SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Josh Giddey slammed his hands together as the ball clattered through the net and onto the hardwood, his face crumpling into a grimace. Disgust and frustration melded in the Chicago Bulls guard’s voice as he shouted at his teammates.
The outburst was short. Giddey didn’t have time to linger on the play, a blown coverage that allowed Sacramento Kings guard Killian Hayes a clear pathway to cut to the basket for a layup. More than seven minutes remained in the game. Giddey gathered the ball and inbounded it to make another fruitless attempt to chip away at a double-digit deficit.
In most ways that matter, Sunday’s 126-110 loss to the Kings reflected the overall despair of the Bulls’ current situation. Giddey tallied his ninth triple-double of the season. Collin Sexton sank seven 3-pointers to score 28 points. Neither meant much in the face of porous defense, ineffective rim protection and a lack of effort on the offensive boards.
It wasn’t bad enough that the Bulls couldn’t beat the team with the NBA’s worst record. Or that the 15-50 Kings cruised to the victory without the familiar faces of Zach LaVine (sidelined for the season) and DeMar DeRozan (illness). The glaring concern for the Bulls is that Sunday’s loss didn’t seem all that purposeful or planned.
It was, of course, the outcome the Bulls desired. They won’t admit it. Front-office executives won’t even say the word “rebuild” too loudly around the United Center. Nevertheless, this franchise set one goal at the trade deadline: establish the best possible pick in the 2026 draft to begin improving a roster severely lacking in talent.
So why doesn’t this team look like it’s tanking?
The Bulls refuse to shut down center Jalen Smith, who returned in a restricted capacity after yet another hiatus due to a calf injury. They won’t play guard Rob Dillingham, a young player under contract for next season who needs reps to improve. They insist upon starting forward Guerschon Yabusele, a 30-year-old who doesn’t fit any aspect of the team’s future profile. All of these decisions are made under the pretense of prioritizing wins.
It’s through these practices that the Bulls picked up wins against the Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns last week, a pair of victories that were egregious for vastly different reasons. Against the Bucks, the Bulls needed a loss to retain an advantage in the draft lottery order. Against the Suns, the Bulls had a straightforward opportunity to fold against a team genuinely trying to move up the Western Conference standings; instead, they put on their scrappiest performance of the season, capped off with a heady time-wasting play from Tre Jones.
This has been predictable to anyone who has listened to Bulls leadership in recent weeks. Executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas doesn’t have the proverbial strong stomach necessary to guide a team out of mediocrity. He gets queasy anytime the Bulls need to make a hard decision — trade a popular player, lose a few games, commit to a strategy — in order to improve.
This inclination means Karnišovas outright refuses to direct coach Billy Donovan to take any tanking measures, despite clearing the way for this strategy at the trade deadline.
“Everything I’ve gotten here from the front office, from ownership, is that we need to do the best job you can to go out there and compete and to try to win,” Donovan said in February. “I believe in that. … That’s kind of the mentality that we have here inside the organization. We’ve always tried to keep the integrity of that anytime we go out and compete.”
The Bulls never wavered from that ethos. That might not have seemed obvious during their 11-game losing streak, the worst in franchise history since 2001. Yet this compulsive desire to win bleeds into every aspect of the team’s management, perhaps best evidenced by the fact that Giddey and Matas Buzelis remained on the court until the final 80 seconds Sunday despite both being fresh off ankle sprains.
Maybe this stubbornness won’t affect anything. The Bulls are currently ninth in the draft lottery order with a 26-38 record. The Bucks lost Sunday night as well, keeping the Bulls 1½ games ahead in the lottery order.
But weighting the draft odds is a delicate business — and one the Bulls remain committed to approaching with a clumsy commitment to competitiveness.
