Heading into the Bulls’ match against the Pistons yesterday, there was no indication that Zach LaVine would be the first in the National Basketball Association to put up 50 on the scoreboard for the season. In fact, he failed to reach even 20 in his first two outings. The day before, he had just eight in 38 minutes on the floor, managing to hit just three of 14 attempts, including none of six from three-point range. And he was actually a question mark prior to tipoff due to back spasms. As he argued, though, “you know me. I’m going to play.”
LaVine getting his touch back is, to be sure, good news, never mind that his 51 on 33 shots came with zero assists; he had his eyes on iron from the get-go, save for a scoreless second quarter that the Bulls lost by 10. The bad news is that they suffered their second setback in three matches all the same; for all his offensive prowess, he was a telling negative-eight in the 37 minutes he burned rubber. To be fair, only starter Patrick Williams had a favorable plus-minus rating of the 10 who saw significant action.
It’s far from fair to draw conclusions from a mere week’s worth of contests. Between now and April, the Bulls certainly have ample time to get their acts together. And it’s not as if they’re strangers; the core has been around for the last two years. In the other hand, there’s a reason they held a closed-door meeting that excluded head coach Billy Donovan after their opener, and that their lone victory to date came on overtime, and only after the referees botched a couple of calls that should have gone the Raptors’ way in regulation.
Considering that the front office spared no expense in the offseason to retain vital cogs, there must have been something it saw in the Bulls’ 2022-23 campaign that gave it confidence in its decision. Yet, there can be no glossing over the results; they finished 10th in the Eastern Conference, had two fewer triumphs than setbacks, and could not even move past the play-in tournament. In view thereof, it was no surprise to detect a hint of desperation in LaVine’e voice as he surveyed the immediate past. “We talk all the time,” he noted in the aftermath of his virtuoso feat, “but we have to figure out how to make this work.” He couldn’t have understated the obvious any better.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.
