Bulls’ Absence in Orlando Could Have Long-Term Implications

As the NBA continues to develop the end of its 2019–20 season with 22 of its teams, none of which are the Bulls, more details are being made public. The league is laying out specific plans for just about everything, and those plans are rather impressive. One thing players will be allowed to do is attend games they aren’t involved in. That’s really cool, and with no fans joining these players in the stands, the antics off the court will be just as intriguing as the antics on it.

While this might sound exciting to Bulls fans at first, they’re immediately brought back to the reality that none of this involves their team. To make matters worse, K.C. Johnson reminds us in his latest piece how there’s no opportunity for the current Bulls to build relationships with players on better teams during any of this. Given how much the NBA has been driven by recruiting over the past decade, there’s never been a better situation to do it in. And the Bulls won’t be anywhere near it.

Already, Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley have been put at a disadvantage before making their first player personnel move. They and their staff can read every scouting report and watch all of the video available. They might even find something in a guy who has yet to reach his full potential. But none of that can replicate the relationships NBA players have with each other, and with the Bulls not going to Disney World, it could be virtually impossible for them to land even a medium fish in the heralded 2021 free agency class.

Though it’s obvious this situation wasn’t expected, what we’re seeing is another effect of Gar Forman and John Paxson running the front office for too long. Their questionable decision-making has set the franchise back during at least the past five years, and now, the Bulls might be screwed for the next five. Their refusal to conduct a real coaching search after firing Tom Thibodeau was bad, and simply promoting Jim Boylen after dismissing Fred Hoiberg has turned out even worse. In overseeing a young team with playoff aspirations turn into one not deemed good enough to finish the craziest season in NBA history, the hated trio has had a more damaging impact on the franchise than we could have seen even at the start of this month.

So as usual, the only real chance the Bulls have at returning to relevancy is to build through the draft. With few impact players available in the upcoming class, it’s unlikely they’ll make a splash right away unless they finally can move up from that dreaded seventh position and into the top four. It will take time for Karnisovas and Eversley to get the roster they want. By then, it’s possible, almost certainly likely, that Zach LaVine, Lauri Markkanen and others will have moved on from Chicago.

This is where Eversley’s reputation for developing player relationships really will come into play. For his first few years in Chicago, he’ll really have to earn his paycheck to land quality players, either by trades or free agency, and keep those players happy enough that they’ll want to sign more than one contract with the Bulls. Since none of the players he’s currently in charge of can be in Orlando, any winner the Bulls build in the nearly future will have to come almost squarely from him. Talk about throwing a new general manager into the line of fire immediately.

Prepare for quite a few more lean seasons, Bulls Nation. The old guard’s sins of the recent past are going to affect the future, and it will take a miracle for the new guard to fix it all right away. Maybe, if it wishes upon a star, that dream will come true. But for now, the Bulls are so unappealing that all of the Disney magic in the universe couldn’t fix them.