Bulls ownership stinks. Don't let the bad front office off the hook

Yes, the Reinsdorves continue to waste a potential NBA superpower. But the guys they hired have been a disaster for a while.

Good morning. A two-week reprieve? Are we talking about armageddon or Jamahl Mosley's job? Let's basketball.

The Bulls fired their front office this week, sending Arturus Karnisovas and Marc Eversley into unemployment after six years in Chicago. It sounds like head coach Billy Donovan, recruited by Karnisovas and Eversley as one of their first moves in the CHI, will remain around if he so chooses.

That's what ownership is saying, at least, and it's a pretty big red flag for any new incoming general manager or president of basketball operations. In reality, if Donovan doesn't retire or ask permission to seek other jobs, he will be the de facto non-ownership leader of the team. The Reinsdorves have telegraphed that they are committed to him, and that anyone they hire in the front office will similarly need to be on board with Donovan's presence. That gives Donovan extensive influence.

This is all another mark on the ledger of the Reinsdorves' crimes against the Bulls fandom. They are mediocre owners at best, and quite possibly straight-up bad, saved only by the luck to land Michael Jordan and a few home runs by Jerry Krause. Jerry Reinsdorf is legendarily spendthrift for an NBA (and MLB) owner who mints money on his team(s), and his son Michael hasn't shown an ability or inclination to change that. Chicago is a massive, lucrative market. The Bulls fandom is rabid and huge. And yet: here we are.

But while the Reinsdorves (and all bad NBA owners) deserve scorn and blame, don't let Karnisovas and Eversley off the hook. They had a completely futile run in Bullsland. This era represents the third worst stretch in franchise history, beaten only by the pre-Jordan era and the post-Jordan era. To be sure, Karnisovas and Eversley inherited a relatively bereft roster led by Zach LaVine. But they really butchered it from there.

The central crime, the Rosetta stone of what went wrong for the Bulls starting in 2020: the new front office traded Wendell Carter Jr. and two picks (Franz Wagner and Jett Howard) to Orlando for Nikola Vucevic, which made a young big on his rookie contract, Lauri Markkanen, expendable. The Bulls got basically nothing for Markkanen in a sign-and-trade when he reached restricted free agency; a year later, Cleveland turned Markkanen and picks into Donovan Mitchell. Vucevic, meanwhile, helped lead LaVine and DeMar DeRozan (we'll get to him) to a single playoff berth.

In other words, Vucevic cost the Bulls Wagner, Markkanen and Carter, more or less ... plus the opportunity cost of a lost half-decade.

The Bulls traded a future first in a sign-and-trade for DeRozan in 2021, in parallel to the sign-and-trade sending Markkanen out in which they didn't get anything of value. (There was a lottery-protected Portland pick in there, but the Blazers landed in the lottery and the pick vanished. Yikes!) Karnisovas and Eversley later had to trade to get their pick back from San Antonio in the De'Aaron Fox deal that sent LaVine to Sacramento to rejoin DeRozan. (There are worse front offices out there!) So let's recap that:

• This front office paid a premium for Vucevic ...
• ... which led them to trade Markkanen for nothing ...
• ... while trading something so valuable for DeRozan that they eventually had to make a trade involving LaVine to get it back.
• And the team won a single playoff game through all that.

This is a circular ball-kicking exercise. Stop kicking yourself!

Again, there are worse front offices. There was a brief moment of time in which Chicago looked great with the three core players, Alex Caruso and a healthy Lonzo Ball. That mirage evaporated quickly and violently. Signing Caruso was a smart move. Trading him for Josh Giddey may yet pay off. (I remain skeptical.) Donovan is a good coach, and hiring him was smart, even if it hasn't mattered in the mind.

But the unforced errors really add up, and the Bulls' potential to be a premier NBA franchise make it look worse. The front office's performance in February – deeply confused and confusing, with Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu getting moved for no apparent benefit or reason – should not have been allowed to happen if the Reinsdorves knew they were moving away from Karnisovas and Eversley. The Patrick Williams extension was clearly foolish, and everyone outside of Chicago knew it and said so immediately. Vucevic was the big crime; all the little ones make it obvious that Vucevic wasn't just an unlikely draw. It was a sign that these dudes were over the heads.

