The Bulls are 2-13 in contests where Bobby Portis ignores the orders of the entire coaching staff screaming at him and inserts himself into the game. When he doesn’t do that, and instead sits blithely on the bench in a painkiller-induced reverie, they’re… 8-23. So, not even that much better. I don’t know what point I was trying to make. If I insinuated that Portis is the reason that the Bulls suck so bad this season, I’m sorry. That was not my intent, at least I don’t think it was.
It’s hard to make any conclusions about the quality of Portis’ play this season. I can say that he’s not as good as last year, but that’s about as far as I’ll go. The Bulls are simply too messed up to make any deeper observations about any of their players. The locker room doesn’t seem as contentious as it did immediately after Boylen was made the interim coach, but near-mutinies don’t just go away because the coach agreed to stop killing them so hard in practice. You know that Portis is still thinking in the back of his mind subtle ways to undermine his coach and maybe his teammates also. Nikola Mirotic is long gone, but you know who is just as punchable? Ryan Arcidiacono. Just bash his pretty-boy face right in.