The Chicago Bulls have 22 games remaining this season, and they would be well-served to lose them all.
Yes, Jimmy Butler is returning to the Chicago lineup soon — perhaps as soon as Saturday — and yes, the Bulls are still in the playoff hunt. And sure, you could say that the final 22 games are a chance to build cohesion and create momentum for a team that has struggled to adapt to new coach Fred Holberg.
But the Bulls aren't going to compete for a title this year, and they're unlikely to land a game-changing player in free agency this summer. The best-case scenario for this Chicago team is a not-quite 100 percent Butler and a never-quite 100 percent Derrick Rose risk further injury down the stretch while scratching and clawing the Bulls into the playoffs as the seventh or eighth seed, only for them to promptly be whooped by the Cavs or Raptors in four or five games.
That's the best-case scenario.
It's time for the Bulls to admit that this season is unsalvageable and set themselves up so that such a calamity cannot be repeated in next year. It's time to tank.
The theories on how to fix the Bulls are as plentiful as the points they are allowing per game. (Holberg's team has allowed at least 100 points in 15-straight games, and they're in the midst of a five-game losing streak that has put them back at .500 on the season.)
Hoiberg, for better or worse, is coming back next year. Tom Thibodeau isn't coming through that door. The Bulls invested too much money, burned too many bridges, and spent too much time recruiting Holberg to set him adrift after one season. Hoiberg might be the crux of the Bulls' problem, but it's not a problem that's going away.
The Bulls can't blame injuries for all their shortcomings either. Yes, seemingly every player on the roster has missed time and Joakim Noah was shelved for the season in January, but every team has dealt with injuries this season. When you put those injuries on a flawed roster, you see these results.
That roster won't be getting any better on its own over the summer. The Bulls won't be signing Kevin Durant, and Noah and Gasol are good bets to leave.
This Bulls roster especially won't get any better if Chicago doesn't start tanking. At 30-30, holding the 10th seed in the Eastern Conference, the Bulls are poised to have a low lottery pick, one that would likely have them picking between 12th and 14th. In one of the shallowest drafts in recent NBA history, there's a marginal, almost negligible difference between that lottery pick and the picks playoff teams will have. In the NBA, mediocrity doesn't pay — especially this season.
The Bulls are staring down the pipe at a dilemma — whether they make the playoffs or not, they're unlikely to have a draft pick worth much. Paired with this summer's possible roster turnover, the Bulls' front office braintrust of Gar Forman and John Paxson will have to decide if it wants to stay the course with a core of Rose (who is a free agent in Summer 2017) and Butler, while patching up holes with reasonably priced, but hardly head-turning free agents (think Evan Turner, Ryan Anderson), or if it wants to move Rose for pieces of questionable value and start a multi-year rebuild around Butler.
Either choice the Bulls make on that front likely leaves them in a similar predicament a year from now. The Bulls need a third pillar, and it doesn't look possible for them to acquire one this summer. Again, mediocrity doesn't pay.
But if the Bulls look at the writing on the wall, admit that this season has been a failure, and aim to improve their draft stock - getting into the top-eight, giving them a 10 percent chance of a top-three pick, is a real possibility — then the Bulls might be able to derive some tangible value from this disaster of a season. Having a higher draft pick will give the Bulls collateral to improve their team this summer, either through the pick itself or by packaging it with Rose and/or another asset in return for a few pieces of young talent.
What the Bulls can't afford to do is continue to be mediocre. If they are, they're doomed to be in the same predicament next year.
