It is an odd time to be a fan of the Chicago Bulls. That has been true for roughly a decade, to be sure, when Tom Thibodeau’s empire of blue-collar excellence expired. Those Bulls never won a championship, or even came especially close, but they were somebody—firmly, ferociously identifiable, a passionate bunch who inspired feelings of grandeur. A bottoming out followed that era, and now we’re into year five of something in between those two realms.
What’s odd about this exact moment, though, is that it feels joyful. Not because the team is all that good, but because Lonzo Ball is back on the floor. For how long, who knows—the defensive genius, who’s also one of the best off-ball shooters and top passers in the sport, just played 15 minutes in two preseason games after missing two-and-a-half seasons with injuries that often seemed irreversible, unfixable. In his first action since January 2022, Ball looked just as good as he did when the Bulls blazed their way to a 27-11 start in his first season here.
He proved more essential to that team’s organism than expected—without him, they finished 19-25, and struggled their way to just under .500 over the following two seasons. The crisp, inventive, collective workhorse style that Lonzo managed never returned, traded in for a sluggish attack often centered around DeMar DeRozan isolation play. Zach LaVine rarely popped off like he did next to Ball, who is a master at snapping the ball to LaVine in the midst of one of his shockingly athletic trajectories. The Bulls became a slog.
If Ball is indeed healthy, back for real, the team will be very entertaining, at minimum. Without the clutch heroics of DeRozan and Alex Caruso that kept them afloat, they aren’t built to win like they have been, particularly given how much youth has been added to their rotation. Caruso was traded for Josh Giddey, who despite a lot of shine at the Olympics often looks like Bambi on an NBA court. Matas Buzelis was drafted, and figures to get real minutes as some mix of early impact player and unpredictable chaos agent. Dalen Terry and Julian Phillips, too, will see more of the floor.
LaVine and Nikola Vucevic will be trying out for other teams, to some extent, looking to show that they’ve still got All-Star production in them but also that they’re capable elder statesmen, graceful facilitators of development and confidence-building. Coby White, Patrick Williams, and Ayo Donsunmu appear to be the Bulls players with the most normal incentives: all three have made it to their second NBA contracts, and none are motivated to get traded, either—and none of the three are rehabilitating a stalled career, like Ball.
Preseason impressions aren’t worth much, but in this case, they suggest that head coach Billy Donovan has landed on a team-wide project that decently pulls all these different incentives and contexts together: play much faster, move the ball more, shoot more threes. They shot no less than 40 three-balls in their exhibition contests, peaking at a bodacious 56 attempts in their final matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Beneath the hood of his deep-shooting slingshot is an equal-opportunity assist machine—Giddey and Ball are the roster’s best transition passers, but in the half court, everyone’s just as likely to be the penultimate handler of the hot potato before it flies rimward.
It’s hard to say how well this experiment goes, or guess how much longer it will—combined with the feel-good occasion of Ball’s return—look like a pretext for a happy team. It does right now, though, which is a distinct change from the visible misery of the past two seasons. Even with DeRozan and Caruso doing beautiful things, Bulls games exuded a funereal quality. Talk to Bulls fans now, and you might still get an earful of bitterness—the last two seasons were not very fun to watch. But you’ll also notice something different: a growing belief that this team might make a little noise, but at the same time, acceptance that if they don’t, it’ll be worth watching them try.