Last night’s Chicago Bulls victory wasn’t the official clincher, but it sure felt like it. With the Brooklyn Nets stumbling in blowout fashion to the Portland Trail Blazers, the Bulls’ OT win increased their buffer for the No. 10 seed to 2.5 games.
Basketball-Reference’s Probabilities Report now gives the Bulls a 72.1 percent chance of making the Play-in Tournament for a third-straight season.
“It’s probably one of the craziest threes I’ve seen live”Lonzo Ball reacts to Coby White’s INSANE 4-point play pic.twitter.com/B8CYXHYPv3
— CHGO Bulls (@CHGO_Bulls) March 1, 2025 The Bulls also really did play some good defense down the stretch. They made up for some struggles in the rebounding department with some good communication and some strong contests around the rim. Toronto only shot 8-21 from the field in the fourth quarter and 2-11 in OT. Was some of this just bad execution on the Raptors’ part? Sure, but the young Bulls didn’t make life easy on them. Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu, and Josh Giddey all did a nice job keeping their defender in front of them. Meanwhile, Stacey King was gushing about Zach Collins’ PnR defense for a reason. The recently acquired big man did a great job moving his feet and recovering to deter shots at the rim.Tremendous defensive possession from the Bulls here.Clean switching, physicality from Coby White to push Scottie off his spot a bit, and a tremendous read from Ayo Dosunmu pic.twitter.com/E90iilv6qJ
— Nekias (Nuh-KY-us) Duncan (@NekiasNBA) March 1, 2025 While I’m sure there will be some positive late-game lessons the Bulls can take away from that victory, we still can’t ignore the fact that a lot of the young talent wasn’t on the floor to close things out. Matas Buzelis played 4 minutes in the fourth quarter and saw zero action in OT. A lot of Lonzo Ball and Kevin Huerter and none of Julian Phillips or Dalen Terry. And I’m sure if Nikola Vucevic was healthy, he would have been out there. Again, it’s a fun individual victory, but what exactly does a win like this accomplish for the organization? Every game DOES matter when you’re trying to set yourself up for sustained success. As I’ve said many times before, this feels like another example of the Bulls living day-by-day instead of working toward a greater goal. For what it’s worth, head coach Billy Donovan made mention of the potential fan frustration regarding another Play-In appearance after last night’s game. While he expressed an understanding, he emphasized that players are never going to tank. Here is the full quote shared by Cody Westerlund of 670 The Score:“They want to play in the postseason,” Donovan said. “They’d love to be able to try to advance and do that. I think that that’s why these guys compete. Listen, I totally understand people’s perspective on long-term this. But when you’re dealing with players that have, in some cases, a very, very short window to play, and a year of basketball for a guy is a big deal.
“It’s really, really hard to ask a player to or give the impression to a player or a team that, ‘Eh, winning is not that important.’ These guys get paid to play the game of basketball and compete, and they want to win. We’re trying to do everything we can to do that. Do we have a championship-level team or one of the best records? No, but there is an opportunity to play after our last regular-season games, and these guys want to do that. And they’re competing for that. They take their job very serious. I think it’s terrible if you tell a player, ‘Listen, this season, this game, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything.’ It means a lot to these guys.”
Look, I agree with practically everything Donovan is saying. In no way do I expect players to throw in the towel and care about lottery odds, especially when that drafted player could end up being their replacement. It’s not their responsibility to put this team in a position to lose games. Indeed, every last ounce of the blame falls on the shoulders of this front office. They are the ones who are supposed to create a young, developing roster that isn’t capable of making the postseason. They are the ones who need to send a clear message to the coaching staff to prioritize player development over wins and losses. They are the ones who held onto Zach LaVine until the trade deadline and allowed the Bulls to start the season 18-20. It’s their job to get out of the middle, and they have continuously refused to do that. I think what is especially confusing to me is that they went out of their way to regain control of their first-round picks moving forward. This immediately suggested that they want to build through the draft, and K.C. Johnson of Chicago Sports Network has even gone on to stress as much. But how do you do that by not picking near the top of the order? The Bulls are acting like a team that is perfectly comfortable picking in the late lottery, and this is the exact method that GarPax tried and failed at for years! Yes, the draft can be a crapshoot and there is always value to be found across the board. But the simple truth is that the franchise-changing talent is more often than not in the Top 5. Hey, at least Lonzo Ball is having fun playing basketball again …Lonzo Ball having fun again >>> pic.twitter.com/Gim1okNde6
— Bleacher Nation Bulls (@BN_Bulls) March 1, 2025 Matas Buzelis propaganda!Matas Buzelis is cold pic.twitter.com/GfPmrZnjiv
— Brett Usher (@UsherNBA) February 28, 2025 Tab takes a look at how coaching was perhaps the least of the Blackhawks’ problems. Luis takes a look at another potential offensive line target for the Bears this offseason.ELSEWHERE AT BN: Check Out BN Fantasy | Subscribe to The BN Newsletter
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