The Chicago Bulls’ season came to a screeching halt on Friday night, the hopes of postseason glory drowned in the South Florida heat. Their dreams were snuffed out not with a bang, but with a long, wheezing sigh—a 109-90 loss to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Play-In finale that symbolized a season teetering between mediocrity and disappointment. For the second straight year, the Bulls found themselves one win away from the playoffs and for the second straight year, it was the Heat who delivered the fatal blow.
This wasn’t the type of loss that’s easy to digest. It wasn’t a back-and-forth shootout that ended in heartbreak or a fluky night where everything went wrong. This was slow, methodical suffocation. Miami dictated the tempo, stifled Chicago’s offense, and simply looked like the more prepared, more composed, and more determined team. Jimmy Butler wasn’t on the court for the Heat, out with a sprained MCL he suffered against the Sixers earlier in the week. But it didn’t matter. Miami still had enough grit, enough experience, and—perhaps most crucially—enough coaching to grind the Bulls into submission.
From the opening tip, it felt as though Chicago was chasing shadows. The first quarter saw the Heat build an early cushion, with Tyler Herro and Jaime Jaquez Jr. pacing the offense, while Bam Adebayo set the tone defensively. The Bulls looked stuck in mud. Their possessions were stagnant, their off-ball movement uninspired, and their shot selection questionable at best. By halftime, they trailed by double digits and never truly threatened to flip the script in the second half.
Zach LaVine wasn’t on the court either. Still recovering from right foot surgery, he watched in street clothes as his teammates fought—and ultimately failed—to extend the season. Without him, the Bulls lacked their usual offensive spark. DeMar DeRozan, the veteran anchor of this team, tried to shoulder the load, but his isolation-heavy style became predictable against a disciplined Heat defense that knew exactly how to bottle him up. He finished with 22 points, but it took him 20 shots to get there, and the Bulls never found a rhythm as a group.
Coby White, fresh off a career night in Chicago’s first Play-In victory over the Atlanta Hawks, couldn’t recapture the magic. After torching the Hawks for 42 points and dominating the tempo, he managed just 13 points on 5-of-16 shooting against Miami. The Heat made it their mission to deny him space and rhythm, and they succeeded. Every pick-and-roll was contested. Every drive met resistance. Every three-pointer was rushed or tightly guarded. With White neutralized and DeRozan left to take tough mid-range shots under pressure, the Bulls simply didn’t have enough weapons.
Nikola Vučević, the team’s reliable big man, posted a quiet double-double with 16 points and 14 rebounds. But as has often been the case during his Bulls tenure, his contributions came in the background—steady but ultimately not impactful enough to shift the game’s direction. His defense, while improved this season, was still targeted by Miami’s perimeter players, who used switches and misdirection to exploit mismatches. Without a rim-protecting presence, the Bulls gave up far too many easy looks in the paint.
Defensively, the Bulls started with energy but couldn’t sustain it. Herro carved them up with a blend of floaters, pull-ups, and deep threes. He finished with 24 points and 10 assists, controlling the pace like a seasoned quarterback. Adebayo added 13 points, 6 rebounds, and a pair of blocks. But it was Miami’s role players—particularly Caleb Martin, Duncan Robinson, and Kevin Love—who proved decisive. Robinson knocked down timely triples. Love hit the glass hard and stretched the floor. Martin was a defensive pest and knocked down a couple of key shots that swung momentum.
The Bulls, by contrast, got little production from their supporting cast. Alex Caruso played just 8 minutes before exiting with a foot injury. Patrick Williams remained sidelined with a lingering foot issue of his own. Without Caruso, the team’s best perimeter defender, Chicago had no real way to slow down Miami’s outside shooting. Ayo Dosunmu gave good effort but was inconsistent. Andre Drummond was a non-factor. Torrey Craig and Dalen Terry played sparingly and made minimal impact. The bench was a black hole, and as the minutes dragged on, it became clear that Chicago simply didn’t have enough juice left in the tank.
The Heat out-rebounded the Bulls, out-assisted them, out-shot them from three, and held them to under 41 percent shooting overall. Miami’s head coach Erik Spoelstra, already a two-time NBA champion and regarded as one of the best minds in basketball, coached circles around Billy Donovan. While Spoelstra’s schemes were sharp, Donovan’s rotations felt reactive rather than proactive. The Bulls rarely trapped Herro, didn’t adjust to Miami’s pick-and-pop action, and never found an offensive set that generated consistent looks.
This loss didn’t just mark the end of a season. It felt like a verdict on the current state of the franchise. For all the hope Chicago had when they first assembled the LaVine-DeRozan-Vučević core, they’ve yet to deliver more than a single playoff appearance—one that ended in a five-game first-round exit. The front office, led by Artūras Karnišovas and Marc Eversley, now faces hard questions. What is the ceiling of this group? What direction should the team take moving forward? Can this core ever compete in the East, especially with ascending powers like Boston, Milwaukee, New York, and Miami constantly raising the bar?
The Bulls have hovered in NBA purgatory for several seasons now—not bad enough to secure high lottery picks, not good enough to make real postseason noise. This season was no different. They finished 39-43 in the regular season, again hovering below .500, and needed a dramatic Play-In win just to get the chance to play Miami. While that victory over the Hawks was thrilling, it also masked deeper flaws—an aging roster, limited offensive creativity, a lack of three-point shooting, and a shallow bench.
In many ways, this final loss encapsulated those very issues. The Bulls went 6-of-25 from deep, a woeful 24 percent. They had just 19 assists to Miami’s 28. They turned the ball over 13 times, which Miami converted into 18 points. They were outscored in transition, out-hustled for 50-50 balls, and outplayed when it mattered most. As Miami pulled away in the fourth quarter, a sense of inevitability set in. The Bulls weren’t just losing—they were fading. Fatigue, frustration, and resignation crept in with every missed jumper and every Heat bucket.
There were moments this season when the Bulls looked like they could turn a corner. Coby White’s breakout campaign was a revelation. Dosunmu showed flashes of becoming a high-level role player. Caruso remained one of the league’s best defenders. Even after LaVine’s injury, the Bulls played respectable basketball, winning enough to keep their postseason hopes alive. But this team was always walking a tightrope. The margin for error was razor thin. And in the end, when the pressure mounted, they couldn’t walk the line.
DeRozan’s future now becomes a major storyline. The 34-year-old will enter free agency this summer, and it’s unclear whether he wants to stay in Chicago for what might be a long and uncertain rebuild. Vučević is under contract, but his role going forward is in question. LaVine’s name has already surfaced in trade rumors, and his long-term fit with White’s emergence may no longer make sense. The front office will need to decide whether to run it back again, tweak around the margins, or hit the reset button entirely.
For the fans, this ending is all too familiar. A proud franchise with six championship banners and a global brand, the Bulls have now missed the playoffs in five of the last seven seasons. Since Derrick Rose’s MVP campaign and the Tom Thibodeau-led squads of the early 2010s, Chicago has searched for a new identity—and largely come up empty. They’ve cycled through stars, coaches, and philosophies, but nothing has stuck. The fan base is restless. The city is basketball-crazy, but the product has not met the passion.
And so, the Bulls head into another offseason with more questions than answers. The only certainty is that the status quo is no longer acceptable. Whether it’s a new coach, a retooled roster, or a full-scale rebuild, something has to change. Friday night’s loss wasn’t just the end of a season. It was a mirror—reflecting all the cracks, all the missed opportunities, all the mediocrity disguised as progress.
In the end, the Bulls ran out of gas. But maybe, just maybe, they also ran out of excuses.