The Chicago Bulls viewed Lonzo Ball as their skeleton key long before he was actually on the team. Months of rumors connecting Ball to the Bulls turned from smoke to fire in the opening minute of NBA free agency, when the complicated sign-and-trade and new $85 million contract that would send the point guard from New Orleans to Chicago was announced as the first offseason deal of the summer of 2021. The entire thing came together so quickly that the league tagged the Bulls for tampering and eventually docked them a second round draft pick.
The Bulls went on to add DeMar DeRozan and Alex Caruso to a roster that had already made its boldest acquisition at the previous trade deadline, sending out two lightly-protected first round picks and Wendell Carter Jr. to acquire center Nikola Vucevic from the Orlando Magic. Almost overnight, the Bulls went from a team had a younger starting lineup than the Wisconsin Badgers to a one with veterans dotting the rotation.
The on-the-fly makeover was put into motion by the franchise’s new front office braintrust of Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley, and a response to the Bulls owning the worst cumulative record in the NBA over the previous four seasons. Karnisovas and Eversley had inherited a truly bare cupboard from the team’s previous front office led by John Paxson and Gar Forman, and had to pay up to get the team back to competence. The Bulls sent out three first round picks in total to reshuffle the roster.
Most observers were skeptical any of this would be worth it: the agreement with DeRozan was roundly criticized as the worst deal of the offseason, and most projections pegged Chicago as a play-in team at best with a hard ceiling on their potential success. Maybe that’s the type of team the Bulls should have had, but when Ball was on the court, Chicago exemplified a group that equaled so much more than the sum of its parts.
When the Bulls hosted the Golden State Warriors on Jan. 14, they had the markings of a team that was a real contender: Chicago owned the best record in the Eastern Conference, with the No. 5 offense and a defense that was in the top-10 a couple weeks earlier before Covid decimated the roster. The game vs. the Warriors was a harbinger for things to come for the Bulls, and not in the way they had hoped: Zach LaVine exited in the first minute with a knee injury that has lingered ever since, and Ball was also pulled with discomfort in his left knee.
Bulls doctors originally diagnosed Ball with a torn meniscus and gave him a 6-8 week timeline to return. Now nearly 11 months later, Ball still “isn’t close to running,” according to Bulls coach Billy Donovan. Last we heard, he could not walk up a flight of stairs.
NBA teams aren’t supposed to fall apart without someone presumed to be their fourth best player, but that’s exactly what’s happened to the Bulls. Chicago limped across the finish line last season before getting smoked in five games by the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the playoffs. This season hasn’t been any kinder, with the team currently sitting outside the play-in picture while owing a top-4 protected pick to Orlando.
In games Ball plays, the Bulls own a 22-13 record. In games he’s missed over the last two seasons, that record falls to 33-47. Chicago has been waiting for Ball to return to provide the key ingredients that had briefly put the Bulls on top of the East. It feels like there’s no end in sight for how long the wait will be.
There was always something wholly idiosyncratic about Lonzo Ball’s game. He was a guard who struggled to drive to the rim, the owner of one of the funkiest jump shots in basketball, and someone with no semblance of a midrange game. Point guards are typically…
Read More: Lonzo Ball is broken, and the Bulls are, too