Aside from one player, Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls have been one of the least impactful franchises in the NBA. If they were stripped of his accomplishments, the organization would have zero NBA Finals wins or appearances, one MVP award, and a 45.7% winning rate over their 46 campaigns without his leadership. Historically, this would mark the fifth-lowest win-loss record across all franchises in the league. In the last decade, things have stayed equally as lethargic. The team has won 45.4% of its contests, made two playoff appearances, and won three total postseason games. Fellow Chicago Bulls beat writer Will Gottlieb of CHGO Sports created an interesting statistic that describes the purgatory zone of the NBA, also known as the middle ground between a rebuild and contention. This figure instantly put the Chicago Bulls on blast, and many wonder what the franchise has been doing, clearly without direction or objective for the past decade.
It’s not new information to hear that the Chicago Bulls have been stuck in the middle of the NBA pack for quite some time. To make this more alarmingly apparent, Gottlieb creatively devised a statistic to embody precisely how bad it has been. The NBA Purgatory Index is a chart where any given team earns a point in two ways: playoff wins and top-five draft selections. While there are special cases where these draft selections don’t indicate a rebuild or a playoff win doesn’t signify contention of legitimate degree, it’s a solid blanketing method to see which organizations have been chasing a title or building their roster. In Chicago’s case, they’ve done neither.
NBA Purgatory Index: combined Playoff wins plus picks in the top-5 of the draft
If you're not winning in the Playoffs or picking in the top 5 to get a guy that can lead you to Playoff wins, something needs to change pic.twitter.com/zfVccbMFNY
— Will Gottlieb (@Will_Gottlieb) December 17, 2024
Amazingly, the Bulls have the fewest top-five picks and playoff wins. The lone top-five draft selection was Patrick Williams, who, by all measures, has been a bust through five seasons. The three playoff wins have not won a single round or forced a game seven in any postseason appearance. In other words, the Chicago Bulls have been the most stagnantly mediocre franchise in the NBA over the past eight years.
Arturas Karnisovas has the most questions to answer for the horrendous eight-year stretch the Bulls have produced. He’s failed to choose and orchestrate a direction his entire four-year tenure with the team; after an initial effort to firesale for a more contention-ready roster in his first full year in town, it’s since handcuffed the franchise to continued subpar results. With the only top-five draft pick that he’s held, Patrick Williams turned into potentially the largest bust from the 2020 draft class. Inking LaVine, Nikola Vucevic, and Williams to extensions have been the nails in the coffin of Chicago’s terrible decade. Failing to draft or trade for All-Star-level talent has indefinitely sunk the Bulls.
Arturas Karnisovas on the possibility of the Bulls becoming a tax paying team this summer and the future direction of the franchise:
“That’s been thrown around all this season, this “blow up, rebuild,” he said. “It’s not on our minds.“ pic.twitter.com/i859SM8hwS
— Darnell Mayberry (@DarnellMayberry) April 15, 2023
While LaVine and head coach Billy Donovan remain the most heavily scrutinized organizational pieces, it doesn’t take an expert to see that Karnisovas’s shortcomings should be held more accountable. If handled correctly, his seat is currently the warmest in the building.
Can Chicago turn the tides of the past decade and commit to a future direction? This season’s youth movement and trade chatter surrounding LaVine and Vucevic hint that real change may be coming.
