the NBA playoffs are quickly showing just how far the Bulls have to go

Ah, it’s been so refreshing to watch the first round of the NBA playoffs without the Bulls stinking them up. The Miami Heat, who eliminated the Bulls from playoff eligibility rather emphatically, took one game off the one-seed Celtics and were mostly otherwise blown out including being eliminated last night.

As I said after that play-in loss, I don’t think that result showed the Bulls were in some significantly lower class than the Heat, even with the Heat missing Butler. Bulls could’ve won that game on three-point variance and clutch performance, whatever.

No, the Bulls were a class below in that they were nearly 4 points/100poss worse in net rating this season. The Bulls are not on a treadmill of mediocrity, they’re walking around the upper track trying to warm up to get on the treadmill. The only way the Bulls can self-delude into thinking they’re even close to what they claim are their goals is the Eastern Conference being bad all over. Looking at it another way, of the teams not trying to lose the Bulls were third-worst, only better in net rating than the Nets and Hawks.

[I inferred from his end-of-season press conference that Arturas Karnisovas – while not wanting to make injury excuses – does think that the entire season performance is not as accurate an indicator as the time the team had one key injury that was a positive (Zach LaVine) but before one that was a negative (Patrick Williams). That was a 28-game stretch where the Net Rating was positive, a 0.6. That is significantly better that their season-long mark of -1.7, but ultimately would still would have them the 20th best team in basketball]

It’s striking to drop in on the discourse of teams recently eliminated. The aforementioned Heat, Kings, Warriors, Lakers, Pelicans, Suns. And if the Sixers don’t come back, and the Clippers/Mavs eliminate-ee. And how they may now be ‘desperate’.

These are all teams that won between 46 and 51 games. This means that AK’s stated goal (“need to find some way to win ten more games”), which will be nearly impossible to pull off, is to get to that level: playoff disappointment!

This is not a particularly new assessment, though I do think it bears reiteration because it’s seeming like the Bulls almost get some benefit to not being seen nationally. To where national “observers” aren’t visually confronted with how far away the Bulls are, because the Bulls aren’t even to the place to remind everyone.

A “desperate” team may want Zach LaVine? Shouldn’t that inform the Bulls that they should be even more desperate?

There was some low-curve grading of Karnisovas as finally sensing reality by merely not being outright delusional. But I didn’t get the sense that he is fully aware of how much he has to do, if he is telling the truth about not wanting to take a step back.