Official Bulls Tankathon 2025 Thread

[The Box Office]

via Nike:

Our slogan this season is "FULL TANK. NO MERCY."

[2weekswithpay]

Read on Twitter

We're making the play-in.

[Muzbar]

Read on Twitter

We're making the play-in.

Help us Brooklyn Nets, you're our only hope!

[Guru]

Read on Twitter

We're making the play-in.

How does making the play-in effect draft order?

If we are to lose I assume we fall back to the 8 spot (I think we are probably going to be 9 with San Antonio rising in tankathon rankings)

If we win dow e go to 15 possibly?

[kodo]

Read on Twitter

We're making the play-in.

How does making the play-in effect draft order?

If we are to lose I assume we fall back to the 8 spot (I think we are probably going to be 9 with San Antonio rising in tankathon rankings)

If we win dow e go to 15 possibly?

Making the play-in has no effect because it means nothing, officially. Those games don't even count officially and in stats. Making the playoffs (so we win our 2 play-in games) would prevent us from being in the lottery as normal.

[Jcool0]

Read on Twitter

[Chi town]

Nice win for the Spurs and the Sixers!

[bledredwine]

I’m already a step ahead! All in for the tank!

Who’s our tank commander?

[dougthonus]

I’m already a step ahead! All in for the tank!

Who’s our tank commander?

We need Vuc back. Zach Collins is killing us.

[bledredwine]

I’m already a step ahead! All in for the tank!

Who’s our tank commander?

We need Vuc back. Zach Collins is killing us.

Why does this always happen to us?

[dougthonus]

I’m already a step ahead! All in for the tank!

Who’s our tank commander?

We need Vuc back. Zach Collins is killing us.

Why does this always happen to us?

Well it doesn't "happen" to us. We purposefully try to win. When we make trades, we do so in making sure the roster doesn't get too bad, and so we do not compete with the teams that are trying to tank, and are willing to strip out current talent for future assets.

Only the fans want to tank. AK has made it clear he would prefer to make the play-in. Strategically, AK said it himself at the deadline and again in the Stacey interview, he doesn't want the team to get bad. He views it possible to get 9-10 good players and then win a championship, and so he's targeting young players with experience (and also very little upside) to build around rather than trying to get draft picks or to ever be really bad.

Time will tell whether he has any plan that can ever make this team good, I think the answer is obviously not because fundamentally I don't think he understands asset management in the way you need to in order to build a good team.

[bledredwine]

We need Vuc back. Zach Collins is killing us.

Why does this always happen to us?

Well it doesn't "happen" to us. We purposefully try to win. When we make trades, we do so in making sure the roster doesn't get too bad, and so we do not compete with the teams that are trying to tank, and are willing to strip out current talent for future assets.

Only the fans want to tank. AK has made it clear he would prefer to make the play-in. Strategically, AK said it himself at the deadline and again in the Stacey interview, he doesn't want the team to get bad. He views it possible to get 9-10 good players and then win a championship, and so he's targeting young players with experience (and also very little upside) to build around rather than trying to get draft picks or to ever be really bad.

Time will tell whether he has any plan that can ever make this team good, I think the answer is obviously not because fundamentally I don't think he understands asset management in the way you need to in order to build a good team.

True. Still, it was infuriating to see Mirotic go off after stinking for two+ seasons during our potential tank year.

I will say this and I know that we are likely in disagreement. I do have more faith in AK in at least avoiding the treadmill for long periods than GarPax. He makes gutsy high risk high reward moves which so far have turned out to be very poor IMO. In the same vein, you’re probably right on asset management. I’d be curious to hear more of your thoughts on that if you’d be up for it. If I can be honest, I’ve never been this out of touch with the team.

[dougthonus]

Sorry this is long, and I also don't mean any insult towards you in any of this, just expressing my opinion around AK and got lengthy going through a lot of detail since you asked.

I will say this and I know that we are likely in disagreement. I do have more faith in AK in at least avoiding the treadmill for long periods than GarPax.

I don't mean this to be rude, but that seems strange to me. He hasn't even been good enough to get on the treadmill, let alone good enough to find a way to get off of it and get better.

From a "making the playoffs" perspective, he's already knocking on the door of tying the worst stretches in franchise history, except all the other times it happened (end of Krause's tenure, end of Paxson's tenure), we were deliberately losing to acquire assets, whereas he's accomplishing this feat while trying to win, and has stripped us bare of assets in the process.

