The Chicago Bulls are officially out of excuses

After landing a point guard in the NBA Draft, the Chicago Bulls are officially out of excuses and must start winning.

If you are a fan of the Chicago Bulls, you haven’t had very much to cheer about the last few years. In what has felt like an indefinite rebuild, there have been countless changes. There was the change to the coaching staff, replacing Fred Hoiberg with Jim Boylen. There was also the roster overhaul which saw players like Jimmy Butler, Jabari Parker, Bobby Portis, and Nikola Mirotic leave, while Wendell Carter Jr., Otto Porter Jr., and most recently Coby White have now arrived.

Suffice it to say there has been quite a bit of turmoil and personnel turnover on the team. It’s one of the reasons there has been an intense debate over the exact start and end date of this “rebuild.”

For obvious reasons, John Paxson and Gar Forman want the perceived start date to be as late as possible to give them as much leash to save this team. Fans, on the other hand, believe this rebuild has been on-going for far too long and are hungry to start seeing some results. In fairness, some recent injuries have thrown a bit of a monkey wrench into their plans, and at the very least slowed the rebuild a bit. However, GarPax are done getting the benefit of the doubt.

Which leads into the point of this piece, which is the Bulls’ management team are fresh out of excuses, and the team must start producing results and showing growth beginning this season.

They have no had three straight drafts with the No. 7 overall pick and have built a young nucleus of Lauri Markkanen, Carter, Porter, and Zach LaVine.

To the Bulls, the one missing link has been a point guard. While they currently have Kris Dunn on the roster, the Bulls clearly were looking for more offensive output from that position. Dunn is an outstanding defender, far better than White, but is nowhere near the shooter White is. Putting aside White is more of a scorer than a distributor of the ball, you can expect more overall offense out of him next season than Dunn.

All of that to say the Bulls have all the pieces now. The point guard was the last piece of the puzzle and now GarPax have the coach that they want and the personnel they want, but most importantly (since this is what doomed Hoiberg) is they have the personnel who can play the kind of basketball their coach wants to play.

This means that regardless of when you think the rebuild started, it officially enters the next phase now. There is no more “building.” There may be some tweaking or fine-tuning, but this team needs to begin the ascent up. Beginning next year they need to show marked improvement in areas like player development, offensive efficiency, and building rapport on the court. If not, and things continue to trend sideways or even downward, GarPax will have no excuses left upon which to fall back.