Greenberg: Bulls rebuilding again after wild trade deadline, but don’t expect turnaround soon

The Chicago Bulls return home Saturday to play the Denver Nuggets, and you get the feeling Nikola Jokić could mess around and get a triple-double while riding around in a Rascal scooter.

I think the new-look, small-ball Bulls are going to be in trouble pretty much the rest of the season, and if that happens, well, then Artūras Karnišovas’ trade deadline will be a moderate success.

Karnišovas, the Bulls’ much-panned executive vice president of basketball operations, couldn’t come out and say tanking was the goal when he talked to the media on Thursday, but it’s pretty obvious that part of the reason he tore up his mediocre team by getting rid of half the roster in the past week was for them to lose as many games as possible down the stretch to better their draft lottery odds.

“I think being in the middle is what we don’t want to do,” he said during a post-trade deadline video conference call with reporters. “I think we’ve seen that the last four years.”

Under his leadership, the Bulls have become a punchline in the NBA for their middling consistency, finishing under .500 and then failing to make it out of the Play-In Tournament in each of the past three seasons.

And now, after a major overhaul at the deadline, the Bulls (24-28) got off to a good start with a 123-107 loss in Toronto. Two of the newest Bulls, guards Anfernee Simons and Jaden Ivey, started, and Simons led the team in scoring with 22 points. New big man Guerschon Yabusele had a double-double off the bench with 15 points and 11 rebounds.

And the Bulls lost just the same, falling out of the last play-in spot. Now they return home to a dissatisfied fan base that is wrestling with the cognitive dissonance of rooting for a team they mostly hate.

Starting Saturday, there are 15 home games left, and you know what’s coming next when they turn lopsided. I’m expecting a mild outbreak of “Sell the team” and “Fire AK” chants. Of course, that’s only if authentically tormented Chicago fans are actually at the games, which isn’t always the case. You see a lot of #SeeRed crowds that are happy to have a night on the town with a side of basketball.

Perhaps the Bulls should be proactive to douse any fan dissent and just keep honoring Derrick Rose until he refuses to show up. Seriously, they can just let him talk about whatever he wants.

“Tonight, Derrick is going to talk about flowers for 25 minutes.”

Karnišovas is an easy punching bag in this town. But give him some credit. He has been criticized in the past for trade-deadline inaction, but this time, he was a wheeling-and-dealing dervish. In the span of a few days, he traded away Nikola Vučević, Ayo Dosunmu, Coby White, Kevin Huerter, Dalen Terry and Julian Phillips, waived Jevon Carter, and acquired and redirected the contracts of Dario Saric, Mike Conley Jr. and Ousmane Dieng.

In return, the Bulls added Simons, Ivey and fellow guards Collin Sexton and Rob Dillingham, along with forwards Leonard Miller, Nick Richards and Yabusele. He mostly moved around guys with expiring contracts for other guys with expiring contracts, but he also added nine second-round picks. How many first-rounders did he get? Don’t ask.

If Bears general manager Ryan Poles acquired nine second-round picks, they’d throw him a parade down Michigan Avenue. But when Karnišovas does it, everyone wants to make fun of him. That’s life in a big market.

While the activity was necessary, the achievement wasn’t anything to brag about. But what could you expect? The reason the Bulls are in this situation is the same reason Karnišovas came up light in the trade returns: He’s just not that good at his job.

Thankfully for him, you don’t need to be proficient at your job to keep it when you work for a Jerry Reinsdorf-owned team. The standards are a bit lower. Then again, a few years ago, Reinsdorf’s baseball front office was mercifully fired weeks after they executed a sell-off at the trade deadline. So you never know.

For now, Karnišovas is in charge and he has big plans for the present.

“Starting right now, I think our pro group is going to focus on watching games with very specific lists of players that we’re going to target during free agency,” he said. “Also, we’re going to watch a lot of college games, international games, and we’re going to focus on the draft and constantly try to get better.”

So they’re going to watch a lot of basketball games. Got it.

On Thursday, Karnišovas outlined what the team’s three goals were going into the deadline.

The first was admitting the team isn’t very good, and that’s actually a bad thing.

“The play-in is not our goal, a championship is,” he said. “We know where we are in the standings, and we’re not satisfied with being in the middle.”

The second was staying focused on building around the remaining core players. Karnišovas named five of them, but there are really just two on the active roster: Josh Giddey and Matas Buzelis. Rookie Noa Essengue is hurt and is a very lanky question mark until proven otherwise.

“We are intentional about surrounding these core pieces with players who have real NBA experience, along with upcoming draft picks,” he said.

And the third was keeping the books clean going into free agency.

“We’ve maintained sustained flexibility heading into the offseason,” he said. “That gives us real options, whether that’s free agency, trades, the draft or continuing investment in development.”

None of this was very impressive, but it’s a start. Where will it lead? Probably right back here.

The Bulls have had one winning season in Karnišovas’ six in charge, and in that outlier campaign, he failed to supplement the team when they needed it. His inert leadership style directly influenced the next few years of mediocrity that got the organization to where it is now. Karnišovas won’t call it a rebuild, but that’s what it is.

“I’m still staying away from that word,” he said. “I just would call it a stage that we are in.”

Will this team move to a bigger, better stage soon? It’s not impossible if they get some lottery luck. Buzelis looks like a solid NBA player, if not a superstar, and Giddey has continued to progress in his second season with the club. I like the additions of Simons, who is an unrestricted free agent, and Ivey, who is a restricted one. I liked White and Dosunmu too. But then again, they didn’t win much while they were here. No one did.

This team needed a full reset, including a new front office, coaching staff and ownership. Instead, it just got a reshuffled roster and promises of brighter days.

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