He just says dumb things like we've seen teams win with 9-10 good players rather than stars. No we haven't actually seen that at all. Even in the recent interview with Stacey, he's still talking about how the Lonzo Ball injury killed them. Dude has been complaining about an injury to a guy slotted as their 4th best player making 20M a year for 3 years now. Paxson did better than this when Derrick Rose missed similar time making 2x the percentage of the cap as Ball.

He makes gutsy high risk high reward moves which so far have turned out to be very poor IMO.

Doing something that is "bold" but with poor analysis is worse to me. He effectively Isiah Thomas'd this thing trading for name players with high counting stats and terrible impact on winning. The lone exception to that has been Alex Caruso, but DeMar, Vuc, and Giddey are all in that vein, and the team he put together had terrible fit with each other which was obvious on paper before things even started.

His drafting doesn't have a lot of information because he traded away a few picks, I'd look at it in hindsight like:
Pat: meh, hadn't been good, but really tough draft to nail, on the flip side, he reached for Pat
Marco: meh, late second rounder, but the fact we gave him a 3 year deal instead of Ayo was super weird
Ayo: good pick, but was #1 on ESPN's top talent list for like 10 picks, so little credit
Terry: Very poor pick, almost everyone after was better and it made no sense at the time and looked like a reach
Philips: good idea, hasn't panned out, but reasonable gamble
Matas: So far so good, but also was mocked at 5 and fell to 11 so not much credit

More or less, his gut instinct picks where he took the non obvious guy were failures. His wins were times that he was taking the consensus guy which doesn't really bode particularly well but small sample size

In the same vein, you’re probably right on asset management. I’d be curious to hear more of your thoughts on that if you’d be up for it. If I can be honest, I’ve never been this out of touch with the team.

I view assets very much from an economists point of view. When trying to build a great team and you have X dollars to spend, it is important to get as much value for every dollar as possible. Also, assets will both appreciate and depreciate, and that change in value is do not only to their play on the court but also due to their contracts.

As you become good, and you have renegotiate with your guys it gets harder and harder to build, because now all your good players cost more, so you need a pipeline of contracts that are good value per dollar to maintain being good, or more likely, the natural thing to happen is that you have rises and falls, as you can't keep a team together.

The teams with the super-duper stars stay good, because those guys, even on max deals or super max deals are still really good value for dollar players, whereas a team like Orlando whom have a lot of good young players but maybe no super duper stars have a harder time staying good when they have to max all these really good but not elite guys and then run into a lot of salary problems are more likely to have this rise and fall or get stuck in the 2nd round.

From a value perspective, understanding you should have traded Caruso a deadline earlier because he wasn't going to fit in on a rebuild on a new contract and has value in the league with two playoff runs would be much higher than with one is a critical mistake. Same with Coby / Ayo this deadline.

Now we will probably either move one of those guys next deadline or this off-season when they are worth less, but also after tehy helped us add wins and make our draft selection likely worse. Or we keep them both, and then we enter 2026 with them as unrestricted free agents (highly, highly likely to leave for nothing) and we had them hurt our draft position for two years while also not having them around on the next good team (or we pay them max in the market and likely now keep them, but on contracts where they don't move the needle forward).

When you know you have few assets, you want to accumulate more future assets at the cost of current success, especially with two elite draft classes where you could load up on draft talent. Trade out current guys who won't help you in the future for future assets, use your cap room to acquire future assets vs current assets, and get better future assets by being bad and juicing your draft odds. Then in 2027, when all your future assets start coming due that you traded away stuff for that wasn't going to have value in 2027, your 2027 has a much higher probability of building something sustainable.

Instead we keep a bunch of current stuff which hurts our draft stock, hurts our future assets because these guys won't help us in the future on new deals at peak market value, and when we enter 2027, we probably have 4 less 1st draft picks, likely worse picks in 2025 and 2026 (though it's random so it may not turn out that way, just more likely to), and are in the same boat we would have been in otherwise with everything else.

From a negotiation standpoint, he doesn't seem to understand the market. The extension we gave Vuc was nonsensical. The extension we gave Pat was terrible. Even though Ayo and Coby ended up on good deals, it was largely because they made massive improvements that would be categorized as unlikely generally speaking. If they went on the likely path, then he also gave out too much money early. His style of negotiation will only generate good deals for the Bulls if the players make huge gains after contract.

He also seems far less likely to move off his mistakes. Vuc is still here. Pat is still here. He doubles down on guys that are attached to him as major moves. Same problem is likely going to happen with Giddey, because we traded Caruso for him, we will likely pro-actively agree to a massive extension (at least based on his past MO) rather than having him go to market or negotiating hard, and we sure won't risk letting him walk because we're too attached to him.

