The mission statement was laid out very clearly back in June of 2017.
“We always know that that’s not the goal, just getting to the playoffs,’’ Bulls vice president of basketball operations John Paxson said, when discussing the trade of Jimmy Butler and the journey of rebuilding the organization was then taking on.
So just two years into it, why does it feel like “just getting to the playoffs’’ is the only goal?
Let’s start with the basics:
If a NBA title truly is the goal for Paxson and Co., here is a reminder of the last seven championships teams: Golden State three times – that’s Steph Curry and Klay Thompson for all three of them, and Kevin Durant added for the last two. Cleveland once with LeBron James, and Kyrie Irving playing the role of Robin to James’ Batman. LeBron twice in Miami with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, and then the San Antonio Spurs with an aging Tim Duncan, but a very spry Kawhi Leonard.
Not just rosters with multiple NBA superstars, but Hall of Famers.
Show me one superstar currently on this Bulls roster.
Which moves us to the more important point of this so-called rebuild to a championship:
Paxson was defending the front office last month after acquiring Otto Porter from Washington, and said, “I’m confident in our ability to get there because we’ve done it before … .’’
The “done it before’’ he was referring to was the 2010-11 team, which fell to Miami in the Eastern Conference Finals in five games. So technically they really didn’t do it before, if a championship is the goal. OK, let’s give him the pass. It was an emotional day.
But the point is the best team Paxson and general manager Gar Forman have built was because of a No. 1 pick in Derrick Rose. The obstacle that stopped Rose was a No. 1 pick in LeBron James.
The draft is filled with uncertainty most seasons, even at the top, but Rose and James were can’t-miss prospects. Franchise-changers. Superstars, there for the taking.
Yes, the Bulls won the Rose lottery with only a 1.7 percent chance, while Cleveland had a 22.5 percent chance to land James, tanking the 2002-03 season away to finish with just 17 wins that year. They went all in on the kid from Akron, and came out with a championship.
So why the heck are the Bulls a combined 6-1 this season against Cleveland, Phoenix and New York – the three teams below them in the standings – while a Zion Williamson is about to enter this year’s draft?
Maybe they don’t value Williamson as highly as some do. Maybe they don’t value the math of the new flattened draft odds.
After all, the bottom three teams each have a 14 percent chance of landing No. 1, while the fourth spot – where the Bulls currently sit – is 12.5 percent.
Maybe 1.5 percent is not worth it to them, but beating a Suns team on a meaningless Mar. 18 game is.
Math be damned.
No one knows what Williamson will be at the NBA level, but no other player in college history has had this combination of size and athletic ability. The same way Curry changed the geometry of the game from a spacing standpoint, Williamson has a chance to change the geometry from a vertical standpoint.
That screams all in, every way possible if I’m a GM of a rebuilding team void of a superstar.
Big-name free agents aren’t coming to the Bulls under this regime. That’s been proven. The draft is their best free-agent pool.
They have 10 games left to start treating it like that.
