LaVine can run and jump and shoot and score, and I still don't care much for his overall game. So listen to the reported offers from some good teams that know he can be a third option or be better deployed by a smart coach as a harvester of points against opposing second units. See if there's still a general manager who thinks he can find in him the star that LaVine seems to strive to be.
The Bulls are averaging just 18,912 fans in paid attendance, good for 10th in the NBA. Their 90.4 percentage of capacity at the United Center ranks 23rd in the league, and the actual number of butts in seats is many thousands less than that. Is this important to anybody? Hello? Is this on?
Everybody is hurt, all the time, with no seeming rhyme or reason to explain the constant state of debilitation. There are thumbs, ankles, hips and knees, issues both chronic and acute. How extensive of a top-down review of their practices has been done to explain this? And what preventive steps can be taken? It can't be just bad fortune.
Boylen did it again in a loss Sunday. He took yet another inexplicable timeout late in a blowout, and he was lampooned across the sport (and this time also by LaVine himself). As is Boylen's habit, he went beyond just answering a direct question about a bizarre move to make sweeping statements about himself as a coach. "I don't stop coaching the team because we're down," Boylen said. "I've never done that, never will."
Whatever, dude. Just like you said, "I never yanked guys. I've never done that" when you actually have. Not every explanation of something dumb has to become a stump speech attempting to affirm some nonexistent legitimacy or unearned identity.
Still out with a mysterious foot problem, Porter is all but certain to exercise his $28.5-million player option for next season. After that, he's an unrestricted free agent. Nobody is likely to trade for him after this, and he will have been here to be a part of nothing that mattered at all. So that all worked out well.
All roads lead to a kind of nihilism with this team, where any scenario we consider ultimately ends up not accomplishing anything. This is some form of NBA hell from which there may be no escape. The same people do the same things, then somebody's hurt and the Bulls draft seventh.
The Bulls need to get to the end of this season with a better idea of what position White plays and how well, because I'm still not sure of either. Young point guards take time to acclimate to the NBA, but I don't know that he's a point guard in the true sense. Also, the Bulls need to employ a coach who actually teaches players instead of just thinking he does. That'd be great.
Recent studies show that trying to imagine how John Paxson, Gar Forman, Boylen and these Bulls get back to contention is the rough equivalent of smoking three packs of unfiltered cigarettes per day while eating only high-fructose corn syrup and asbestos. It's the same as riding an experimental motorcycle without a helmet, sleeping one hour per night and learning to be a snake-charmer using YouTube videos. It shouldn't be done by minors, the elderly or women who are pregnant or may become pregnant. It has been linked to plaque psoriasis, high blood pressure, explosive intestinal gas, coughing from the ears, speaking with a comical Parisian accent, pernicious anemia, traveling intercontinentally while sleeping, temporary gigantism, the fire-sweats and Fournier's gangrene.