PHILADELPHIA — Josh Giddey knows the direction this can go.
A glimpse at the standings, a few thoughts creep into the head, and later that night a Bulls player finds himself going iso on a defender he has very little chance to beat off the dribble while a teammate is wide open for a corner three.
That’s how a team splinters, that’s how an already bad season turns downright miserable, and that’s what Giddey saw in the humiliating performance against the 76ers on Wednesday.
“It’s kind of a weird spot,” Giddey said. “There’s a lot of free agents in the room, so a lot of guys have contract situations coming up, but I think the most important thing is we keep playing the right way.”
Giddey was speaking from experience. He was dealing with a very public contract year last season, and his 2024-25 campaign couldn’t have started off worse. He was benched late in several games because of defensive breakdowns in November, felt like he was failing himself and his new team by December, and finally started to put it together after the All-Star break.
And while most NBA players dismiss the contract as a mental obstacle, Giddey was very transparent in admitting that it was weighing on him. He did eventually get his four-year, $100 million deal done in the summer, but even now he can recall the emotional roller coaster he rode.
“I’m not going to speak for other guys because I know how it is to be in a contract year and individually you are always worried about yourself,” Giddey said. “Everybody wants to play well, that’s no secret, contract-wise or not, especially coming into free agency. You want to perform, you want your visibility to be as high as possible, so I get it from that point of view. But it’s important to make everything about the team. It’s easy for guys to waver and think about themselves. I was guilty of it as well.
“I just think it’s important to let that stuff get handled in the offseason. Don’t drag it into the team. (Wednesday) in stints I thought we played selfish ball and started to get in one-on-one stuff, iso stuff, and it’s just not the way we play. It’s not sustainable and not how we have to win games.”
As it stands right now, Anfernee Simons, Collin Sexton, Nick Richards, Zach Collins and Guerschon Yabusele are all unrestricted free agents. Jaden Ivey is a restricted free agent, while the Bulls have a team-friendly option on Leonard Miller.
That could be a lot of moving parts yet again.
Giddey & Co. already went through this exercise, starting this season off with a locker room full of free agents with Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu, Nikola Vucevic and Kevin Huerter headlining that group.
To their credit, that first iteration was able to compartmentalize their own situation from the team’s well-being.
This current group? Maybe not so much.
Then again, the losing has come much more frequently since the roster was flipped, there’s questions about the coaching future of Billy Donovan, and within a few more games there will be nothing left to play for with the Bulls on the brink of play-in game elimination.
“I put myself in their shoes because I know what it’s like to have that in the back of your mind,” Giddey added. “Everybody wants to take care of their families, you got money to make, so I get that from a contractual standpoint, and while we’re out of the playoffs — not yet, but we might as well be — it’s important we stay together, keep doing this thing together, and let that stuff be handled in the summer.”
NOTE: The Bulls announced on Thursday that Jaden Ivey (knee) and Jalen Smith (calf) will be shut down for the remainder of the season. Ivey played just four games after coming over in the Kevin Huerter trade with Detroit, and looked hampered by the knee from the get-go, while Smith was in and out of the lineup the last six weeks with the calf strain.
