Decision on LaVine is where it all begins
The passage of a year always shifts perspective. That couldn’t be more true for the Bulls as they enter 2024.
The Bulls exited 2023 in nearly identical form to the way they entered it. On Jan. 1, 2023, the Bulls were 16-20. They entered the new year at 15-19. On paper, this status feels the same — sitting four games under .500, clinging to the 10th spot in the Eastern Conference to remain in play-in contention. Yet the energy around the team could not be more different a full year later.
Last season, the Bulls teetered around the .500 mark until Nov. 9, after which they tumbled as low as 12th in the East before stumbling into 2023. It wasn’t dramatic, just the humdrum drone of an underperforming roster.
This season took on a different tone. The lows came first — a players-only meeting fueled by an opening-night blowout, a five-game road losing streak and a 5-14 start, the worst since 2018. But that only made the highs more redemptive as the Bulls rode a 10-5 streak, punctuated with Coby White’s ascension in a historic run of shooting.
Hope can be dangerous, especially when born of desperation. When a team can wrench itself out of a situation as dire as the first 19 games of this season, it’s understandable to question whether the hope that follows is simply a reflection that after anything so bad, even mediocrity would feel like a soaring success.
And skepticism is fair when it comes to the Bulls. They won only 34 games in the last calendar year, a team riddled with and demoralized by injuries, a team that still doesn’t seem convinced of the identity it has attempted to craft over the last three years.
But on the first day of the year, it’s imperative to give in to hope. So let’s try.
January will be a formative month for the future of the franchise. Although executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas often prefers the methodical approach, this is a time for decisiveness. Over the next six weeks, the front office will be forced to determine which players to build around — a decision that will be equally informed by injury recoveries, game results and the trade market.
Everything turns on a decision that might not even be in the front office’s hands: whether to finally split from Zach LaVine.
After missing the last 15 games with a foot injury, LaVine on Monday was assigned to the
Bulls’ G League affiliate to begin contact practices this week. He remains on track for his original recovery timeline with a potential return to the court by mid-January.
But what does that even mean? Coach Billy Donovan and team leaders such as DeMar DeRozan have insisted LaVine wasn’t the problem and winning 10 of 15 games without the maximum-contract star is an unfortunate coincidence. LaVine insists he’s prepared and eager to mold his play around the style that has brought the Bulls success in his absence.
That doesn’t change the reality of the situation. Playing without LaVine was like switching on a light for the Bulls, washing the team with a new sense of hope while simultaneously revealing the cracks in the facade of the team’s identity when the top-paid star is on the court.
It’s time to make a call. Can those cracks be repaired? That seems unlikely. But if LaVine can get back on the court — even just for a handful of games — the Bulls might get at least the shape of an answer. If the Bulls sink back into the slog of their early-season offense with LaVine playing, then it’s an easy call. If things look better — well, it’s still a dangerous game of “fool me once, fool me twice.”
The market is the uncontrollable variable here. What is any team even willing to offer for LaVine? This question isn’t an indictment of his talent but the reality of the burden created by his $215 million maximum contract. Contracts of that size are meant to be binding. In this case, the clear fear is that a maximum deal shackled LaVine and the Bulls together for much longer than was beneficial.
There’s nothing productive to predict here except for the inevitability that a decision will be made one way or another. LaVine will stay or he will go. And while this turning point will define the future for the Bulls, it’s only one piece of a larger quandary for the front office.
There is a future here. The last 15 games have proved that. White is transforming into a bona fide star. Patrick Williams and Ayo Dosunmu are making the necessary steps in their development. DeRozan and Nikola Vučević have unselfishly molded their playing style to complement their younger counterparts. Alex Caruso remains consistently mind-boggling.
Tossed into this assortment of goodwill is the almost painful potential of Lonzo Ball returning to the court this calendar year, a hope renewed by the news that he will begin running again this month as he returns to Chicago to rehab with the team.
But which part of this season is real? The 5-14 start or the
10-5 turnaround? In the middle of a positive run, it’s easy to focus on the wins and scrap the losses as some sort of fluke from before this group found itself. The team is as deeply flawed as it is promising — over-reliant on high scoring from White and DeRozan, vulnerable on the boards, inconsistent in ball movement and 3-point production.
That is the purpose January will serve — to weed out what’s fake and define what’s sustainable for this group. The Bulls don’t need to exit this month as a finished product. But they must use the next 31 days to determine key steps forward — whether to extend DeRozan, whether to trade Williams before free agency, whether to build the roster around LaVine or White or some other variable.
2023 seemed to only craft questions for the Bulls. In 2024, perhaps the greatest hope for this team is to finally begin to receive answers — and with them, a clearer path toward sustainable success.