Column: The Chicago Bulls have a chance to change their underachieving narrative, but it has to start now

Coby White made his second NBA start Wednesday night at the United Center as the Chicago Bulls returned to the court for the opening game of the 2020-21 season.

White’s first start came March 10 as a reward for an eight-game stretch in which he’d averaged 27 points a game, providing Bulls fans with hope the rebuild was beginning to show signs of life.

Then came the COVID-19-related shutdown that suspended the NBA season. When the league restarted in July, the Bulls were on the outside looking in, deemed unworthy of an invitation to the Orlando bubble.

By the time they met the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday, some 9 ½ months after their last regular-season game, the Bulls had new management, a new coach and a fresh outlook on life.

The reboot was here, and finally it was time to find out what the core could do under Billy Donovan.

It was evident early on that progress might not be linear — or even decipherable — in a season that could have fits and starts because of the pandemic.

The Hawks hit eight of their first nine shots, including a thunderous dunk by Hawks guard John Colins on a lob that echoed in the empty stadium. The Bulls played defense like it was just a passing thought as Atlanta jumped out to a 42-29 first-quarter lead with half of its scoring in the paint.

Things came so easy that at one point you figured Trae Young might just steal one of the two Lexus sports cars parked on the floor where North Shore accountants wearing ugly sweaters used to sit. With no fans around, the marketing department gave Benny the Bull a new “fan cave” in the 200 section, where he entertained himself instead of watching the game.

Chin up, Benny. It can only get better.

The only certainty in Year 4 of the rebuild is that Arturas Karnisovas, the Bulls’ new executive vice president of basketball operations, owes a debt of gratitude to Theo Epstein and Rick Hahn. Thanks in part to the successes of Epstein, the former Chicago Cubs president, and Hahn, the current Chicago White Sox general manager, Karnosivas has been given the benefit of the doubt by most long-suffering Bulls fans, whose patience with the old regime ran out years ago.

If Karnisovas can plan and execute this rebuild-in-progress with as few miscues as our two baseball executives endured during theirs, there’s reason to believe the return of a prolonged run of success is more than corporate-speak. He’s already ahead of the game, having dispensed of longtime GM Gar Forman and coach Jim Boylen and replaced them with the respected duo of GM Marc Eversley and Donovan.

If you think it was easy to fire Forman and Boylen, you don’t know Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, whose loyalty is legendary, no matter the organization or the employee’s driving record.

No one expects any miracles from this year’s team, so there’s no pressure on Donovan, their third coach in three years, to do anything but see some improvement from the young core. We’ve seen glimpses of greatness from many of them but consistency from none.

It’s the same underachieving bunch as last year’s 22-43 edition, along with promising 19-year-old rookie Patrick Williams and free-agent acquisition Garrett Temple. But improvement is a must, and because a team now can make the play-ins with the 10th-best record in a 15-team conference, it’s a reachable goal.

“I think you have to go into it thinking that you’re going to go to the postseason,” LaVine said Wednesday in a videoconference. “We all understand how accomplished Billy is and what he’s bringing. We obviously have a new front office. But at the end of the day, it’s players too. We have to compete for that spot, be ready for the trials and tribulations, try to be there in the hunt at the end of the season.

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“Even the years that we haven’t made it, at the beginning of the year, you have to think you’re a playoff team and you’re going to win or you already lost. That’s just my mentality.”

That is the proper mentality, especially because they probably can get in without a winning record.

The best part of having Karnisovas in charge is every key player besides Zach LaVine must re-prove himself, while LaVine just has to prove he’s an All-Star-caliber player and a team leader. Karnisovas didn’t draft or acquire the core, except for Williams, so he’s not indebted to anyone. Lauri Markkanen, Wendell Carter Jr. and White basically are getting a fresh start, like rookies all over again.

Karnisovas started by not signing Markkanen to an extension, putting the No. 7 pick of the 2017 draft on notice in only his fourth season. The acquisition of LaVine, Markkanen and the now-departed Kris Dunn in the Jimmy Butler trade kicked off the rebuild, but only LaVine has lived up to expectations. If Markkanen has a great season and the Bulls are forced to shell out more to match an offer sheet and keep him, so be it.

It was 50 years ago that another young core was just starting to find its way. On Dec. 23, 1970, they Bulls beat the Buffalo Braves behind 31 points from Bob Love, 29 from Chet Walker and 20 rebounds from Tom Boerwinkle, improving to 22-12. That 1970-’71 team, which also featured Jerry Sloan and Bobby Weiss, went on to win 51 games, a 12-game improvement, and became a force to be reckoned with for years. They broke our hearts a time or two, but are still beloved in Chicago five decades later for the way they played.

This team isn’t anywhere close to that group, of course, but we can always dream.