The Chicago Bulls’ 2019-20 Season Is Mercifully Over

A Chicago Bulls season that began with promise has finally ended with a thud.

As expected, the Bulls will not be a part of the NBA’s return-to-play plan. The league’s Board of Governors officially approved a 22-team format on Thursday, featuring the 16 current playoff teams and six other teams that went into the season hiatus within six games of a playoff spot. The approval from the National Basketball Players Association is a mere formality.

The Bulls’ 22-43 record had them eight games behind the eighth-seeded Orlando Magic, so they missed the cut by a couple of games. Chicago wasn’t exactly deserving of a chance to extend its season anyway thanks to that poor record, and The Athletic’s Shams Charania even reported that “several players and staffers” in the organization preferred not to resume their season.

Bulls ownership did want to return, and both Michael Reinsdorf and new executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas expressed disappointment that their season is over:

Still, the Bulls understand why they won’t be traveling to Walt Disney World
DIS
given the circumstances, and now the franchise can look ahead to more key organizational changes.

Bulls fans would rather look ahead to hopefully better times than look back at the wretched season that was. Head coach Jim Boylen confidently declared making the playoffs as a goal at media day, and there was scattered hype for Chicago as a team that could be a challenger for a playoff spot.

Instead, the Bulls face-planted from the opening tip. They blew a late lead against the Charlotte Hornets to open the season and then suffered several other confounding losses. Otto Porter Jr.’s early foot injury turned into a nearly four-month ordeal. The Bulls were sniffing the playoffs around Christmas thanks to an easy December schedule and a weak Eastern Conference, but then the schedule toughened up and the injury bug hit, resulting in a slide out of playoff contention.

Zach LaVine’s All-Star-caliber play and Coby White’s hot streak before the hiatus were bright spots, but positives were few and far between. Too often the focus was on Boylen’s poor coaching, Lauri Markkanen’s stagnated development or a failure to close out games. Sometimes it was all of the above. The Bulls went just 2-23 against teams .500 or better, perfectly highlighting their incompetence against meaningful competition.

This colossal failure of a season should result in Boylen’s dismissal after big changes were already made in the front office, and signs are pointing to that happening at some point in the near future. Karnisovas and new general manager Marc Eversley will be in Chicago soon, which means the decision on Boylen should come not long after that.

The new front office will likely make other moves in the front office as well, but what happens with the roster brings the most intrigue. Karnisovas has said he’s in no rush to blow everything up, but that doesn’t mean a decision won’t be made to shake things up. Anything and everything should be on the table when it comes to a franchise that has been miserable since the Jimmy Butler trade.

The NBA announced several key dates that will interest the Bulls as they look ahead. The NBA Draft Lottery will take place on Aug. 25, with the 2020 NBA Draft then set for Oct. 15 and free agency opening Oct. 18. The NBA is also eyeing Nov. 10 as the open of next season’s training camp and Dec. 1 as the start of the 2020-21 campaign, but those dates are negotiable given how quick of a turnaround that would be from the end of this season.

When it comes to the lottery, the Bulls sit in the No. 7 slot, giving them a 7.5% chance of winning the No. 1 pick and a 32.0% chance of picking in the top four. The Washington Wizards could technically wind up with a worse winning percentage depending on how they perform in Orlando, but they can’t tank past Chicago because the lottery seedings of the non-playoff teams will be based on records through March 11.

Looking past the draft, Porter will have an easy decision to make on his $28,489,239 player option. Markkanen is eligible for a rookie-scale extension, but it’s hard to see the sides agreeing on a deal after his disappointing season. Kris Dunn, Denzel Valentine and Shaquille Harrison are all restricted free agents, and they could all be gone. The Bulls aren’t set to be big players in free agency, but they could make noise on the trade front.

Whenever the Bulls do return to the court, they could look a lot different. There has been chatter about a potential Fall League for the eight teams not involved in the Disney return, but nothing is set in stone and the Bulls may wind up not playing another game until November or December.

While that’s a long wait, the hope is Chicago’s fresh start makes it worth it.