Will Chicago Bulls have to tank again in 2019?

With new young powers emerging in the Eastern Conference, will the Chicago Bulls find themselves hoping for another lottery pick next season?

After watching the way this season has turned out for the Cleveland Cavaliers, it seems as if LeBron James might finally leave the Chicago Bulls (mostly) in peace after next season.

Barring an absolutely god-like performance from James, the Cavaliers make it past of the Eastern Conference Finals, let alone win a title. In fact, making it to the Eastern Conference Finals might be an accomplishment at this point.

So yay! That obstacle will be removed at last.

The problem is that while James will probably be gone, a whole lot of other impediments are looming up in the Bulls’ path in the East. And with the conference ostensibly growing stronger, Chicago might be in for a few more ugly seasons.

The Process has come to fruition, and Ben Simmons is looking like young LeBron reincarnate.

Toronto has a very good team around DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry.

The Boston Celtics, barring something unforeseen, will have both Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward back next season.

Even with the East’s Central Division, the Bulls will be hard-pressed as Giannis Antetokounmpo continues to bring the Milwaukee Bucks up with him as he ascends up the NBA’s ladder, Victor Oladipo leads a resurgent Indiana Pacers team and the Detroit ostensibly gets another shot to see if Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond can make the Pistons good again.

Where does this leave the Chicago Bulls? Not in a particularly good place, unfortunately.

Even with standout rookie Lauri Markannen, a solid combo guard in Kris Dunn and an emerging scorer in Zach LaVine, the Chicago Bulls need a ton of things to go their way in the upcoming years.

First off, they badly need to stay within the top six picks of this year’s NBA draft and grab a potentially franchise-changing star. For my money, I’d want that to be Michael Porter Jr. despite some of the injury concerns.

And then, they need whatever rookie they get to dominant immediately while the aforementioned three, along with the bench led by Bobby Portis, take all their games to the next level.

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And that still probably won’t be enough to do better than third in the Central.

At that point, wouldn’t the Bulls just be better off tanking again?

Sure, fans will hate it as they want to see this team compete in the playoffs and for a championship again now. But realistically, this team needs way more firepower before we can even talk about winning a playoff series here.

To be honest, that probably means they need another top 10-caliber talent on this roster in addition to what they’ll get next year.

Then, the Chicago Bulls could be cooking with gas.

Of course, the Bulls could try to lure a top free agent to Chicago to expedite things if they think they’re close enough. But naturally, that carries with it the risk of maybe giving up young assets they want to develop.

As such, it’s probably not wise to spend big in free agency until that championship window opens again. And that means they’ll have to build through the draft, probably with some high picks, at least through next season.

Next: Michael Porter Jr. to the Bulls a slam dunk?

While we can’t assume that The Process will work the same in Chicago as it did in Philadelphia — besides, they had higher draft picks than the Bulls have had and had those picks for years in a row — they might be forced to trust it anyway.