The Bulls call it a "stage," but they're still just the Bulls

At the trade deadline, Artūras Karnišovas finally took tangible steps to free the Chicago Bulls from the purgatory he helped create, moving on from mainstays Nikola Vučević, Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu.

Neither he nor the organization can afford to blink now. 

There’s no virtue in sprinting through the tape of a lost season.

At 24-32 and 12th in the Eastern Conference, the Bulls are drifting away from the middle. The worst thing they could do now is catch themselves.

This final stretch can’t be about hollow victories or cosmetic respectability. It has to be about clarity. About odds. About choosing a direction beyond the shadow of a doubt. 

Around the league, that choice is already being made. 

The Washington Wizards aren’t in any rush to play Trae Young and Anthony Davis. The Dallas Mavericks closed the door on Kyrie Irving returning from injury. The Sacramento Kings will finish without Domantas Sabonis and Zach LaVine after both underwent season-ending surgeries.

Those franchises understand what this portion of the calendar demands.

The Bulls seemed to get the hint. Then they blinked.

Collin Sexton and Anfernee Simons weren’t rerouted for future assets. Instead, 28-year-old Nick Richards and 30-year-old Guerschon Yabusele were added to the fold.

That’s not a rebuild. That’s hesitation.

Josh Giddey, Tre Jones and Jalen Smith returned to action on undisclosed minutes restrictions in a 110–101 loss to the Toronto Raptors on Thursday, the Bulls’ seventh straight defeat.

Their two highest-ceiling acquisitions, Rob Dillingham and Jaden Ivey, combined to play just 10 minutes. Ivey never left the bench.

With Billy Donovan away following the death of his father, Wes Unseld Jr. explained that squeezing six guards into the rotation is complicated.

In a vacuum, that’s defensible. In this season, it’s directionless.

Soft-tissue injuries warrant caution. If ever there was a time to prioritize long-term health over short-term optics, this is it.

That approach would serve Ivey and Dillingham, too.

After uneven starts to their careers, the former lottery picks need runway. Not a positional timeshare.

"This team has a lot of guards," Ivey said afterward. "Going into it I'm kind of just thrown in."

That's precisely the problem.

The Bulls don’t need lineup data right now. They need developmental data.

Even if they can only realistically fall to the league’s eighth-worst record, the difference matters.

Finishing there as opposed to where they currently reside represents a 6% swing in top-four lottery odds and a 1.5% bump at landing the first-overall pick. 

Marginal gains, yes. But in a draft that offers the clearest path to the cornerstone the franchise has spent much of the post-dynasty era searching for, margins are everything.

Karnišovas admitting the Bulls were stuck was the easy part.

Now he has to prove he understands how to get them unstuck.