I'd rate AK as fundamentally one of the worst GMs in basketball, because the he seems below average in more or less every category I would rate a GM, and every time I listen to him explain himself I just pray he is lying and thinks these things he says sound good and don't represent his beliefs, but the reality is that they likely do, because his actions follow them.

[Infinity2152]

I'll respond to the AK negativity. Everybody has their idea of what a GM's should and can do. What was AK's mandate when he was hired in 2020? I'll maintain that it was to quickly make this team a contender. The Bulls were coming off a 22-43 season. This notion that AK inherited a good team and messed it up is crazy.

AK's first year: Bulls went from 22 wins to 31 wins. That's a huge leap.
Year 2: Bulls went from 31 wins to 46 wins. Ridiculous leap. His mandate was still probably win at all costs.

Year 3: Bulls go from 46 wins to 40 wins/42 losses. No Lonzo Ball, though he was reported several times to be returning. Team 1 win away from being .500 without their starting PG all season. That's a playoff team with him.

Year 4: Bulls go 39-43. No Ball, though he was supposed to return. Tries to start rebuild. Puts Lavine on trade block. Lavine gets injured, can't be traded. The talent that AK put together and the coach he hired took us to 39 wins without our best player. AK's with the rebuild at this point. Lets Derozan leave, trades our best defensive player for a young prospect with a year left on a rookie contract.

Year 5. Bulls are 24-36. Continues rebuild. Puts Zach and Vuc on the block. Trades Lavine. Giddey added to roster.

Signings:
Made Zach go and get an offer, rather than offer him max as RFA.
Admittedly overpaid for Derozan and Vuc, but if Lonzo doesn't get hurt and his plan works, those picks are worth MUCH less.

Resigning's: Resigned Coby and Ayo to bargain contracts.
Resigned Zach, our best player, to market contract. Zach performs at the same level, ends up netting us a first, an
expiring young PG, and two players who may be core role players next year.
Resigned Vuc to what they considered market level contract. Impossible to prove they didn't check the market,
calculate, and determine that's his market value. Supposed to be worth $20 mill worth of players and a couple of
seconds, maybe a first. Hard to argue he's not worth $20 mill now, let alone two years younger.
Resigned Pat Will, 23 yr old number 4 pick to $18 mill. Looks bad now. Nobody knows what his market rate at time of
signing would have been, at least $12-14 mill. So a $2-6 mill/yr overpay.

Dollars and cents:
Zach Lavine $40 mill stats: about 25, 5 and 4, 39% 3pt. Comparable to similar paid players, good dollar value by production
He was worth a first and assets totaling his salary

Nikola Vucevic $20 mill stats: Around 19 pts, 11 rebounds, 3 assists 35% 3pt last 5 years. No center in his price range put up those
numbers, two centers do and they are max players. Great number production by dollar value.

Coby White $12 mill stats since extension: around 19 pts, 5 assist, 4 rebounds. Great dollar value.

Ayo Dosunmu: $6 mill stats: 12 pts, 3 rebounds, 4 assists. One of our best defenders. Great dollar value.

Alex Caruso: $9 mill stats: 8pts, 4 rebounds, 3 assists. In DPOY race twice, turned into Giddey. Great, Great value for dollar.

Pat Bev: 800k. Not even going to explain.

Andre Drummond: $3 mill. See Pat Bev.

Jalen Smith: $9 mill. May be our starter next year. Great production, great dollar value.

Signe Lonzo to new 2yr/$20 mill. Great value.

A bad contract to me is one that has negative value. Meaning you need to attach an asset to move it. A net neutral contract is not a bad one. So if you can trade the player for expirings, maybe get picks back, that's not a bad contract. It's a movable asset. Of the contracts that AK has signed, right now Pat Will's looks like the only one that has negative value. And it's WAY too early to determine that, given we're still in the first season of a 4 year contract.

Most of these criticisms of AK come without knowing what his directive or plan for the Bulls were at any time after the first year. He can't just do whatever he wants, there are mandates above him. Assuming the decision to go away from win now was made last year, he's released Derozan, traded Lavine, added a young prospect for a vet that got paid 4yrs/$81 mill, put Vuc on the block, and got our pick back in a strong draft. Regardless of how we got here and what he did before, that's what's happened basically since this summer. And he tried to trade Zach last year.

