The Bulls’ Zach LaVine waits for a free throw during a game against the Bucks in November.
Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images
If you were a Cubs fan from the Middle Ages through 2015, there’s a decent chance you believe in curses. Your team couldn’t win a World Series of any sort –baseball, jousting, it didn’t matter. The curse was attributed to a vengeful bar owner who was asked to leave a 1945 World Series game at Wrigley Field because his pet goat was bothering other fans. Only in Chicago. And Hogwarts.
Then the inexplicable happened, with Joe Maddon’s boys winning the crown in 2016 and everything you thought you knew about the futility of life falling by the wayside.
Chicago still remembers what a curse looks like, though, which is why I bring you my concerns that we have another one in progress. Bad things are happening to the Bulls, have been happening to the Bulls and, if my hunch is correct, will continue happening to the Bulls.
The latest proof that somebody up there has something against them is Zach LaVine. News broke Saturday that he needs surgery on his right foot and will miss the rest of the season. Just when the Bulls might have moved their most valuable asset before the trade deadline and started reworking an unworkable roster, they learned he’ll need four to six months to recover.
When we attribute a team’s woebegone-ness to a curse, we remove some of the responsibility from the shoulders of ownership and management. A hex doesn’t explain why LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vučević can’t find a way to win together. Bad decision-making does. But a curse might explain Lonzo Ball, the hardest of hard-luck cases. The point guard hasn’t played in two years because of knee problems that have led to several surgeries.
The cause of a possible Bulls curse is in the bloodshot eye of the beholder. Was it a vindictive Michael Jordan, angry at chairman Jerry Reinsdorf for not allowing the team to go for title No. 7, who wished ruin upon the organization as he walked out the door? It does sound like something the ice king might do. The Bulls were terrible for years after the Jordan Bulls were blown up. Is that a curse or is that a matter of giving Rusty LaRue 17 minutes a game in the 1998-99 season?
Did a curse come much later than that? What about the 2017 trade that sent Jimmy Butler to Minnesota for LaVine, Kris Dunn and a draft pick that became Lauri Markkanen? Did Butler put a pox on Reinsdorf’s house for it? Is that trade the Bulls’ version of the Billy Goat curse? I’m skeptical. It doesn’t explain the sad story of Derrick Rose, who was a Greek tragedy in high-tops well before Butler’s departure. Rose was the NBA’s Most Valuable Player in the 2010-11 season, only his third year in the league. The Bulls made it to the Eastern Conference finals that season. They were going places with a roster that included Rose, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah and, the following year, a rookie named Butler.
Then came Rose’s knee injuries, and he and the Bulls were never the same. Since the 2015-16 season, they’ve been to the playoffs just twice, losing in the first round both times. Somewhere in there was a rebuild, the modern translation for “we’re stinking on purpose,’’ but there has been no payoff. The only thing the Big Three of LaVine, DeRozan and Vučević have proven is that they can’t coexist in any meaningful way. Ball has been mentioned as the secret sauce that would have made it all work, but there’s no proof because there’s no Ball.
Much like the Bad News Cubs of lore, the Bulls have been beset by bad choices and bad luck. There doesn’t appear to be an obvious way out that would lead to a change in fortune. Team vice president Arturas Karnisovas hasn’t been better than the much-maligned management team of Gar-Pax, and if that isn’t evidence of a curse, I don’t know what is. More evidence: There doesn’t seem to be any relief in sight.
You might be asking yourself: Why is Rick picking on the Bulls when the Bears haven’t won a Super Bowl since the 1985 season? Wouldn’t the team’s infamous decision to draft Mitch Trubisky ahead of Patrick Mahomes at least suggest a nefarious power at work?
The Bears’ troubles feel more like user error than malware. A curse is an injury at the wrong time or a ball that hops over an infielder’s mitt at a key moment. Bad vision is not being able to see a future Hall of Fame quarterback when he’s standing right in front of you.
I am open to the possibility of a Bears curse, however. They’ve passed on drafting Mahomes and C.J. Stroud, who just had an outstanding rookie year for the Texans. If it turns out that they miss again, this time with the 2024 No. 1 overall pick, I’ll know what to look for down the road: billy goat droppings.