And so ends the marathon, the Bulls 2022-23 regular season mercifully coming to an end Sunday afternoon in an anticlimactic 103-81 victory over the Detroit Pistons.
Pistons coach Dwane Casey resigned as soon as the game ended with the Bulls risen to 40-42 for the season. The events appeared to be mutually exclusive.
So now begins the climactic and potentially fun part, the post season sprint that for the Bulls begins 6 p.m. Wednesday in Toronto with the start of the play-in tournament for the Bulls. The Bulls have to win that game, and then if they do, play Friday in either Atlanta or Miami to qualify for the playoffs, which would begin Sunday in Milwaukee.
“We understand what they do and how Nick (Nurse, Raptors coach) makes adjustments and different traps,” said Zach LaVine, who led the Bulls Sunday with 17 points with no starters playing into the fourth quarter. “I think it’s going to be about offensive rebounding, transition. It’s going to be the smaller things that I think get us over the top. Your guys must step up. There’s nothing for me to be told or I have to hear. We understand that regardless of who you are or how you play, we have to go out there and win the game. That’s what it is.
“One and done,” noted LaVine. “Go and throw it all out there and see what will happen.”
So the Bulls, with practices this week, begin focusing on the Raptors, who won two of three from the Bulls this season. Though two of the games were in early November before LaVine was even playing in back-to-back games because of his off-season knee surgery. So there’s not much to extrapolate.
Much like the Bulls hope from this mercurial regular season that a good week would, if not erase, certainly help mitigate.
“I’ll have time to reflect on the 82,” said Bulls coach Billy Donovan. “But looking at it in totality, the results were disappointing, quite honesty. There were a lot of different variables that played a part of that. We didn’t close games very well. Our consistency has been up and down. We’ve had some crazy plays happen at the end of games where we came up on the losing end.
“There were some really, really good moments, and some moments that were not so good,” Donovan acknowledged. “You’d like to obviously be in a situation now where you are in the playoffs. But we’ve got to work and find a way to get to that point. So we have work in front of us. I think this group has stayed together. They have tried to work through things. They have tried to get better. The consistency part was a challenge this year. We had some very difficult, tough losses on game ending shots; that happens sometimes. But I think these guys from a work standpoint of trying to play together and work together and play for one another, I feel they’ve tried to do that. I think we made some real positive gains and growth defensively. Offensively, we had our struggles. But I think after the All-Star break we started to play better offensively. You always look at the end result of where we finished and that part was disappointing. But I’ve never seen these guys waver and not fight.
“That being said, we’ve still put ourselves in position to play after tonight,” said Donovan. “I’m excited those guys have been able to put themselves in that position. So what we’ve got to do is prepare to play Toronto, go up there and be at our best.”
It was a difficult season and somewhat unexpected after last season’s 46-36 record. Point guard Lonzo Ball never did return from surgery, which was a major setback. His status now remains in question for next season. Donovan did admit not having a regular or traditional point guard made the team’s offense too predictable. Though the Bulls overall were one of the healthier teams in the league among their best players. The belief had been they could leverage that into a solid if not seismic improvement.
Nikola Vučević and Patrick Williams both played all 82 games, a rarity in the NBA these days and one of the more commendable feats for this NBA. LaVine even with his early season back-to-back limitations blew past that and only missed five games. DeRozan missed eight.
LaVine ended up as the team’s leading scorer at 24.8 per game with an all-world post All-Star break run averaging 28.3 points and shooting 44 percent on threes. Despite the difficulty of so many shots, LaVine shot 49 percent overall for the season. DeRozan averaged 24.5 points and surprisingly was second to the kinetic Alex Caruso in steals. Williams led the team in three-point shooting at 42 percent. Vučević averaged 17.6 points and 11 rebounds. Williams was the only other Bull other than the Big Three to average in double figures at 10.2.
But an under. 500 season and 10th in the conference wasn’t anticipated after last season, and especially with a reset against some of the league’s best teams.
“Vooch, DeMar and Zach had good years,” said Donovan. “I would have liked to have seen us generate more threes. I really felt based on what happened last year and the way we closed last season (13 of 19 losses and 4-1 playoff loss), we were way more competitive this year. Which I thought was an improvement from last year. Last year we were like 2-15 against top seeds in the East and West; this season I thought we made a really nice jump and how we were playing on both ends of the floor helped us against those teams.”
But there were those idiosyncratic shots.
Maybe some teams had more desperation game winners against them, but it would be difficult to imagine the Bulls whack-a-mole luck starting with Orlando’s Jalen Suggs and continuing through Tyrese Haliburton, A.J. Griffin, De’Aaron Fox, Kyle Kuzma and Donovan Mitchell’s mendacious finish that led to overtime and his record 71 points.
Those two-minute reports just rubbed it in more with DeRozan against Indiana, the Clippers and Washington with what should have or could have been game changing free throws. It’s what makes for fewer happier endings.
“I think we’ve had so many highs and so many lows, so many ups and downs,” said DeRozan. “You’ve got to take the good with the bad, the bad with the good; that’s a season. I don’t know nobody who’s had a perfect season. For us to go through so much it builds so much character you have to find enjoyment in it, how we pulled together. We had moments throughout the season where we tested each other and we came together and I feel we became closer and more locked in.”
There were plenty of those cathartic and celebratory times.
DeRozan did have a winner against the Knicks, which we always cherish. And Ayo Dosunmu had a classic putback winner in Atlanta that famously buried John Collins. There was the time the Bulls made the Bucks look like turkeys for a real Thanksgiving meal after taking two straight from the Celtics. There was the no doubt sweep of the Miami Heat that began from the first day of the season in Miami. And that audacious season saving road trip sweep that truly resonated after the 150 points given up in Minnesota with wins in Miami, Atlanta and New York.
The Bulls ended Joel Embiid’s dominance, and in Philadelphia, no less, and even more concluded the MVP sweep by beating Nikola Jokić in Denver. LeBron came back in L.A. to much ado and then got done in by the Bulls. Memphis went down with Ja in an historic comeback that left jaws agape. Before Durant and Kyrie were traded, and perhaps that was why, they lost to the Bulls twice with both playing. So the Bulls despite the negative milepost did show they impressively could take some dangerous turns.
And they now have a chance.
“We can put all those emotions we felt throughout the year and understand what that is and be prepared for it,” said the introspective, if also intrepid DeRozan. “It’s just us still having an opportunity and taking advantage of that is something we have to lean on. Everything else for me I won’t reflect on until everything is done.”
In the blocks, ready, set...
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