It’s been 10 years since the Bulls last won a home playoff game, yet GM Artūras Karnišovas is still asking for patience
The Chicago Bulls lost to the Miami Heat 109-90 to end their season Wednesday night. The outcome of the game didn’t matter much, but as Tyler Herro roundly kicked the Bulls up and down their own home court to eliminate the Bulls for the third consecutive time in the play-in tournament, it was a painful reminder that the Bulls are still stuck in the same place they’ve been in for the better part of the last decade.
The Bulls have been satisfied with being the picture of mediocrity in the NBA. Not being talented enough to seriously contend, but not bottoming out entirely to acquire top talent through the draft. And in a year where the top prize for the team that lands the No. 1 overall pick is Cooper Flagg, it’s more glaring than ever that the Bulls have no idea what they’re doing.
No one who played in Wednesday night’s embarrassing loss is someone the Bulls should seriously consider building around for the long term. Josh Giddey and Coby White are talented players who could certainly fit into a role on a championship-caliber team, but neither is the main guy. Matas Buzelis had a strong end to his rookie season, but he doesn’t scream franchise centerpiece.
It’s interesting that, in a year when a generational talent like Flagg is expected to be the No. 1 overall pick, the Bulls did not do everything in their power to position themselves to draft him. Flagg is a franchise-altering player, someone Chicago could’ve built around for the next decade-plus.
But while the Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards and Charlotte Hornets will have the top-three best odds to land Flagg’s talents, the Bulls opted to be just competitive enough to secure one of the final play-in spots in a weak Eastern Conference, just to get smacked on their home floor.
This is just par for the course for the state of the Chicago Bulls. It goes back to Chicago’s front office holding onto guys like DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine longer than they should. The same goes for Alex Caruso. When the Bulls finally decided to trade all three of those guys, it only netted them a single first-round pick, which was their own from when they originally traded for DeRozan.
At the deadline, general manager Artūras Karnišovas touted how getting the top-10 protections off that pick was a goal. He said the same thing Thursday morning, while speaking to the media, that getting that 2025 first-round pick back was one of the four main goals this season.
That’s all fine and well, but since getting that pick back, the Bulls only worsened their draft lottery odds and are now expected to draft 13th. Drafting in the lottery is always a positive, but I’m sure that after the embarrassing loss on Wednesday night, the Bulls’ front office and its fans are sitting here now wishing they had a chance to select Flagg instead.
So, what is the plan going forward now? Karnišovas spoke of patience from the fans Thursday morning, saying, “I’m asking fans for patience because we’re in the first year of that transition. I think we’ve got to keep on building on this group by adding another player in the lottery, by going to free agency and adding another piece.”
But this fanbase has been incredibly patient for the last decade. The Bulls routinely rank near the top of fan attendance while playing in the largest NBA arena in the league. Fans show support even when the team is incredibly poor, but last night when the team was getting hosed, boos broke out on multiple occasions. Chants of “sell the team” were heard as the clock was winding down on Chicago’s season.
How much more patient can the Bulls’ ownership and front office expect from a fan base that still holds on to the glory years of Michael Jordan? It’s been 10 years since the Bulls last won a home playoff game, when hometown hero Derrick Rose hit this shot at the buzzer to take a 2-1 series lead against the LeBron James-led Cleveland Cavaliers team in the second round in 2015. That was the last time the Bulls were considered legitimate threats in the league; since then, it’s been mediocrity.
Karnišovas mentioned that getting to the summer of 2026, when the Bulls project to have more financial flexibility, will allow them to greatly improve the roster. Even then, that doesn’t get at the heart of the issue with this team. The Bulls should be bottoming out next season to position themselves to land the likes of AJ Dybantsa and Darryn Peterson, who are the projected top two picks of the 2026 NBA Draft.
The issue isn’t that the Bulls don’t have money to spend; we saw what they did with it when they had it: signed LaVine to an erroneously large contract that made it difficult to trade him later, and inexplicably signed Nikola Vučevic to an extension. The issue is this team doesn’t have “the guy” to build around yet. Without that, then it doesn’t matter how much cap space the Bulls have.
From the sounds of Karnišovas’ press conference on Thursday and all the messaging this season from the Bulls, it still doesn’t sound like this team is ready to fully hit the reset button. And until it does, then fans can expect this team to be right back in the play-in next season, probably losing to the Miami Heat, with little hope for change in the future.
