ctaylorjr14
Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley gambled on their Big 3 of Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan & Nikola Vucevic and chose the road of continuity heading into this season. The belief was the three All-Stars would finally be able to come together, play together and lead the Bulls into real playoff contention this year. AKME also came into this season with the mind frame of possibly needing to blow this team up if things didn’t pan out the way they had hoped.
It hasn’t panned out. The season opened with a 20-point loss to the upstart OKC Thunder which prompted a players only meeting… after the 1st game game of the season. Billy Donovan has stressed the team needing to getting up more shots due to the fact the Bulls were dead last in the league in 3-pointers made & attempted last season. And while the Bulls are 2nd in FG attempts per game this season, they also rank in the bottom 10 in the following categories:
- 23rd in scoring
- 27th in FG percentage
- 24th in 3PT made
- 22nd in 3PT attempted
- 23rd in FT attempted
- 27th in rebounding
- 27th in assists
- 28th in 3PT made differential
- 30th in 3PT attempted differential
- 29th in rebounding differential
That’s the mark of a team that takes bad shots, can’t make baskets, can’t score enough, can’t get to the FT line enough, can’t rebound and can’t move the ball around.
Too many times this season the Bulls have gotten off to poor starts and relied on their bench players, led by Alex Caruso, to inject the team with some life and effort. It shouldn’t take your bench players to get the team to play with effort – that’s what your Big 3 are supposed to be doing. The bench players should be sustaining what the starters have done, not rescue them due to piss poor effort. Speaking of starters, Patrick Williams has been benched in favor of Torrey Craig.
The latest fiasco of this young season happened last night against the Milwaukee Bucks. Once again the Bulls got off to a horrific start and found themselves staring down the barrel of a 17-point deficit. It was a hole they wouldn’t be able to dig themselves out of as they lost 118-109. LaVine and DeRozan were a combined 8 for 33 from the field, 2 of 13 from 3 while scoring a combined 31 points. During the game, Zach & DeMar at one long stretch collectively missed 21 of 24 shots. The Bulls as a team shot 38% from the floor despite getting up 11 more shots than the Bucks. The loss dropped the Bulls to 4-7 and no answers seem to be in sight.
So what should AKME do at this point? Should they play the season out and see if it starts to come together or should they look to do what they should have done during the offseason – blow it up. Well… it looks like the Bulls brass could be open to doing some form of the latter.
Shams Charania, NBA Insider for The Atlantic and Stadium, dropped this bombshell earlier today:
It’s time to blow this thing up. This combination of Vooch, Zach & DeMar can’t coexist. AKME missed badly on Patrick Williams. Dalen Terry, the Bulls 2022 1st round pick, can’t sniff the court and has been assigned to the G-League a couple of times this season. The Bulls didn’t even have a 1st round pick in 2023 thanks to the Vucevic trade. And if the injury to Lonzo Ball was that significant, what does that really say about your team?
It’s time for AKME to admit they swung and missed wildly. This experiment didn’t work… and now for the sake of the organization and its fans it’s time for AKME to be done with ‘continuity’.
About Author
