The Chicago Bulls have had a disaster of a season, to say the least, with a poor 27-38 record and sitting tenth in the Eastern Conference standings.
The Bulls’ season has been slowly going downhill, from injuries to key contributors in the starting lineup to incompetence in the front office; the Bulls have not fielded a competitive roster for this season.
The Bulls’ front office has made excuses for the product they’ve put out on the court, and one Bulls beat writer has finally called it out, but specifically called out Bulls’ VP of Basketball Operations, Arturas Karnisovas.
Chicago Bulls front office slammed for poor decision-making
Joe Crowley, who covers the Bulls for the Chicago Sun-Times, recently slammed the Bulls in his latest article, in which he labeled the Bulls’ front office, but Karnisovas in particular, as ‘mediocre’ which is the perfect way to describe how the season has gone.
Per Crowley:
“In Bulls executive vice president Arturas Karnisovas’ world, there apparently are levels of mediocrity. And the tier in which he must be most comfortable wandering around is competitive mediocrity.
That’s NBA hell for most, but that’s not the case for Karnisovas. He embraces it.”
Crowley also adds that the Bulls aren’t even playing poorly enough to get a decent pick in the draft this offseason.
“The Bulls aren’t good enough even to be an afterthought in a prospective playoff series against the Cavaliers, Celtics and Knicks, but they aren’t bad enough to put themselves in the best position possible to try to hit the lottery and land a franchise-changing player such as Duke’s Cooper Flagg.”
An accurate assessment
Crowley’s assessment of the Bulls season and how the front office has operated couldn’t be more accurate. The biggest blunder of the season had to come at the trade deadline when the Bulls made one move.
Instead of trading all their valuable assets, the Bulls only dealt Zach LaVine for a group of unproven players and one pick. They ended up keeping both Lonzo Ball and Nikola Vucevic, who could’ve netted them more valuable draft capital and instead gave Ball a two-year extension.
For good measure, Karnisovas, in his post-trade deadline press conference, baffled reporters by stating that he thinks he can win with a team of ‘good players’, which is unrealistic. As Crowley puts it in his piece: ‘The NBA is a superstar league’, and the Bulls lack a legitimate superstar to compete with the teams that do.
The NBA has transitioned into a superstar league, where teams have at least two superstars to compete. Then, it’s the front office’s job to find the role players to surround the stars with to facilitate a winning culture.
The Bulls need a superstar to win
In the case of the Bulls, they have some solid pieces on the roster, but they lack a true superstar.
Josh Giddey, Matas Buzelis, and Zach Collins are all great role players, with Matas having the potential to develop into a star, but he’s still a rookie.
This offseason will be critical for the Bulls to bring a star to Chicago to build around, and they hope they get a decent pick in the draft, where they likely will miss out on Cooper Flagg.
If the Bulls can land a star and pair them with players on the roster, they could be more competitive next season.
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