Questions Bulls Must Answer Before End of Regular Season

The Chicago Bulls could be a short winning streak away from the No. 1 seed in the NBA's Eastern Conference.

Then again, the standings are so bunched up that a midsize slump could rob Chicago of a top-four seed and the first-round homecourt advantage that comes with it. Let those losses pile up longer, and the Bulls could—hypothetically, at least—plummet all the way to the play-in tournament.

That's life in the 2021-22 iteration of the Eastern Conference, where a margin for error is a foreign concept. And that's just how things look now. Imagine how ferocious the competition will be once the playoffs tip.

On second thought, don't imagine that yet. The Bulls can't afford to get ahead of themselves, so we won't rush them. Besides, this club has multiple questions in need of answering between now and season's end.

When Are the Reinforcements Coming?

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The Bulls sit second in the conference standings despite not being whole in...well, all season, basically.

They lost starting forward Patrick Williams to a wrist injury just five games into the campaign, and the injury bug went on to knock out backcourt fixtures Lonzo Ball (knee) and Alex Caruso (wrist). The starting lineup of Williams, Ball, DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic has logged just 63 minutes together. Swap out Williams for Caruso, and the minutes only increase to 95.

This lack of shared floor time gives Chicago significant room for internal improvement—a scary thought for the rest of the league—but only if the Bulls will actually become whole again. Ball, Caruso and Williams are progressing, but it could be a few weeks before a firmer timeline comes into focus.

The biggest concern obviously is getting all three players back to 100 percent. Chicago can't chase its most ambitious aims without them. Having said that, though, the Bulls would ideally bring them back with enough time remaining on the regular season schedule to build up their conditioning and re-establish their chemistry with their teammates.

Can the Defense Get Back on Track?

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Peep this roster on paper, and you might assume defense is a major issue. For all of the talent running through the trio of DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic, there isn't a ton of it extending to the game's less glamorous end.

That's what made the start of this season so fascinating. The Bulls not only sprinted out of the gate, they could credit much of that success to their defense. By the end of November, Chicago actually ranked higher on that end (seventh) than it did on offense (ninth), per NBA.com.

Shortly thereafter, offense became the driving force for this group, which, by itself, is fine. A team with this kind of firepower should be explosive on the point-production front, and it has been. Dating back to Dec. 1, this is the fifth-most efficient attack in basketball.

The problem is the defense has fallen off a cliff. The Bulls sit 22nd on defense over that same stretch, and every team behind them is either in play-in tournament range or headed to the lottery. Getting healthy will help this unit stabilize some, but Chicago might need to do some soul-searching over the next month-plus in an effort to rediscover the secret sauce that turned so many heads early on.

Is This Team Ready to Hang with the Best of the Best?

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Only five teams have a higher winning percentage than Chicago's .629 mark. All five are in the championship chase, as the Bulls are, too.

This is—by most accounts—one of the NBA's elite. But if you subscribe to the adage that in order to be the best you must beat the best, the Bulls fall a little short.

They are just 12-17 against .500-and-above opponents and 1-11 against teams with a .600-plus winning percentage. They are winless against the Miami Heat, Golden State Warriors, Memphis Grizzlies, Phoenix Suns, Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers.

"We're just not there yet in the execution," Vucevic told reporters. "Offensively, defensively, the execution, the communication, doing the little things that we go over in meetings and shootarounds. Those are the little things that end up costing you."

Maybe this adversity will harden the Bulls and prepare them for the precarious path ahead. Perhaps the full-strength roster will better handle the issues that have cropped up against the best of the best. Something needs to change, though. The only way to turn the regular-season success into playoff triumphs is by slaying a few Goliaths. Chicago has yet to show it can do that.