The Bulls’ insistence on keeping Coby White on the bench while Zach LaVine is injured meant that Shaquille “Shaqalici” (if anyone gets that reference you get my props) Harrison got his third consecutive start. How else is White going to set all sorts of records when it comes to rookies coming off the bench if he isn’t even coming off the bench? The only goal of the Bulls’ season at this point is arbitrary crap like that. And tanking, can’t forget the tanking. If Egg-Man (Jim Boylen) would even think about letting the Bulls tank, which I doubt he would.
Perhaps Harrison being the starter is one of those “stealth tank” decisions, a decision that looks reasonable on the surface but in fact really hurts the teams’ winning chances. Teams have been doing stealth tanking for a long time now, it was the preferred mode of tanking until Philly came in and showed that the NBA won’t punish you if you just straight up don’t even try to win.
I shouldn’t be hard on Harrison; he actually played really well this game, something that hasn’t happened a whole heck of a lot this season. Sure, it was on the back of unreasonable three-point shooting (he was 3-for-3 from deep, and he’s only made 11 threes total on the season), but you can’t take away those points just because they’re unreasonable. He legitimately scored those points, they’re his points now. Only the actions of Adam Silver can take them away, and I don’t think he’s ever used that particular perk of being the NBA commissioner.