And that's what brings it back on the Reinsdorves. The Vucevic trade was more than five years ago. By the summer of 2022, when the second Markkanen trade happened and Wagner finished first team All-Rookie, it was obvious that this front office was a failure. The Reinsdorves let the dudes cook for four more years. That is malpractice. Karnisovas and Eversley made mistake after mistake, and the Reinsdorves let them. And this is what you get in the end.

Scores

Bulls 129, Wizards 98 – Seventh straight loss for Washington. They are in a struggle with Indiana for the worst record and, thus, no worse than the No. 5 pick. The Wizards have 17 wins. The Pacers have 18. Washington has another game against the Bulls. Indiana faces the Nets next. GULP.

Timberwolves 124, Pacers 104 – Just like that, with this win and Phoenix's loss, Minnesota clinches no worse than No. 6. Still no Anthony Edwards. Still Jaden McDaniels.

Bucks 90, Nets 96 – We have a No Profile Photo Brooklyn Net who got 40 minutes. This is actually his third appearance for Brooklyn. Welcome to the show, Trevon Scott.

Damn Nets, this is a 2K rotation after 15 years on franchise mode.

And they won!

Heat 95, Raptors 121 – Miami is such a disappointment. Getting boatraced in a critical game in the final week of the season with your full line-up (minus Nikola Jovic) available? Pfffft. Bam Adebayo was 2/13 from the floor, the bench didn't impact much and the vaunted Miami defense let four of Toronto's starters run wild.

Hornets 102, Celtics 113 – Another solid victory over a good opponent for Boston. One more win will clinch No. 2. Nikola Vucevic got a longer leash in his second game back from injury. He went 1/10 in 23 minutes. Hmm.

Jazz 137, Pelicans 156 – Surprisingly only the second time Utah has given up 150+ in regulation this season. The Wizards have done it four times. Actually, one of the funniest subplots of the final week is that the Wizards and Jazz are locked in a death match for the worst defensive rating of all-time. Utah has had the league's worst defense in each of the past two seasons, and it's even worse (121.3) this season. But Washington is also at 121.3 after Tuesday's action. This might be something Utah is allowed to win!

Jeremiah Fears with 40.

Kings 105, Warriors 110 – Doug Christie, up one with 3 minutes left with the Warriors in the bonus, called for Doug McDermott to intentionally foul Seth Curry, a career 86% free throw shooter. Why? No one knows! The Kings did take a timeout after the foul but didn't make any substitutions. Curry split the free throws. Draymond Green pointed to it in comments on tanking after the game, but ... the Kings only did it once, and kept their more productive available players in the game down the stretch. It's just ... weird and pretty dumb. Which explains the Sacramento Kings, honestly.

The Warriors' chances of getting No. 9 are now zero. They will be the No. 10 seed and will need to win two games on the road to make the playoffs.

Thunder 123, Lakers 87 – Yep. The odds that the Lakers fall to No. 5 are looking more and more likely. They officially no longer control their own destiny for No. 3. They have to win out to guarantee the No. 4 seed.

Mavericks 103, Clippers 116 – Cooper Flagg did not score 40+ again. Just 25 this time. However, he did do this.

Rockets 119, Suns 105 – Dillon Brooks chirping vociferously at Kevin Durant ... right before KD puts him on his ass with a crossover. Cinema.

With this result and Minnesota's win, the Wolves have clinched no worse than the No. 6 seed and Phoenix will be no higher than No. 7.

Links

Louisa Thomas in the New Yorker on tanking and the need for more scorn.

The public was not amused. Did the Wizards really trick someone who’d paid good money to watch a horrible team into thinking that he’d won ten thousand dollars, only to humiliate him—and then laugh at him—in front of eighteen thousand people? The outrage was loud enough that, the following day, the Wizards released an apology. The whole thing had been scripted, the organization said; the fan, along with all the mascots and staff, had been in on the act. Still, the team acknowledged, the stunt had “missed the mark.”

