The Bulls in Pain: A Nail in the Coffin

The Bulls and the Cavs were the only teams that didn’t make an in season trade this year. The Cavs made their huge move in the offseason when they traded for Donovan Mitchell so their lack of action is pretty justifiable. The Bulls, on the other hand, have absolutely no justification for their inaction at the deadline. 

I just don’t understand how you can watch this Bulls team and not think there is something seriously wrong both with the roster construction and with the team chemistry. Everyone was making a huge deal about OG Anunoby potentially going for 3 first round picks and a team supposedly offering 4 firsts for Mikal Bridges but this is just indicative of the META in the NBA. Forwards who can guard multiple positions and knock down 3s are a recipe for success. 

Just look at the Boston Celtics, one of the best teams in the league, they essentially do not have a single guy that can’t hit shots AND play elite defense. Honestly the only guys on the Celtics that can’t shoot are Timelord, Marcus Smart and maybe Derrick White (38.5% on 4.7 attempts this season, which is nice). 

The Bulls are one of the most guard heavy teams in the entire league. Per Cleaning the Glass, all 8 of the Bulls lineups that have played 100+ possessions contain 3 guards. Essentially the Bulls are always playing three of Lavine, Caruso, Ayo, Demar and Coby White. What’s humorous about this is that NONE of those players are both plus defenders and reliable three point shooters. The Bulls roster construction makes it obvious how fundamentally unserious we are as a team.

The numbers back up that the Bulls are an atrocious shooting team. Per 100 possessions, the Bulls rank DEAD LAST in three point attempts. You might think that the Bulls shoot so few threes because they only shoot when they are open but no the Bulls are also 20th in overall three point percentage. 

Well maybe the Bulls don’t shoot a lot of threes because they are an offensive rebounding team. Nope, the Bulls are 29th in offensive rebounding. We do, however, rank FIRST in long midrange shot frequency and fifth in long mid range accuracy! Woo hoo, we are the very best at the very least desirable form of offense! 

Here are the Bulls 3 point shooting splits over the last 7 games: 10/32 (mid), 15/35 (decent), 3/21 (horrid), 5/21 (frightening), 5/26 (please make it stop), 7/35 (wow, we suck), 8/26 (I wonder if there is a good matchup on League Pass).

I legit believe that the Bulls have one player on their roster that even shows the potential to be a plus defender and shooter, Patrick Williams. I recently watched a high school or pre-draft interview or something with PWill and the interviewer talked about how PWill’s parents were both basketball players and how that affected his game. Patrick then took it upon himself to mention that his parents kept telling him that ‘he didn’t have to play basketball’. At first I interpreted this as a sign that PWill is actually dedicated to the game but now I wonder if I should actually interpret it the opposite way. Perhaps, PWill’s parents kept telling him he didn’t have to be a hooper because they were hoopers and could tell he didn’t have the fire for the game. PWill is a guy with all the tools to be great and he even shows flashes of it but the mentality and approach to the game is simply not there. It’s tough to watch. 

What About Lonzo Ball?

Now is as good of time as any to mention that Lonzo Ball does actually fit the model of a guy who can defend and shoot the hell out of the ball. It was just announced that Lonzo will be out for the entire season as he continues to rehab his knee. I have been predicting, essentially since he missed training camp, both that Lonzo would not be back this season and that there is a non-zero chance that he never plays again. 

Current reports are essentially that Lonzo has seen a number of specialists and they all tell him the same thing– there is no structural damage in his knee so he should be “healthy”. And yet, Lonzo still experiences a ton of pain when he is running, jumping or doing anything he needs to do to play basketball. In all likelihood, Lonzo is experiencing neurological issues with his knee. Meaning the part of his brain that ‘creates’ pain within his body is interpreting that his knee is still messed up when in reality his knee is not physically damaged. 

This may sound bizarre, that his brain thinks he is hurt when he isn’t, but in reality this actually aligns perfectly with how contemporary medicine understands pain as being produced through a number of factors. 

