Billy Donovan isn’t sugarcoating a thing. For the first time since he took over in Chicago, the Bulls have crashed into a seven-game losing streak, a collapse so dramatic it has erased the shine of their once-promising 6–1 start. What was supposed to be the softest, most forgiving stretch of their schedule — seven games mostly against bottom-tier teams between Nov. 22 and Dec. 5 — turned into a full-blown disaster that exposed every crack in the franchise from the floor to the front office. Chicago didn’t just lose. They unraveled.
Six of those games came against teams sitting below them in the standings: Washington, New Orleans, Charlotte, Indiana (twice), and Brooklyn. Orlando was the lone winning team in the mix — and the Bulls had already beaten them once this season. That didn’t matter. After barely surviving Washington, Chicago dropped game after game, capping the collapse with a loss to a Warriors team missing both Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. If you’re looking for the worst basketball being played in the NBA right now, it’s coming out of the United Center.
Even Donovan couldn’t hide from the brutal truth anymore. Speaking to reporters earlier this week, the head coach delivered the most painfully honest assessment of his tenure:
“People wanna sit there and say, ‘Well, you lost to New Orleans. They got a bad record.’ Indiana, bad record. I don’t think we’re any different from those teams. We’re not just gifted to walk in there and win games. I do not view it that way at all when I watch tape,” he said, via The Athletic.
For a franchise trying desperately to present itself as competitive, those words hit harder than any blowout loss. Donovan wasn’t pointing fingers at injuries. He wasn’t using youth as a shield. Instead, he called out the core issues: sloppy execution, lack of focus, inconsistency in transition, and a team completely detached from the identity that made them look so promising early in the season.
And the numbers back him up. Chicago is 3–13 over its last 16 games, holding the second-worst net rating in the league, better only than the hapless Wizards. The crisp, connected offense that powered their hot start has collapsed into isolation, stagnation, and missed opportunities. Over their last 15 games, they’ve held the 28th-ranked offensive rating, one of the most dramatic drop-offs in the entire NBA. They’ve failed to score even 105 points in four of their last five games — a death sentence in today’s league.
Defense? It was never going to be great. But without the offensive energy and movement that once masked their flaws, the Bulls now look equally lost on both ends.
Donovan deserves credit for calling it like it is. Acceptance is the first step toward solutions. But it also raises a tougher, more uncomfortable question: If the Bulls now look like a bottom-tier franchise, isn’t that a reflection on far more than the players?
This meltdown didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of an organization that has been drifting for years.
A coaching staff that let a 6–1 start rot into a 9–14 record.
A front office that built a roster with no star to lean on and no clear direction.
A franchise that refuses to commit — not to rebuilding, not to contending, not to anything resembling a coherent plan.
The Wizards and Hornets may be bad, but at least they’re bad with intention. The Bulls? They’re stuck in the NBA’s most dangerous place: talent-poor, directionless, and delusional. Their own head coach just grouped them with teams openly rebuilding — and not kindly. Some teams are bad because that’s the strategy. Others are just bad. Chicago is the latter.
When your head coach publicly declares that you’re no different from the league’s bottom-feeders, that’s not a warning shot. That’s a flare shot into the sky screaming that something inside the organization is fundamentally broken.
Something drastic needs to happen.
Something overdue.
Something the Bulls have avoided for far too long.
Whether they’ll finally act is an answer fans have been waiting on for years — and one the franchise can no longer run from.
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