By Danny Durkin ‘23

While the Chicago Bulls made the Play-in Tournament and were one game away from clinching a spot in the playoffs, many can agree with me and say that this season was a letdown.

With the Bulls making the playoffs last year, many people including me thought it was just the beginning for this new team full of great players with great veterans including Demar Derozan, Zach Lavine, Nikola Vucevic, and Andre Drummond.

Senior Don Twomey said, “This season by the Bulls was just painful to watch. I feel like I could have gone out there and made some threes for the team because no one else on the team could.”

While the Bulls did not make the playoffs, they did have a great stretch of games after the All-Star break to even give them a shot at making the playoffs. A big part of their success late in the year was signing veteran guard Patrick Beverly.

Beverly, who is known to show toughness and work extremely hard, showed that during his time with the Bulls this year. He challenged his teammates to work as hard as they could.

Senior Michael Bos said, “Beverly was the major reason the Bulls turned their season around.”

The Bulls did make the play-in tournament. The play-in is 4 teams who are still trying to make their way into the playoffs, and those seeds are the 7, 8, 9 and 10. The 7 and 8 seeds play each other, and the winner goes to the playoffs, while the loser plays the winner of the 9 and 10 seeded game. The loser of the 9 and 10 game goes home.

The Bulls were seeded as the 10th seed (the last team to get in), and they had to travel to play the Toronto Raptors who were the 9th seed. This meant win or go home for the Bulls. The Bulls went into Toronto and took the win, which meant they were one win away from going to the playoffs for a consecutive year. The Bulls then traveled to Miami to play the Heat who just lost to the Atlanta Hawks. This game was win and get in, and the Bulls did not win so the season had ended.

Senior Dan Grannes said, “They should have won that game against the Heat, but there’s always next year.”

While the Bulls did disappoint this season, they sure didn’t catch a break either as their starting point guard, Lonzo Ball, was out for the season with a knee injury.

Even though they came up just short, I still believe the future is still bright for this Chicago Bulls team.