Heading into Sunday afternoon’s matchup against the Boston Celtics, the Chicago Bulls have lost four straight and find themselves outside the playoff picture. The Bulls (31-34) are 10th in the East, a game behind Milwaukee for the eighth seed, with Miami in between. Understandably, the poor play in recent days has veteran point guard Rajon Rondo frustrated. Beyond losing, Rondo has seemed to question the team’s lack of direction.
Just take a look at these quotes from Vincent Goodwill’s piece for CSN Chicago:
“There’s no exact answer, you gotta learn through experience,” Rondo said to CSNChicago.com. “We go out there, we’re in sixth place (tied at that point in the East)…I don’t feel like…I feel like we should be trying to move up.”
“(We should) continue to try to move up in seeding versus experimenting,” Rondo said.
“Just no consistency at all… Our team overall. It’s difficult,” Rondo said. “We are losing some games in the fourth, some games we should win…I don’t know if we’re doing analytics, what we’re doing as far as who we play, who’s not. Everybody has to be ready when their name is called.”
For a team that so often goes all-in on the win-now model, and did so last summer by bringing in Rondo and Dwyane Wade, the trade deadline deal to send Taj Gibson and Doug McDermott to Oklahoma City seemed an abrupt change of direction. Now, coach Fred Hoiberg is in the difficult position of trying to get the young players like Denzel Valentine, Bobby Portis, Cameron Payne, and Joffrey Lauvergne some time while trying to satisfy veterans like Rondo, Wade, Jimmy Butler, Robin Lopez, who want to make the playoffs.
Thus far, the desire to get extended looks at the youngsters has seemingly won out, with Hoiberg having played at least 10 players in every game since the deadline, including three games when he played 12, something usually reserved for Summer League games, not a team fighting for the playoffs. Unfortunately, that hasn’t translated into wins, with the Bulls 3-5 since the deadline.
It would seem time for Hoiberg to tighten up the rotations. Regardless of whether you’re trying to make a playoff run, or fall back for a higher lottery pick, playing 10-12 guys a night -- often with varying starting lineups -- isn’t helping anyone.
Players need to know their roles; it helps them feel comfortable and provides a sense of what’s expected. As Wade noted to Goodwill, “Some guys don’t know when they’re gonna play, some guys don’t know how much so it could be a little challenging. Especially young guys, when you’re trying to develop mental toughness, it could be tough.”
With Hoiberg and the team trying to find their way, and numerous paths available ahead of them, it should be quite interesting to see how this plays out in Chicago.