Every one of the Bulls’ remaining regular-season games has to be treated as a must-win — all 17 against the Bucks, Nuggets, Kings and 76ers, to name a few.
And even then, they’ll need some help.
There are a lot of moving pieces. The Pacers, a half-game behind the Bulls at 12th in the Eastern Conference standings, have to stay in the rearview mirror, and either the Raptors or Wizards (ninth and 10th) must stumble — and that’s just for the Bulls to get in the play-in tournament.
Asked Tuesday if he was surprised the Bulls now find themselves in such an arduous predicament, veteran center Nikola Vucevic answered, “Of course.”
“It’s not where we expected to be,” he said. “We know we have more talent and we should be better than we’ve shown. Sometimes things don’t work out the way you thought they would, for whatever reason. It’s not always easy to deal with because you expect more and you want more and you put in more than what you’re getting, but it is what it is at this point.
“We have these last 17 games, and we have to fight until the end and hope things work out for us [and that] we can get into the play-in and go from there. The whole season hasn’t been what we thought it would be.”
It isn’t what many thought it would be. With two All-Stars in guard Zach LaVine and forward DeMar DeRozan, the Bulls won 46 games and secured the No. 6 seed last year with a crew that spent more time in the training room than on the floor. It wasn’t a championship roster by any means, but it was a core that a front office could like. Or love, in the case of Arturas Karnisovas, the Bulls’ executive vice president of basketball operations, who brought the team back mostly intact, adding guard Goran Dragic and center Andre Drummond. Dragic is no longer with the Bulls, while Drummond is a rotation player depending on the matchup.
Even as the Bulls were nosediving at the trade deadline last month, Karnisovas opted to stay the course, making them one of two teams — the Cavaliers were the other — to not make a single move.
On Tuesday, the Bulls wrapped up practice, getting ready to head off to Denver to face the Nuggets, who are 30-4 at home.
“I made the comment when [last] season ended that this was going to be a really hard year,” coach Billy Donovan said. “The East had gotten better, and there were some things that really went our way. I don’t want to sit here and say that everything that happened our way [last year] was luck, but we had a lot of good fortune. We were very close to not even being a playoff team.”
Then why keep this group intact?
“I knew there were things we were going to have to do at a higher level and be better at, and one of the things I felt we’d be better at is offensively . . . being a little bit more random,” Donovan said. “Some of the areas we’ve gotten better at, and some we haven’t.”
Now the Bulls have no choice but to do something they haven’t all season: play consistently and rip off a winning streak.
That was Vucevic’s hope. And hope is really all they have left.
“Crazy things have happened in this league,” Vucevic said. “We know we have the talent, and that gives us belief. We just have to find a way to do it night in and night out.”
