{"id":649921,"date":"2026-03-10T01:36:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T01:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/649921\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T01:36:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T01:36:40","slug":"bulls-notes-tanking-decisions-giddey-lavine-derozan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/649921\/","title":{"rendered":"Bulls Notes: Tanking Decisions, Giddey, LaVine, DeRozan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bulls lost to the NBA\u2019s worst team Sunday night in Sacramento, but it\u2019s still not clear that they\u2019re committed to a tanking strategy, writes Julia Poe of The Chicago Tribune<\/a> (subscription required). The team has gone 2-11 since shaking up its roster at the trade deadline and has plummeted to 12th place in the East. However, Poe points out that puzzling lineup decisions are still being made for a team with incentive to tank.<\/p>\n

Jalen Smith<\/a> returned to the court on Sunday after missing the previous five games with a calf strain. Poe notes that the Bulls refuse to shut down Smith even though he has been in and out of the lineup over the past month. Young guard Rob Dillingham<\/a>, who was acquired from Minnesota at the deadline, only saw 15 minutes against the Kings, while 30-year-old Guerschon Yabusele<\/a>, who will be a free agent when the season ends, remains in the starting lineup.<\/p>\n

Poe blames executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas for getting \u201cqueasy\u201d any time the organization faces a major decision. She states that just as Karnisovas is hesitant to pull the trigger on trading a player, he\u2019s also reluctant to fully commit to a tanking strategy, even when it\u2019s obviously in the team\u2019s best interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything I\u2019ve gotten here from the front office, from ownership is that we need to do the best job you can to go out there and compete and to try to win,\u201d coach Billy Donovan said last month. \u201cI believe in that. \u2026 That\u2019s kind of the mentality that we have here inside the organization. We\u2019ve always tried to keep the integrity of that anytime we go out and compete.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more on the Bulls:<\/p>\n

In a separate story<\/a>, Poe questions why the organization is so reckless with Josh Giddey<\/a> after giving him a four-year extension last summer and making him part of the foundation for the future. She notes that Giddey was reinserted into Tuesday\u2019s loss against Oklahoma City after limping off the court with a rolled ankle a few minutes earlier. He\u2019s also dealing with a lingering hamstring issue that\u2019s supposed to limit his playing time to about 30 minutes per night, but Donovan\u00a0doesn\u2019t always adhere to that. Poe questions why the Bulls are taking any chances with Giddey when there\u2019s nothing left to play for.
\nThe new additions to the Bulls\u2019 roster are still getting used to the extreme up-tempo pace that Donovan prefers, observes Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times<\/a> (subscription required). It was effective in Thursday\u2019s win at Phoenix, but didn\u2019t work as well on Sunday. \u201cThe biggest issue I think was the fact that a lot of those guys were coming from situations where they were not playing at all,\u201d Donovan said. \u201cLike Yabusele wasn\u2019t playing, Nick (Richards)<\/a>\u00a0wasn\u2019t playing, Rob (Dillingham)<\/a> wasn\u2019t playing, so I think the pace has been a little different. We went through some of that with Tre (Jones)<\/a>, Zach (Collins)<\/a>\u00a0and Kevin Huerter<\/a> last year.\u201d
\nDonovan has fond memories of former Bulls players Zach LaVine<\/a> and DeMar DeRozan<\/a>, who both missed Sunday\u2019s game in Sacramento, Cowley adds in another piece<\/a>. \u201cListen, I love both those two guys. I think those guys know how I feel about them,\u201d Donovan said. \u201cThey were totally professional, and listen when you\u2019re dealing with high-level players like that you are not always going to see eye-to-eye on stuff, but I appreciated the conversation and the intent on their part was to really try and win. That was important to those two guys. I don\u2019t know all the reasons it didn\u2019t work out (here).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bulls lost to the NBA\u2019s worst team Sunday night in Sacramento, but it\u2019s still not clear that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[4750,7,920,919,329,3824,3213,204,2291,965,6,977,3212],"class_list":["post-649921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bulls","tag-arturas-karnisovas","tag-basketball","tag-bulls","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-chicagobulls","tag-demar-derozan","tag-guerschon-yabusele","tag-jalen-smith","tag-josh-giddey","tag-nba","tag-rob-dillingham","tag-zach-lavine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116202319715819809","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}