Take the Tale of Two Nails popularized by Professor of Pain Psychology Rachel Zoffness. In one of the tales (both are true stories), a construction worker jumped off of a platform and began screaming in pain as his foot landed on a nail. His co-workers quickly rushed him to the hospital and winced in pain as they imagined what he was going through. At the hospital, the doctor started by taking the construction worker’s boot off and was shocked when he noticed no blood. The doctor then realized that the nail had not even pierced his skin, in fact the nail went straight through the bottom of his boot and between his toes. He had actually sustained no physical injury at all but was still in an immense amount of pain. This tale demonstrates that our brain creates signals of pain not just on what happens to our body but rather what we think is happening to our body.

In the second tale, we see essentially the reverse of our construction worker. A different construction worker was using a nail gun when it unexpectedly went off and a nail hit him in the face and appeared to fly off to the side. At first he just had a minor toothache and a bruise under his jaw, he didn’t think too much of it. Then, six days later, he was still feeling some pain and went to the dentist. He got back an X-ray that showed he had a 4-inch nail embedded in his head. Because he thought that the nail had never pierced his skin his brain never created the proper signals of pain. If he had not gone to the dentist, it’s likely that the nail would have pierced his cerebral cortex and he would have died or become brain dead.

The Bulls, somehow, are experiencing both of these stories at the same time. On the one hand, we have Lonzo Ball with a healthy knee who can’t seem to stop thinking about the pain of going under the knife, aligning with our nail-in-the-boot friend. On the other hand, we have a giant nail in our skull that we need to remove before we become completely brain dead, this is AKME (the Bulls front office). The Bulls not making a move at the trade deadline would be like if the nail-in-the-skull guy decided not to go to the dentist to get himself checked out SIX days after the nail lodged into his skull. 

In this analogy, one of the six days between the accident and the dental scan was the second half of last season when the Bulls looked exceedingly mid. A second day passed when the Bucks casually walked us out of the playoffs by saying ‘ha, beat us with some shooting’ and we couldn’t hit a damn thing. The third day passed when we didn’t sign a single forward in the offseason despite that being a clear area of need. Days 4 through 6 happened this season when we kept losing to terrible teams and were never able to stay above .500 for more than a few days. And with the passing of the trade deadline we are on day 7 and the dentist doesn’t have any availability for the next 7 days, it will most likely be too late to save ourselves from being brain dead. 

This offseason, we will be faced with the impossible decision of either overpaying for Vooch, a player that clearly does not contribute to winning, or letting him walk away for nothing just two seasons after paying a king’s ransom for him. We won’t have the ability to ‘tank’ and try to keep our top 4 protected first round pick from the Magic because we kept all of our good players. Caruso and Demar will both be a year older and have a year less on their team friendly contracts. The doors of a ‘retool’ don’t stay open forever and it’s become clear that those doors have shut. 

Oh my god, wait, I forgot to mention that the Bulls managed to get Patrick Beverly off waivers! Wow, we could really use another guard with an unreliable jump shot! I am so glad that we made a savvy move to make our team better without having to give anything up!

My personal preference would have been to trade the vet guys away for assets but that might just be because I am still obsessed with the Sam Hinkie model of building a roster. I wonder if there was some other kind of move the Bulls could have made, even if it was lateral. Could we have dangled the Portland pick and Coby White and gotten someone worth a damn back? Could we have packaged together some combination of Ayo and Coby for enough second round picks to get Jae Crowder or another wing? 

At this point, all I hope is that the Bulls realize their alignment with the Tale of Two Nails. I am not quite sure who to point the finger at between ownership and management– AKME were given a clear win-now directive when they took over which handcuffed their decision making. On the other hand, AKME let Wendell Carter Jr. and Lauri “all-star starter” Markkanen walk out the door and cashed all their chips in for a big man who can’t protect the rim, switch out onto guards or reliably hit 3s. Maybe a flower will bloom another day for the Bulls. Lonzo will learn to take the boot off and realize his knee has healed, PWill will finally find the confidence he needs to become an all-star and we will get lucky in the draft. Regardless of what could happen, one thing is clear: it’s time to put the nail in the coffin on this Bulls core.