In a crowded field for the season’s most uninspiring losses, the Chicago Bulls somehow reached a head-scratching new low with their 115-106 defeat against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday night.
Not only did the Bulls lose for the fourth straight, they were thoroughly dominated by the team they owe their first-round draft pick to this summer and whose best player at the start of the season, Nikola Vučević, they acquired at the trade deadline in March. Yet it was the Magic that took a 21-point lead into the fourth quarter in an all-around abysmal performance for the Bulls, who fell to disappointing 3-8 since the trade deadline.
“Are we going to keep playing lifeless basketball?” forward Thad Young said he asked his teammates near the start of the fourth quarter.
“Because at this point we just rolled out of bed and came to work today because we had to come.”
Vučević put up 29 points and 11 rebounds against his former team.
And Zach LaVine attempted to rescue the Chicago Bulls in the fourth quarter where he scored 22 of his 30 points.
But they got help from virtually nowhere else.
Daniel Theis also acquired at the deadline was the only other player in double figures with 16 points off the bench.
Coach Billy Donovan had shortened his rotations to nine or 10 players in recent games.
But he tried 12 different players Wednesday searching for someone, anyone, capable of getting a defensive stop. He found few answers.
The stock in John Paxson and Gar Forman’s most recent pair of first round draft picks, Coby White and Lauri Markkanen is descending fast.
White finished with two points in 12 minutes Wednesday while Markkanen finished with six points in 17 minutes.
Wendell Carter Jr., meanwhile, recorded 19 points and 12 rebounds to help lead Orlando which has the third-worst offense in the NBA to score 93 points through three quarters.
“My thing is you can’t play desperate for nine minutes and expect to win an NBA game,” Donovan said.
“We don’t have that margin for error to not be a desperate team.
“We can’t decide we want to be urgent for nine minutes in the game and then try to save a victory; it doesn’t work like that.”
The Chicago Bulls made a bold trade at the deadline, dealing away pieces for the future with the intention of competing for the rest of this season and beyond.
But so far, this experiment has not cured any of their ills. Their roster has improved on paper.
But aside from a brief three-game winning streak that has been erased by this most recent skid, the team has not meshed well at all.
Since the deadline, the Bulls rank 17th in offense and 25th in defense.
The Bulls are short on rim protectors and their guards struggle to stop the ball at the point of attack.
They still lack a true starting point guard capable of organizing their offense.