Between his value contract and his prodigious scoring ability, Zach LaVine has landed in trade rumors throughout his Bulls tenure.
As the best player on a bad team, LaVine always has represented the Bulls’ biggest asset.
But what if LaVine reaches his breaking point and seeks an address change?
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To be clear, there are no indications this will happen or that LaVine has entertained the thought. But in this age of stars getting traded and, more importantly, LaVine’s consistent public message that he’s tired of losing and wants to play for a winner, would it be a surprise?
Maybe a little since LaVine loves living in Chicago, always has ably handled being the face of the franchise and represented the Bulls well both on the court and in the community. He also has made clear his excitement level for the player-first mentality espoused by the new management regime of Artūras Karnišovas and Marc Eversley and the resume of new coach Billy Donovan.
But LaVine is on the front end of his seventh season. He has publicly declared his desire to taste the postseason so often that you can almost feel his pain. And with an 0-3 start and the losses exposing several potential warning signs for this Bulls’ season, playoffs could be a pipe dream again.
Here’s what LaVine said late Sunday when asked how challenging it is for him personally to shoulder the burden of an 0-3 start:
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“I mean, nothing has been given to me. I’m going to fight through it. I think it starts with me. I have to approach it with the right attitude and try to lead this team and do the best I can. Regardless of what the outside people say or what the results may be, I have to step forward for our guys Each day is a new challenge. But I’m willing and ready for it.”
Along those lines, multiple people within the organization have cited LaVine’s growing leadership as a positive to this young season. Following the Bulls’ second straight blowout loss late Saturday night, LaVine addressed his teammates about the need to stick together and keep working to develop good habits, according to two people present.
So for now, LaVine continues to walk the walk and talk the talk. He does this even if he sometimes seemingly can’t win.
For instance, even after scoring the go-ahead basket with 5 seconds left Sunday night, he agreed with Donovan’s assessment that he attacked the basket a little too early, leaving the Warriors enough time for a final, fatal possession.
“Yeah, I think I shot it a little too early there as well,” LaVine said. “He started pressuring me, so I just took the opportunity to go. Obviously, you’d rather get a shot up than not. Obviously, I made it. But it gave them an opportunity to come down and score their last shot of the game. Realistically, I wish I shot the ball with like 2 or 3 on the clock. Even if I missed it, we still had overtime. It’s upsetting.”
The Bulls had until Dec. 21 to extend LaVine’s contract that runs through 2021-22 and calls for him to make $19.5 million this season and next. That date passed with no public signs of talks between the two sides.
That could be another indication of the tenuousness of this relationship. Between his decision to take a hard line on rookie extension talks with Lauri Markkanen and him publicly acknowledging next summer’s salary cap space limited his free-agency shopping to a one-year deal for Garrett Temple, Karnisovas has made clear future flexibility is important to his vision of overhauling the roster.
The trade deadline is March 25. By then, the Bulls will be three weeks into the second half of their schedule that hasn’t been released yet.
If the losing has piled up, it will be intriguing to see where the patience levels of both Karnisovas and LaVine are.