How Many Wins?

[prolific passer]

The Chicago Bulls. Where a winning a record is rare these days.

[Axl Rose]

I don't care what happens this offseason I know I'm voting for 39 wins next season. It's kind of impressive that no matter what changes this team has basically put up the same record for 3 years in a row (this and last year were the exact same with 2023 winning ONE more game).

[meekrab]

As expected, the Bulls defense was bad - 3rd worst in NBA ppg. But we weren’t as bad on PPP or efg against, actually a mid team, possibly in part that by playing at a higher pace than before, the Bulls took some teams out of their games. Also mid FTA.

Offense was improved - Giddey and bounce back years from Zach and Vuc being big reasons why, along with Coby building on last season - and also the recent stretch and associated circumstances.

Points per game is meaningless if you don't account for pace; we had the 6th highest PPG but our offense was still 20th in the league i.e. bad in terms of points per possession.

Ironically for the third time out of 5 our defense with the supposed traffic cone Vucevic at the back was better than our offense in league ranking.

I forget what I picked in the original poll but clearly it was hard to predict the Pistons surging to the 6th seed, Orlando once again having the most win shares lost to injury in the entire league, and Philly completely collapsing. Most people probably didn't think we'd finish ahead of the Raptors or Heat either but that was before the Jimmy contract drama. Barnes apparently needs another offseason in the oven before he's ready to be The Guy.