See posts talking about worst Bulls run. Bulls were 27, 22, and 22 the years before AK got here. 31, 46, 40, 39 after. He inherited a losing bottom team and drafted Pat instead of Haliburton. That's his single biggest mistake. The only way teams usually get better from that is huge improvements in their high lottery picks (4 and 7), aka Pat and Coby. If Pat and Coby are stars the way you'd hope a number 4 pick and number 7 pick are, we're looking at completely different teams. And some bad luck, with Coby we had the 7th pick in draft with 3-4 top prospects. No guy who went outside the top 5 is a star, unless you count Tyler Herro. He's around Coby's level to me, maybe a little better.

[jc23]

sixers look better without embiid. i bet he absolutely suckrd the energy out of a locker room.

[leo921]

Ak and Bully are so dumb that even if we get extremely lucky and get the 1st pick in Flagg that our lineup the following year is
going to be the following - Giddy/White/Ball/Williams/Vuc with a bench of Ayo/Huerter/Flagg/Matas/Smith with the rest on the
deep bench.

Billy will then play Flagg/Matas 15-20 mins a game saying they need to "earn" it while positioning Flagg at the right 3 pt corner
and Matas at the left 3 pt corner and then wonder why they arent doing better, which will once again reinforce his belief in Williams.

My god please fire AK and Billy get us a real GM and a coach with a proven record of developing young guys

[MrSparkle]

Well, I’ve been saying for a month- this team is not gonna bottom out without blatantly aggressive tank efforts.

Sorry Zach Lavine fans, but the bundle of VETERAN throwaways was a depth upgrade. Losing Vuc to injury was a major Net Rating / style of play upgrade.

Any scrub G-League team can try and sneak wins on an NBA schedule. Remember when the “Vuckevic”(sp?) Wizards kicked our ass last year? You just need to find the most predictable mediocre team with defensive liabilities, exploit and out-hustle them. Young guys with no guaranteed deals are hungry, and if they get hot, they get hot. There’s no scouting plan for stopping them.

I don’t care what anyone says- Philly looks like a team with a secret mandate to lose. Nurse didn’t break a sweat coaching that Bulls game. Everything looked disorganized and rec-league. Bulls don’t do that, and they pay the price every draft. The regret will seep in next year when Philly or San Antonio face us with Flagg on their roster.

Don’t get me wrong- they don’t tell their players to lose, but they set up a situation where they don’t have much of a chance to win.

Billy is coaching to win, with vets. We’ll get a 10-13 pick.

[Infinity2152]

Philly has no young players they care about except Maxey. Losing doesn't really hurt their current players. Bulls are looking for improvements from Matas, Giddey, Williams, White, Ayo, Terry, Phillips, Smith, and now Tre Jones, Huerter and Collins. Coaching that many young guys to lose is not the same as coaching a team where PG13 and Embid, who may medically retire are 2 of your top 3 guys.

Bulls went 1-7 after the Lavine trade. The team's they've beaten since are near the bottom of the league. Our last 4 wins, 2 are against the Raptors and one against Philly. The other was the post-Butler Heat. One of the wins against the Raptors took a four point play and overtime to win. Don't know how much lower he could have dragged our winning percentage down. Much as people want it, no team is telling a coach with a team of young players to deliberately lose. Who wants a coach who would listen to that? It betrays the current players and the spirit of basketball and fair play. Why not try to build our team fairly, instead of cheating? Because other teams are cheating?

[RedBull23]

A major longshot, but after yesterday’s Kyrie injury, POR pick might be back in play. They have a brutal schedule to finish off the season but if Dallas and Phoenix lose out, it’s definitely possible. Portland is seating their vets but still winning. I would not completely write them off in a play in game vs the Clippers or the Kings.

Edit: they just announced he has a torn ACL. If the Suns don’t decide to get their s**t together, Portland is going to the play-in! Next comes another Kawhi injury and a Lavine laid play in egg.

[PJSteven22]

I'll respond to the AK negativity. Everybody has their idea of what a GM's should and can do. What was AK's mandate when he was hired in 2020? I'll maintain that it was to quickly make this team a contender. The Bulls were coming off a 22-43 season. This notion that AK inherited a good team and messed it up is crazy.

AK's first year: Bulls went from 22 wins to 31 wins. That's a huge leap.
Year 2: Bulls went from 31 wins to 46 wins. Ridiculous leap. His mandate was still probably win at all costs.

Year 3: Bulls go from 46 wins to 40 wins/42 losses. No Lonzo Ball, though he was reported several times to be returning. Team 1 win away from being .500 without their starting PG all season. That's a playoff team with him.

Year 4: Bulls go 39-43. No Ball, though he was supposed to return. Tries to start rebuild. Puts Lavine on trade block. Lavine gets injured, can't be traded. The talent that AK put together and the coach he hired took us to 39 wins without our best player. AK's with the rebuild at this point. Lets Derozan leave, trades our best defensive player for a young prospect with a year left on a rookie contract.

