Don’t sweat the tank: Luck will help, but Bulls need a better plan

The most tedious portion of Bulls season has arrived. Or maybe it's the most exciting time, there's not much variety with this team.

When March Madness arrives at other basketball venues, the Bulls wade into their annual phase of, “Why aren't you losing more?”

There was no need to worry about wins Wednesday at the United Center, since playoff-bound Toronto pounced early and rolled to a 139-109 victory at the United Center.

“It's just disappointing for me,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “We were making some progress, I felt like we were getting better. (Toronto was) coming in here saying, 'We can't let this one get away.'”

For all those in the “tank harder” camp, just relax. The Bulls have 13 games left and won't win more than three or four the rest of the way. The play-in tournament is beyond reach for a change.

The Bulls and Milwaukee are essentially battling for the No. 9 and 10 lottery seeds, but there's a decent chance both will get passed up by New Orleans. The Pelicans are starting to play well now that Dejounte Murray is finally healthy, and their first-round pick is already promised to Atlanta, so no point in tanking.

The team with the ninth-worst record will get a 4.5% of landing the top draft pick, while the 10th-worst gets 3.0% That might seem like a meaningful difference, so let's put it another way — the Bulls would have a 95.5% and 97% chance of not picking first.

The odds of getting a top-four pick are 20.3% at No. 9; 13.9% at No. 10, which also might seem like a big difference, but there's no rhyme or reason to NBA luck.

Don't forget, the last two top picks went to the No. 11 lottery seed (Dallas) and No. 10 (Atlanta). The team with the worst record hasn't picked first since the NBA evened out the odds back in 2019. It used to be the worst team had a 25% chance at getting the top pick. Now the bottom three all have a 14% chance.

The Bulls were never going to drop far in the standings because they waited until the trade deadline in early February to clean house. If they were truly interested in avoiding the “middle,” like Arturas Karnisovas claimed, they would have done some locker room evictions during the summer of 2024. After moving on from DeMar DeRozan and Alex Caruso, the Bulls could have traded away Coby White and Zach LaVine, tried to get an extra first-rounder in return, and started over with Josh Giddey and Matas Buzelis as the nucleus. That's essentially where they stand 20 months later.

Also true — it is possible to go from the middle of the pack to the NBA Finals. Indiana just did it last year. Most recent NBA champions haven't tanked their way to a title, talking about Boston, Denver, Golden State, Milwaukee and Toronto. The Lakers did tank, then traded most of those high picks for Anthony Davis, but signing LeBron James as a free agent was the main catalyst for the 2020 title.

Oklahoma City pulled off a quick tank job, but the Thunder already had future MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — a player the Bulls could have drafted instead of Wendell Carter Jr. in 2018.

Detroit and San Antonio have made tanking look like a smart idea this season, but keep this in mind. The Spurs have moved up in the lottery three years in a row, which is hard to believe.

The Pistons were able to snag a second first-rounder to take Jalen Duren in 2022, because they had enough cap space to absorb Kemba Walker's salary from the Knicks. The Bulls still could get Portland's first-round pick if the Blazers make the real playoffs, a remnant of the Lauri Markkanen trade, but otherwise have done nothing clever besides overpaying for Nikola Vucevic in 2021.

Lottery luck could turn the tables for the Bulls in a couple months. But most of the NBA success stories are both lucky and smart, and the Bulls haven't shown enough of the second trait.

The real problems are the Bulls' bad decisions of the past, not random late-seasons win over Memphis or Phoenix.