During the 2021-22 NBA season, the Chicago Bulls seemed like a promising team with a bright future in the league. Since then, the team has finished each season worse and worse, until they were on the verge of blowing up the roster.
Chicago Bulls All-Star Nikola Vucevic thinks he knows why the team struggled. In his eyes, one of the main reasons was Lonzo Ball’s injury. In an interview with Meridian SportVucevic opened up about the Bulls’ recent downfall.
“Since Lonzo Ball got hurt, we haven’t been able to get the results we could have gotten,” Vucevic said. “It’s been a huge drag on us. When he was playing, we were leading the East for a while, which might not have been a realistic result, even if we were playing well, but with him, we would have been contending for anywhere between third and sixth in the end. The rest of us are more focused on scoring: LaVine, DeRozan and myself. He’s brought us all together, sped up the game, been a big part of the defense, guarding the best players with Caruso.”
LONZO BALL TO ALEX CARUSO WOW.@NBCSChicago | @ACFresh21 pic.twitter.com/WaYSFhBdNu
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) October 23, 2021
It’s not just Lonzo Ball’s injury that has affected the Bulls, Vucevic believes it’s also the constant trade negotiations surrounding the team. What makes it even worse is that the Bulls haven’t even traded a single player until this offseason, sabotaging themselves over the past few seasons.
“Although [Lonzo’s] “The numbers may not have been impressive, but he meant a lot to us,” Caruso said. “We tried with young players, then we had a lot of injuries. Trade talks also affected us, preventing us from getting the results we thought we could get, but when results don’t follow, changes come… DeRozan left, Caruso left, the team got younger and they wanted to go in a different direction.”
As things stand, the Chicago Bulls are no better than they were last season. However, the team is now completely stuck between being a flop and trying to gather resources to be a flop in the future.
