Getty Chicago Bulls stars Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan embrace during a bout with the New York Knicks.
With the Chicago Bulls seemingly more interested in avoiding the luxury tax than going all-in on the current core’s championship window, some fans have been left looking for reasons to believe the team can build upon the success of last season.
That said, the fact that Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and their crew were actually leading the Eastern Conference for large swaths of 2021-22 offered hope that the team could really compete in ’22-23. They just needed to stay healthy.
Needless to say, that’s not going to be the case for much of the campaign, with Lonzo Ball being forced to undergo another knee surgery. Time will tell, but it looks as though the former No. 2 overall pick won’t be back until after the turn of the calendar into 2023, either.
So, the odds of the team springboarding toward contenders status are looking pretty long.
Meanwhile, the latest stat-based projection on the Bulls’ season from a former league exec is looking uglier than that of just about any would-be playoff team in the Association.
Bulls Projected to Take Major Step Backward
Every year, ESPN‘s Kevin Pelton — who’s well-known for his analytical models and stats-based approach to evaluating player and team performance — puts out win projections for the forthcoming NBA season. The 2022-23 campaign was no different, but his system was particularly harsh on the Bulls this time around.
Pelton’s projections, which are based on a combination of his SCHOENE player projections for box score stats and three-year, luck-adjusted Regularized Adjusted Four Factors (RAPM), have the Bulls all the way down in the No. 12 spot in the Eastern Conference with just 38.1 average wins. Wrote Pelton:
Despite starting 2021-22 atop the East at 26-10 before a second-half slide, Chicago is projected to finish worse than .500 this season. That stems in large part from the Bulls’ minus-0.4 point differential, which would typically translate to 40 wins instead of the 46 games Chicago actually won. The Bulls were even worse in Lonzo Ball‘s absence, performing 1.5 points lower than average after accounting for opponent and location.
Clearly, Ball’s absence looms large when using analytics to project the Bulls’ future success. Added Pelton:
With Ball’s return from knee surgery uncertain (he is penciled in for 875 minutes), Chicago might need more late-game heroics from DeMar DeRozan to get on the right side of .500.
Before We Lend These Projections Too Much Credence…
Seeing this kind of thing mere days before Chicago takes the court, sans Ball, for its first pre-season game against the New Orleans Pelicans is undoubtedly a gut punch for the Bulls faithful. However, Pelton’s projections should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
Case in point: the win total that was doled out to the defending-champion Golden State Warriors.
Despite the fact that the Dubs’ foundational six remain on the roster, and key departures were offset by the arrival of Donte DiVincenzo and JaMychal Green, Golden State was projected to finish right around .500 with 41.9 average wins. That number was good for just eight in the Western Conference.
For his part, ESPN’s Matt Barnes was dumbfounded by the projection.
“When they told me this morning I wanted to go off on Kevin, but then they said this is just the analytics and they pump the numbers in the machine. So, it’s not actually him,” Barnes said.
“This is a perfect example of why analytics should be a small part of basketball. It’s more about the eye test and kind of just understanding the game.”
Bulls fans are definitely hoping that he’s right.