Despite being led by one of the best scoring duos in the NBA in Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan, the Bulls are facing an uphill battle just to make the playoffs. 

Fresh off making the playoffs for the first time since the 2016-17 season, the Chicago Bulls enter the 2023 season with their eyes set on a deep postseason run, but lack the extra star power and depth to fully compete with the top teams. 

The Eastern Conference has rapidly improved this offseason. Milwaukee, Brooklyn, Miami, Philadelphia and Boston are the clear top teams in the conference, while Atlanta and Cleveland both made drastic improvements. Add in Toronto, plus playoff hopefuls in Charlotte, New York and Washington, this is the deepest the East has looked in years.

That’s not to say the Bulls are doomed. Alongside DeRozan and LaVine are Alex Caruso, Nikola Vučević, Patrick Williams and Ayo Dosunmu which makes for a solid core. Even though Chicago didn’t make any splashy moves this offseason, they did go out and bolster their bench, signing veteran center Andre Drummond and point guard Goran Dragić. But is it enough?

A year ago, the Bulls quickly found themselves atop the Eastern Conference, sitting at 26-10, but injuries to star point guard Lonzo Ball and key contributor Alex Caruso led to Chicago falling back to earth. 

The Ball injury is worrisome for Chicago because he is sidelined for at least the next few months, as he recovers from his September knee surgery, his second overall surgery since last year. In 35 games before he went down, he averaged 13 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 5.1 assists, while playing lockdown defense.  

For the Bulls, the team will go as far as DeRozan and LaVine can take them. For the majority of last year, DeRozan was an MVP candidate, continually hitting buzzer-beater after buzzer-beater. In his first year with the Bulls, he finished the season averaging 27.9 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 4.9 assists, while shooting a career-high 35.2% from deep.

LaVine saw his stats take a slight dip in 2022, but that’s to be expected when he no longer had to carry the burden by himself. In 67 games, he averaged 24.4 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 4.4 assists. This past July, Chicago proved they were fully committed to LaVine, signing him to a five-year supermax contract worth $215.2 million. 

The biggest wild card for the Bulls this season is Patrick Williams. He was drafted fourth overall \in the 2020 NBA Draft. The 21-year-old fractured his wrist five games into last season, but returned down the stretch, appearing in Chicago’s playoff series loss to the Milwaukee Bucks. He showed flashes of stardom, averaging 9 points, 4.1 rebounds, 0.5 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game in 17 regular season games that he played in. 

A player of his draft stature must take the next step for the Bulls to become a serious threat in the East.

Chicago will immediately be thrown into the ringer, with seven of their first 10 games against teams that reached either the play-in tournament or the playoffs. The Bulls won their season opener with Miami Wednesday night, 116-108, followed up with games at Washington Friday and home against Cleveland Saturday. Due to their rough early stretch, they cannot afford to get off to a slow start.