CHICAGO — No one is quite sure which Chicago Bulls team will show up Wednesday night in Toronto for their play-in game with the Raptors.
They’ve played much better since the arrival of Patrick Beverley in late February but not good enough to shrug off their 40-42 record or their tendency to put themselves into an immediate hole in the first quarter.
“You can’t really predicate basketball off misses and makes,” Beverley said Monday after practice at the Advocate Center. “You can’t say a guy is not ready for it because he missed shots. It’s basketball. It’s a make-or-miss league. You really can’t control that.
“What you can control is your effort on the defensive end. From that standpoint, I think everybody is ready and locked in.”
The Bulls have no choice but to be locked in, knowing their season would come to an abrupt end with a loss in Toronto and questions about which players should return in 2023-24 would begin.
Executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas’ honeymoon probably ended last summer when he made no significant offseason improvements while the Cleveland Cavaliers were adding Donovan Mitchell and the New York Knicks signed Jalen Brunson. Both the Cavs and Knicks are in the playoffs, while the Bulls need two wins for a shot at the Milwaukee Bucks.
The 2022-23 Bulls basically have been the doppelgangers of the 2022 White Sox — a group whose overall talent never coalesced in a disappointing season. The difference is the Bulls have a long-shot chance to write a new ending thanks to the NBA’s benevolent “come one, come all” approach to the postseason.
Karnišovas gambled that the Bulls could get by at point guard with Ayo Dosunmu, Alex Caruso and Goran Dragić until Lonzo Ball returned from knee surgery. He lost that bet when Ball suffered another setback and was scheduled for yet another surgical procedure.
After Dragić was waived, Karnišovas turned to Beverley in a last-gasp attempt to salvage the season.
Beverley and Caruso have provided the kind of defense the Bulls desperately needed, but without any outside shooting help, opponents are able to focus on shutting down Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan and bet that the others won’t beat them.
Look for the Raptors to use the same blueprint.
“If I was a coach, I’d try to limit DeMar and Zach as much as possible and let the quote-unquote ‘others’ beat you,” Beverley said. “It’s the playoffs. You can’t give everything. You’ve got to give something up, and if the opportunity presents itself, we’re locked in.”
That’s a double “locked in” if anyone is counting. But seeing will be believing when it comes to this team.
“The ball has got to move, and we’ve got to make good decisions with the ball,” coach Billy Donovan said. “There’s going to be opportunities for a lot of different guys, and if we do that, they’ve got to be able to step up and shoot the basketball with confidence. That’s what we’ve tried to get to, where it’s just not one-person-centric.”
Beverley averaged 5.9 points and shot 30.9% from 3-point range in 22 games with the Bulls, well below his 37.3% career 3-point accuracy. Caruso averaged 5.6 points in 67 games but was better beyond the arc at 36.4%. The Bulls finished last in the NBA in 3-point attempts, a weakness Ball’s presence was supposed to alleviate.
Still, this is a chance for Beverley, the hometown kid, to show he’s a catalyst on a team that can defy the odds and win a pair of play-in games on the road.
“Pat-Bev and Alex, two things stand out,” Donovan said. “One is they’re very high-IQ players. They know the league very well and have kind of established themselves as elite defenders.”
Caruso playing with LeBron James in Los Angeles — and Beverley alongside several stars during his many NBA stops — also gives them the knowledge of how to “function and flow in some of those things,” Donovan added.
The Bulls-Raptors game comes almost one year to the day of Beverley’s celebration during and after the Minnesota Timberwolves’ play-in win over the Los Angeles Clippers, one of his former teams. Beverley let out a primal scream in front of the Clippers bench near the end and yelled, “Take your ass home.” He jumped on the scorer’s table after the win, then went to the bench and sobbed.
The video went viral, and Beverley was torched on Twitter for treating a play-in win like the NBA Finals. But he always has had that chip on his shoulder. After a strong freshman year at Arkansas, the former Marshall star told the Chicago Tribune to “holler at (Illinois coach) Bruce Weber, too, man.”
“Tell him, ‘I told you so,’” Beverley said. “I want that in the paper. Tell. Bruce. Weber: Does he still doubt me? I want that in the paper.”
The play-in win in Minneapolis seemed like the start of a beautiful relationship. But the Timberwolves dealt Beverley to the Utah Jazz in July in the Rudy Gobert trade, then the Jazz traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers in August. The Lakers sent him to the Orlando Magic in February in a four-team deal, and after the Magic waived him, he signed with the Bulls on Feb. 21 in an effort to salvage a lost season.
The Bulls had lost six straight when Beverley arrived, and Donovan was asked whether management considered giving up on the playoffs and focusing on the draft lottery instead.
“When you talk about winning, and players in the locker room and even people who come out and purchase tickets, I think they want to see us putting our best foot forward, making decisions that are going to put the group and the team in the best position to win,” he replied. “Never anything like, ‘Listen, we’ve got these games and a potential (lottery) pick here, (and) we’re choosing this pick.’ That’s never happened at all.”
Beverley provided a spark, though the Bulls would have needed a bonfire to get the No. 6 seed and avoid the play-in tournament. They went 14-9 over their final 23 games after the signing, barely making the the play-ins. Still, they beat the Denver Nuggets, Philadelphia 76ers and Memphis Grizzlies over the last month, showing what they can do when they play as a unit.
Beverley always has been candid, a trait that was apparent back in high school. When he led Marshall downstate in his senior year in 2006, he told the Tribune he was “shocked to see us, Glenbrook North and Simeon in the same bracket.”
“But it’s like the world of beasts,” he added. “Who survives the longest.”
Beverley’s world has changed quite a bit since he became a high school star on the West Side, but now he’s back home trying to find a way to survive in the NBA postseason.
“I feel like I impact winning on every level,” he said Monday. “I don’t think that will change. I’m just fortunate to play postseason, to still have fun with the game.
“It’s a lot of pressure on a lot of people. But it’s a regular game, baby, a regular game.”
