We're going to have to put a huge emphasis on (contesting shots),” Donovan said, per Will Gottlieb of CHGO Sports.
The loss of Caruso is definitely a huge blow to the Bulls' point of attack defense. At first glance, only Ayo Dosunmu and Patrick Williams are the consistent rotation players who project to be average to above-average defenders for the Bulls, although the silver lining is that the team has some good size across multiple positions.
Giddey may not be the best defensive player in the world, but him being 6'8″ makes up for a lot of his deficiencies on that end of the floor. Lonzo Ball could perhaps return at one point in the season, and he should provide some solid defense as well.
But the team's other personnel leave a lot to be desired on defense. Nikola Vucevic has never been the best rim-protector, while Zach LaVine and Coby White don't rate too highly on that end of the court. But it's good that Billy Donovan is aware enough that defending will be the Bulls' biggest challenge entering the 2024-25 season, as it should help them prepare some tactical configurations that would help hide their deficiencies in that aspect of the game.
Will the Bulls bottom out?
Compared to the league's true bottom-feeders, the Bulls aren't quite there yet. They might be hopeful that they perform poorly enough to give themselves a shot at Cooper Flagg, but the Bulls have a collection of shooters and playmakers that they will be a tough team to beat especially when a team is unprepared or fatigued.
The Bulls have also said that they were placing an emphasis on pushing the pace, which should make the most out of the talents of Coby White, Josh Giddey, and Matas Buzelis, just to name a few.
Nonetheless, Billy Donovan said that he is not mindlessly going to give the minutes to young players with the goal of bottoming out. The Bulls' goal, first and foremost, is to build a winning culture and to let those youngsters earn their stripes.
“Can we establish an environment a culture of how we need to play? This is not a situation where, we're not going to just play the younger guys and see what happens,” Donovan added.
