Keep moving; nothing to see here.
But only for now.
Which seemed to be the message from Bulls Executive Vice-President of Basketball Operations Arturas Karnišovas Thursday after the Bulls were among just a few NBA teams not to make any changes in the flurry of activity that marked this season’s NBA trading day/week deadline.
It was one of the most active in season NBA transaction periods in recent memory with stars like Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Russell Westbrook changing teams along with valuable veterans like D’Angelo Russell, Mike Conley, Jae Crowder, Mikal Bridges, Jakob Poeltl, Eric Gordon, Devonte Graham, John Wall, Mason Plumlee, Mo Bamba, James Wiseman, Thomas Bryant, Josh Hart and Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith, the latter two who faced the Bulls with the Nets Thursday.
Karnisovas said the Bulls were active and involved in trying to improve the team and not sell off players. But he suggested because of the play-in tournament more teams believed they could be in contention, so it proved more difficult to acquire talent. Also, Karnišovas said, the Bulls believe the landscape in the Eastern Conference became more welcoming because more of the star talent relocated to the Western Conference.
But Karnišovas also said he expected more from the team this season and will analyze these last 28 games for plans moving forward. But that he’s still confident about the team’s prospects.
“I’m like the fan base,” said Karnišovas. “Hate to lose a lot of those close games, but a lot of those close games we were in it. It’s just disappointing to see that our record doesn’t show we’ve improved. In a lot of those games, it’s just disappointing that we lose at the end. After a busy couple days, we came to the conclusion that this was the best group for us to give us the best chance to win.
“There were so many buyers, so there were a lot of teams that didn’t want to take a step back including us, so we tried to improve our team, but at what cost?” asked Karnišovass. “That price was not OK with us, so I think the next stage for us now that we’ve passed the trade deadline is to evaluate this group the next 28 games. Mediocrity and average is not OK with us, but the next step is what’s going to happen for the rest of the season and then how we can address – during the draft and free agency – our shortcomings.
“There were a lot of hypotheticals and a lot of rumors and, like I said, we were pretty busy, but nothing capitalized,” Karnišovas reiterated. “I think you have to have an open mind, especially when you are in the ninth or 10th place. You have to look at yourself realistically, but I think at the end of the day, we'll look at this group as the best way to go over the next 28 games. I am disappointed in terms of result. I’m disappointed in inconsistency. But again, those guys are still hanging in there. Players and coaches are doing a great job to hang in there. There’s still time to improve. And we have 28 games left. We have to improve our position. Each team probably says the same thing. We’re going to battle and see what happens.”
Do you expect to be in the playoffs? Karnišovas was asked.
“Yes,” he said tersely.
So this Bulls season at 26-28 before Thursday’s game with the depleted Nets missing Durant and Irving plows ahead with the hope that it can harvest enough victories to produce that hoped for playoff yield.
“We were pretty active at the trade deadline. It just didn’t seem like there were deals for us to make to improve this group,” Karnišovas insisted. “I think that this group has shown some resiliency, improvement this year because we’ve kind of flipped the script from last year beating bad teams, losing to good teams. This year, winning against good teams and losing to below .500 teams. Regarding this group, again I thought there were small improvements this year in terms of staying in games, coming back from large deficits in the games we had no business being in, pulling [them] out in the end, and obviously there were a lot of painful losses that we were very close. So at the end of the day we thought this was the best group to finish the season.’’
Karnišovas also said the Bulls hope to be able to resign center Nikola Vučević.
“I’m confident (resigning Vučević); he’s having an unbelievable year,” said Karnišovas. “We want him to be here. I just think for this group now it is important now that the trade deadline has passed. This is the group that we are sticking with and they can go out there and play and put a foot on the gas and put together a run.
“This trade deadline showed us that we have a lot of good players that have a lot of value around the league and I think there’s ways to do it (improve),” said Karnišovas. “We will look at how to improve based, obviously, on the next 28 games and how we are going to finish the season. There’s some parity in the East. I think the trade deadline kind of shifted some quality more toward the West, so there’s a chance obviously to compete in Eastern Conference. There’s a lot of teams that are pretty good, but they are just (bunched) all together.
“We tried to get into a lot of deals,” Karnišovas said when asked about Kevin Durant. “But at the end of the day we didn’t make any of them. I think after looking at the return and what we had to give up to improve the team, we thought it was prudent to stick to this group for the next 28 games. We made calls; we got a lot of calls. It was pretty busy, but at the end of the day we were buyers. We wanted to improve our team. But we couldn’t capitalize on that.”
Although the Bulls were not able to make any transactions to improve the team now, there is the possibility for player acquisitions on buy out contracts or be released. Karnišovas said the Bulls will “look at it. First, I have to look through every trade that actually happened and what kind of rosters each team has before we look at the buy out market. We'll look at it, for sure.”
Last year, the Bulls added Tristan Thompson as a buyout.
Though it’s speculation, some of the players who could become available include Westbrook, John Wall, Reggie Jackson, Terrence Ross, Patrick Beverley, Will Barton, Serge Ibaka, Kevin Love, and Derrick Rose.
“I think we turned the roster around the last couple years,” said Karnišovas. “We’ve done deals that in the summertime that a lot of people said we couldn’t do. I think there are ways to improve. It’s just the timing is going to depend on when you make those moves. This is just a collection of information, these next 28 games, of where we are.”