The Bulls are about to walk into one of the roughest stretches imaginable, and that might be exactly what this rebuild needs.
Beginning Monday, Chicago faces a 10-game run that reads like a hit list: Celtics, Knicks, Celtics, 76ers, Knicks, 76ers, Spurs, Hawks, Timberwolves, Cavaliers. Yes, that is the full slate. And yes, it is as unforgiving as it looks.
For a fan base already bracing for a long season, the reaction is easy to understand. The Bulls are young, still figuring things out, and this kind of schedule could go sideways in a hurry.
They could also steal a few games and make people sit up a little straighter. They could just as easily lose every one of them.
That’s part of the deal.
What makes this stretch so useful is the kind of lesson it offers. Chicago’s young players won’t just be logging minutes against teams that are better on paper - they’ll be asked to learn in real time against some of the league’s toughest competition.
Caleb Wilson and Matas Buzelis will have to defend Jayson Tatum and Paul George, Jaylen Brown and LeBron James. They’ll have to try to score against O.G.
Anunoby, Josh Hart, Dyson Daniels, and Lu Dort. And when they get to the rim, Gobert and Wemby are going to be there waiting.
Let’s see Caleb and Matas put those guys on posters.
That doesn’t make the losing easier to stomach. It never does. There’s still plenty to miss about what came before - Lonzo Ball’s injury, the way things might have looked if that Bulls group had stayed healthy, the old Derrick Rose ache that never really goes away, and the endless frustration of watching the Miami Heat beat Chicago in the Play-In Tournament over and over and over again.
But this is where the rebuild lands: not with comfort, but with opportunity.
The organization moved on from the players who had kept the Bulls afloat over the last half-decade, sending them to Sacramento, Charlotte, Boston, and Minnesota. That won’t be fun to watch, and neither will a potential 10-game skid. But those moves were made for the long-term future, and this stretch against elite teams is part of the same bigger picture.
Maybe in 10 years, these young Bulls will be the ones on podcasts laughing about their “Welcome to the NBA” moments. Maybe they’ll point back to this run as the week, or month, that forced them to grow up fast. Maybe they’ll say they learned to fight fire with fire.
For now, the challenge is simple: let them take their lumps and learn from them. Not every young player gets this kind of trial by fire.
The Bulls do. And as rough as it may look in the moment, that’s something worth watching.
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For Bulls fans, it is the kind of conversation that feels familiar because Chicago has lived through plenty of roster speculation built around talented, movable guards. The discussions circling Poole have included the Heat and Kings as possible landing spots, with the usual questions about fit, cost and what each team would have to give up still hanging in the air while nothing official has been completed. [Read more 🡒]