I laughed when I heard of the stunt, not because it was clever (it wasn’t) but because it was so typical of the Wizards. The Wizards, after all, are something worse than bad; they’re an affront to the ideals of sports, which include sincere competition. That fake stunt occurred during a fake competition, in which only one team, the 76ers, was trying to win.

Shams Charania has a Giannis deep dive that makes it perfectly clear (to me, at least) that the Bucks are going to trade him this summer. Giannis isn't covered in glory by what Charania reports, but no one comes off worse than Doc Rivers.

Rivers ... started the meeting by imploring his players to look up his résumé, six people in the room told ESPN.

"I took teams to the playoffs and to the championship that weren't supposed to. I thought this was one of them," Rivers told players in the session. "Either you're with us or against us. If you're not playing hard, we're not playing you anymore. I know everything that goes on in this building."

Rivers showed clips of forward Kyle Kuzma's miscues in recent games. Kuzma was a DNP-Coach's Decision later that night in the Bucks' 27-point home loss to the Celtics. It was the first DNP-CD of Kuzma's career.

Logan Murdock on Jalen Duren's leap.

A Redditor translated a detailed Chinese story told by the Shaolin master who trained Victor Wembanyama last summer. Fascinating read on the accommodations the temple had to make for Wembanyama and how he adapted himself. This is epic lore.

Paul Flannery on the NBA's competitiveness crisis.

Michael Malone taking the UNC head coaching job is a pretty incredible twist both for UNC Basketball and for the NBA coaching carousel. It's been a decade or so since NBA teams were directly competing with NCAA programs for top coaching talent. I thought Brad Stevens' NBA leap and commitment had put all that to bed.

Howard Beck on the negative effects of the 65-game minimum for league awards.

No, in this particularly stupid strand of the multiverse, we’re being asked to pretend that Cunningham’s outstanding season never happened. We’re deleting Edwards and Doncic from our spreadsheets. We’re praying to the basketball gods that Jokic and Wembanyama don’t trip in the shower this week, for fear it might trigger their own erasure from the historic record.

We’re parsing Article XXIX, Section 6, Subsection B(ii) of the collective bargaining agreement, trying to interpret exceptions and grievance procedures that might allow the NBA’s greatest players to get their deserved recognition, whether on an MVP ballot, an All-NBA team, or an All-Defensive team. The agents for Doncic and Cunningham are already busily preparing their appeals.

Jared Dubin's unofficial awards ballot.

Kelly Dwyer on the Bulls cleaning house.

The great Chris DeVille attended the Modest Mouse cruise. New-to-me fascinating piece linked by DeVille: this case that Spotify is in trouble and the path forward for artists is cultivating direct relationships with their fans. (This could sorta apply to independent writing, as well.)

It turns out space is still cool when you're not weird about it.

Schedule

Alright, here's what we have at stake on Wednesday. All times Eastern. Highlight games in bold. Tank battles in italics.

Hawks at Cavaliers, 7, ESPN – ATL can clinch a top-6 seed with a win. CLE stays alive for No. 3 with a win. Possible first round preview.

Timberwolves at Magic, 7 – MIN stays narrowly alive for No. 5 with a win. ORL clinches no worse than No. 9 with a win. ORL would be eliminated from No. 5 with a loss. Have I mentioned lately that the East playoff picture is a total mess?

Bucks at Pistons, 7

Grizzlies at Nuggets, 9 – No clinching scenarios for DEN, but obviously a win would be good for their hopes for No. 3, for which they control their own destiny.

Blazers at Spurs, 9:30, ESPN – SAS can stay alive for No. 1 if they win here and OKC loses. A win would help POR's quest for No. 8.

Thunder at Clippers, 10 – Possible first round preview. OKC can clinch No. 1 with a win. LAC improves its slim shot at No. 7 with a win.

Mavericks at Suns, 10 – PHX can clinch No. 7 with a win and an LAC loss.

Be excellent to each other.