Bulls play the lottery game as NBA looks to curb tanking: Telander

CHICAGO - The NBA Playoffs have begun, and, naturally, the Chicago Bulls aren’t involved.

There are 30 teams in the league and the Bulls finished behind 21 of them. Their 31-51 record put them 29 games behind the Detroit Pistons—the Pistons?—and 33 games behind the Western Conference champion Oklahoma Thunder.

The Bulls' half-hearted attempt at semi-obvious tanking is one of the reasons commissioner Adam Silver is trying desperately to figure out a system that does not openly reward pitiful teams and clubs that lose on purpose.

Back at the trade deadline in February, the Bulls belched up more than half their team and reloaded with nameless guys from wherever. Remember Coby White, Nikola Vučević, Ayo Dosunmu, Kevin Huerter, Dalen Terry? All gone.

There was a point when nobody was sure who was a Bull and who was an opponent. Only guard Tre Jones made it from the opening day starting lineup to the final day starting lineup. Who got cheated? The fans.

Still, the point of the shedding was clear: Nobody wants to be stuck in the unsolvable middle, close to .500 with no savior in sight. In a closed system like the NBA, with a salary cap and a yearly draft, it’s better to be terrible than middling. Sad but true.

When you’re awful, you have more chances in the lottery. And as we know, a single high-choice player can change a team probably more than in any sport. Think Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, and most recently, Victor Wembanyama. 

So the Bulls chose terrible. Even if there’s logic behind tanking (at least for now, until Silver figures out a solution), it’s kinda miserable for fans. The league knows this.

"Remember, we’ve changed the draft lottery five times," Silver said recently, explaining the difficulty of keeping the league competitive but not devious. "This is not a new issue. We will address it. There’s a bunch of new ideas on the table."

The weird part is the NBA is more popular than ever. And to miss out on the postseason or to have middling attendance during the regular season is a punishing thing. You want even weirder? The Bulls, with their lousy team, led the league in home attendance this season with almost 830,000 people total, over 20,000 per game at the United Center.

Chicago loves the Bulls. But, in truth, the whole NBA is cooking. Even the ridiculously bad Washington Wizards drew 660,000 fans at home.

Still, it would just be really nice to see the Bulls be relevant once again. Those six Jordan-led titles in the 1990s are fading off into the dustbin of antiquity.

The Steph Curry-induced three-point shot has excited all NBA fans, and every city with a team would like to be part of the post-season show. And the international players have brought a depth of skill that has never been seen before in what is now a truly global game. Moreover, the players’ personalities are on display in great camera shots and online videos for all to dig into.

I personally was delighted to see Portland Trail Blazers guard Jrue Holiday playing with a toothpick in his mouth in his team’s playoff opener Sunday against the San Antonio Spurs. I’ll tune in to Game 2 just to see if he does it again.

As an entertainment entity, the NBA is in a nice place right now. It’s always a fragile thing, staying relevant with viewers’ eyeballs having so many other things to look at, but the sudden popularity surge means the league is doing a lot right. According to USA Today, 170 million people watched NBA regular season games on TV or internet platforms this season. It was the most-watched season in 24 years.

And maybe most important in this digital era, the league drew 228 billion views on social media in 2025-26, a 13 percent increase from the year before. Then you had displays like the classic mid-season match-up of age-old rivals the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, hauling in the most TV viewers for any game since 2000, with an average of 5.6 million across all platforms.

How nice, then, to still be playing ball now. But as Silver mentioned, some teams actually feel it’s better to be in the lottery than the playoffs. Trouble is, they could be right. It’s a situation Silver wants to "disincentivize." 

Until then, the Bulls will always have the ping-pong balls to carry them onward.

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Want more? Read some of Rick Telander’s recent columns for Fox 32:

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