MIAMI — After seeing their season hit the same dead end from a year ago, Chicago Bulls players no longer could toe the company line.
One by one, the team’s best players came as close as they could to saying the quiet part out loud.
They’re over continuity, and however it must happen. they’re ready for change.
The unified message emerging from the locker room is one the team’s management certainly will hear. The only question is whether the front office will ignore their players’ cries too.
“We’ve got to figure it out. Figure something out.” Bulls guard Coby White said after his team’s 112-91 loss in Friday’s Play-In Tournament elimination game against the Miami Heat. “We can’t keep relying on the Play-In to get to the playoffs. Like the last two seasons, we’ve been this close and we ain’t make it. So we don’t need to rely on the Play-In next year. We need to try to get that top-six seed.”
DeMar DeRozan went a step further when asked what he needs to see from the Bulls franchise as he weighs his unrestricted free agency decision this summer.
“A competitive team,” he said. “A team that gives us a chance to be able to make a run.”
The Bulls finished in ninth place with a 39-43 regular-season record, beating the 10th-place Atlanta Hawks in the first Play-In game before suffering a familiar fate Friday. After finishing in 10th place last season, the Bulls dramatically won their first Play-In game at Toronto before losing control late and falling on the road against the Heat.
DeRozan remembered the anguish he and his teammates felt on that 2 1/2-hour plane ride home last April. This time, with Heat star Jimmy Butler injured, the Bulls blew an opportunity to advance to the first round as the Eastern Conference’s eighth seed and a matchup against the top-seeded Boston Celtics.
In a win-to-get-in game, the Bulls’ offense betrayed them. They matched their regular-season low for points in a game and shot 38 percent, narrowly topping their 37.4 percent regular-season low.
In the end, the Play-In Tournament for the Bulls was just another two-game sample that exposed their long-standing inconsistency. Play great one night. Play dead the next.
Before ducking off into the offseason, DeRozan delivered one final analogy, which he’s become known for using, to describe his three seasons in Chicago. It came in response to a direct question of whether he still sees a future for himself with the stagnant Bulls. While DeRozan said his desire to remain in Chicago hasn’t changed, he also made clear his frustration.
“It’s kind of like when you’re crawling up that hill and you get knocked back down,” he said. “And you take a look up at the mountain and you say, ‘Damn, I’ve got to do it all over again. I’ve got to figure it out.’ ”
The players can only do so much. They weren’t perfect but they gave everything they had during a turbulent season filled with major injuries.
“It hurts because the guys in this locker room came in every day and worked their butt off,” White said.
That’s why White wouldn’t touch a question about whether wholesale changes are needed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just work here, brother. I’m not the front office.”
Everyone knows who the onus is on.
The major players from Bulls management, Artūras Karnišovas, Marc Eversley, Pat Connelly and J.J. Polk, watched Friday’s massacre in Miami from the first few rows behind the Bulls’ bench. They got a master class from Miami, a team running on fumes and culture yet still surgical enough to build a 29-point lead on the Bulls.
“They’re called the Heat culture for a reason,” White said.
How do the Bulls go about building their culture? How does Chicago escape the Play-In cycle and chart a winning course?
“I think it’s just creating that desperation,” Alex Caruso said. “Not being satisfied. Having an end goal and seeing the vision for where you want to be.”
Caruso paused.
“Not being satisfied,” Caruso repeated. “There’s got to be a vision for where you want to be and what you want to achieve.”
Roster construction comes before anything, and the Bulls’ repeated shortcomings on that front are largely to blame for their failure to make the playoffs for a second consecutive season. The team’s final two games were a microcosm of how disastrous last summer’s free-agency period was for the Bulls.
Chicago’s only significant free-agent signings, Torrey Craig and Jevon Carter, played a combined 24 minutes over two must-win games. Javonte Green, who was signed from the G League in March, outplayed both. Second-year forward Dalen Terry, who owns 895 career minutes, became the injury-ravaged Bulls’ default sixth man.
Carter averaged only 13.9 minutes and shot a career-low 32.9 percent on 3.3 3-pointers per game. Craig’s injuries limited him to 53 contests and his botched pass to himself off the backboard while trailing by nine in the home finale will define his season more than his rugged rebounding and determined defense.
Neither player bolstered the Bulls’ depth as anticipated to help the team withstand season-ending injuries to Zach LaVine and Patrick Williams.
Those suboptimal additions only compounded on top of the previous summer’s fringe acquisitions: Andre Drummond and Goran Dragić. Drummond has been a sturdy reserve center behind Nikola Vučević. Dragić appeared in 51 games before being waived last season. He’s retired now.
“I just want to win,” DeRozan said. “More than anything, just have the opportunity to win and not got to go home and see the first round of the playoffs, the second round of the playoffs. It’s frustrating.”
The Bulls went 19-32 against teams above .500 this season and 20-11 against teams below .500. That stat alone explains who the 2023-24 Bulls were. They played hard and remained competitive, but never were they a top-end team even when whole.
Shooting has been a problem area in the past few seasons. The Bulls marginally improved but were worse defending the 3-point line. When it wasn’t shooting, the culprit was rebounding, poor starts, pick-and-roll defense or a lack of attention to detail. All season, the Bulls played with the inconsistency of a team playing above its head. Some nights, they played so hard it just worked.
But the roster was always flawed.
“It’s a results-orientated business,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “We didn’t get the results ultimately that we wanted to get as competitive as we were. But I will say this from my standpoint being with these guys every single day, I appreciated and respected what they did this year for each other and the organization.
“You’re 5-14. You’re not even in the playoff picture at all. They fought their way back. And I think at times we did play good basketball. We were not a good 3-point shooting team all the time. There were things that we lacked and weren’t great at. But I thought that the spirit and the fight and the way they tried to compete was really good all year long.”
Now the Bulls players are crying out for help. They did their jobs to the best of their ability.
After another disappointing ending, they can’t help but wonder aloud when the people pulling the strings will join them.
(Photo of Coby White: Rich Storry / Getty Images)
