Zach LaVine Says Bulls Fans 'Should' Boo Team After 'Embarrassing' End of Season

Chicago Bulls guard Zach LaVine said he didn't have a problem with fans booing the team as it entered halftime down by 28 in Friday night's 133-117 home loss to the Charlotte Hornets.

"They should [boo]," LaVine told reporters. "It's embarrassing. We're a really good basketball team, and we're not playing like it. They know that. We know that. It's understandable. We understand that they have our back, but we got to play better."

The Bulls' fourth straight loss dropped their record to 45-36 and locked them into the No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Chicago looked like one of the NBA's top championship contenders early in the season, sitting atop the East with a 26-10 record in early January.

Starting point guard Lonzo Ball suffered a knee injury in mid-January that required surgery, however, and he was recently ruled out for the remainder of the 2021-22 campaign. While players such as Ayo Dosunmu and Coby White have played well in his absence, the team's performance has still dipped.

DeMar DeRozan, who found himself in the MVP conversation during the Bulls' early-season success, said he's not surprised by the rough patch but he wishes it happened earlier.

"It's just one of those tests we wish we would've had earlier in the season," DeRozan said. "We had so much success so quick, so fast that I knew at some point we were going to have to deal with this type of adversity. You never want it at the end of the road."

The worst news for Chicago is there isn't much time to right the ship. It has one game left in the regular season, Sunday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves, and then the postseason arrives. The only silver lining is that the Bulls avoided the play-in tournament.

A sudden turnaround back toward title contention would begin at the defensive end, as the Bulls are giving up 126.8 points per game over their past five contests. That simply puts too much pressure on the offense.

"We singing the same story, and I always try to be very uplifting and try to see the bright side, but I'm tired of talking," LaVine said. "We say a lot of words and we say the right thing, but we got to figure it out. We're not doing that, plain and simple."

Chicago still has the talent to make some noise in the postseason, but it would take a level of play the squad has rarely shown over the past few months.

If the Bulls can't reverse their fortunes quickly, the boo birds may follow them into the playoffs.