The first rule of the NBA preseason: It’s only the preseason.
It’s a crucial reminder when anything — good or bad — happens during the two-week stretch. These games are functional as litmus tests for the starting status of rosters and systems. But they also aren’t real. Teams are wary of injuries, players are focusing on specific pieces of their game and fourth quarters often feature names who won’t appear on a regular-season roster.
Still, preseason scraps can provide some crucial information for the trajectory of players and goals for a team. Entering the preseason finale Friday against the Cleveland Cavaliers (7 p.m., CHSN), here are three questions the Bulls need to answer before the regular season begins next week.
Is Talen Horton-Tucker locked into the final roster spot?
Coach Billy Donovan met with front-office executives — including executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas and general manager Marc Eversley — after Wednesday’s game to review the performance of training-camp players.
The team then made a round of cuts Thursday morning, waiving Onuralp Bitim and Kenneth Lofton Jr. Bitim’s contract was not guaranteed until the first day of the regular season, which means the Bulls were free to waive him.
The Bulls have one roster spot to fill before the season begins in addition to a two-way position. That final first-team slot likely will come down to Talen Horton-Tucker or E.J. Liddell, two Illinois natives who stood out.
Horton-Tucker has the clear upper hand to make the roster. He featured heavily with the rest of the regular rotation Wednesday, scoring 17 points in the preseason victory against the Minnesota Timberwolves, and impressed from the start of training camp. His 3-point shooting would be an important boost to an area of need for the Bulls.
An interesting wrinkle: Signing either of these players would leave the Bulls with only one center and six forwards, with eight guards dominating the roster. While Horton-Tucker is a physical player, he isn’t particularly switchable as a defender and is only 6-foot-4. The Bulls embraced the fact they were going to be smaller this season, but this is quite the size disparity compared with the rest of the league.
Is their 3-point shooting for real?
Refer back to the first rule of the preseason. No aspect of a team’s play over the course of five preseason games should be taken as a reflection of how the season will play out.
With that said, the sudden improvement in 3-point shooting has been an interesting pattern of the preseason. The Bulls made 55 3-pointers in their first four games of the preseason for the sixth-highest volume in the league (15.8). They are shooting at a 34.4% clip while logging the fourth-highest attempts from deep.
So how real is this change? The Bulls are better equipped to stretch the floor this season. Players from Ayo Dosunmu to Julian Phillips are being encouraged — if not urged — to up their volume of 3-point attempts both off the dribble and in catch-and-shoot situations. As a result, the Bulls spent the preseason playing more inside-out ball with a green light to let it rip from long range.
Last preseason, the Bulls averaged the third-fewest 3 attempts in the league, although their long-range numbers were somewhat bolstered by efficiency (36%, 11th). That efficiency evaporated in the opening stretch of the season — the Bulls shot 34.1% on 3-pointers (and 44.1% from the field) in the first 15 games. Their 3-point attempts remained consistently low throughout the season.
This doesn’t guarantee the Bulls will carry their preseason shooting into the regular season. But it’s clear they are at least approaching the offense with a different mindset. Whether it will result in high-volume scoring — and whether any of that will be enough to balance out their defensive concerns — will have to wait until the regular season.
How much can Lonzo Ball play?
Wednesday night was a high point of the year for the Bulls. Getting Lonzo Ball back in any capacity was a major victory after the guard’s recovery from a seemingly minor meniscus injury in his left knee resulted in a 33-month absence and three knee surgeries. Ball scored scored 10 points in 15 minutes, 7 seconds against the Timberwolves in his first game action since January 2022. Now the Bulls get to move into the next stage of Ball’s recovery.
Ball participated in a light practice Thursday, a positive sign that he didn’t experience overwhelming knee soreness in the wake of his first NBA minutes in years. He expects to play Friday against the Cavs and to be available for the season opener Wednesday in New Orleans.
Ball will have restrictions. He will stick to a 16-minute cap for the opening stretch and likely will not play back-to-back games at all this season. But outside of those limitations, it’s still impossible to predict how many minutes per game — and games per week — the Bulls can expect out of the point guard.
These questions can’t be answered quickly. But if Ball can play another 16-minute rotation Friday without setbacks, it sets the stage for a much higher volume of play at the start of the season than previously expected.