Year 5. Bulls are 24-36. Continues rebuild. Puts Zach and Vuc on the block. Trades Lavine. Giddey added to roster.

Signings:
Made Zach go and get an offer, rather than offer him max as RFA.
Admittedly overpaid for Derozan and Vuc, but if Lonzo doesn't get hurt and his plan works, those picks are worth MUCH less.

Resigning's: Resigned Coby and Ayo to bargain contracts.
Resigned Zach, our best player, to market contract. Zach performs at the same level, ends up netting us a first, an
expiring young PG, and two players who may be core role players next year.
Resigned Vuc to what they considered market level contract. Impossible to prove they didn't check the market,
calculate, and determine that's his market value. Supposed to be worth $20 mill worth of players and a couple of
seconds, maybe a first. Hard to argue he's not worth $20 mill now, let alone two years younger.
Resigned Pat Will, 23 yr old number 4 pick to $18 mill. Looks bad now. Nobody knows what his market rate at time of
signing would have been, at least $12-14 mill. So a $2-6 mill/yr overpay.

Dollars and cents:
Zach Lavine $40 mill stats: about 25, 5 and 4, 39% 3pt. Comparable to similar paid players, good dollar value by production
He was worth a first and assets totaling his salary

Nikola Vucevic $20 mill stats: Around 19 pts, 11 rebounds, 3 assists 35% 3pt last 5 years. No center in his price range put up those
numbers, two centers do and they are max players. Great number production by dollar value.

Coby White $12 mill stats since extension: around 19 pts, 5 assist, 4 rebounds. Great dollar value.

Ayo Dosunmu: $6 mill stats: 12 pts, 3 rebounds, 4 assists. One of our best defenders. Great dollar value.

Alex Caruso: $9 mill stats: 8pts, 4 rebounds, 3 assists. In DPOY race twice, turned into Giddey. Great, Great value for dollar.

Pat Bev: 800k. Not even going to explain.

Andre Drummond: $3 mill. See Pat Bev.

Jalen Smith: $9 mill. May be our starter next year. Great production, great dollar value.

Signe Lonzo to new 2yr/$20 mill. Great value.

A bad contract to me is one that has negative value. Meaning you need to attach an asset to move it. A net neutral contract is not a bad one. So if you can trade the player for expirings, maybe get picks back, that's not a bad contract. It's a movable asset. Of the contracts that AK has signed, right now Pat Will's looks like the only one that has negative value. And it's WAY too early to determine that, given we're still in the first season of a 4 year contract.

Most of these criticisms of AK come without knowing what his directive or plan for the Bulls were at any time after the first year. He can't just do whatever he wants, there are mandates above him. Assuming the decision to go away from win now was made last year, he's released Derozan, traded Lavine, added a young prospect for a vet that got paid 4yrs/$81 mill, put Vuc on the block, and got our pick back in a strong draft. Regardless of how we got here and what he did before, that's what's happened basically since this summer. And he tried to trade Zach last year.

See posts talking about worst Bulls run. Bulls were 27, 22, and 22 the years before AK got here. 31, 46, 40, 39 after. He inherited a losing bottom team and drafted Pat instead of Haliburton. That's his single biggest mistake. The only way teams usually get better from that is huge improvements in their high lottery picks (4 and 7), aka Pat and Coby. If Pat and Coby are stars the way you'd hope a number 4 pick and number 7 pick are, we're looking at completely different teams. And some bad luck, with Coby we had the 7th pick in draft with 3-4 top prospects. No guy who went outside the top 5 is a star, unless you count Tyler Herro. He's around Coby's level to me, maybe a little better.

Pax inherited the Baby Bulls in 2003 which wasn’t a good team at all and more than doubled the Bulls from his first season to his second season win total with mainly draft picks he made. It’s no excuse for him being as bad as he has been. It’s like what Doug said he been bad at every you can evaluate a GM/Executive. Also he’s left the team in worse condition than when he arrived.

Vuc: You’re overrating him. If he was so good, he’d have a trade market.

Zo: should have gotten the draft pick. They need assets.

Jalen Smith: solid backup nothing else


Andre Drummond: should’ve taken the 3 2nds for him. They end up losing him for nothing. Bad decision

All he has to his name is signing Coby and Ayo to Cheap deals.
You mention their previous win total without context: GarPax was trying to lose and acquire high draft picks. Meanwhile AK has been trying to win and he’s been below average/mediocre.