Chicago Bulls About To Receive The Ultimate Participation Trophy

The Chicago Bulls already got a big enough humiliation by failing to qualify for the 24-team NBA playoff series down in Orlando. A surefire sign of how awful they were this past season. Yet it seems the league is about to give them an extra kick when they're down.

Jackie MacMullan of ESPN revealed that plans are in motions to hold a separate "bubble" league where the six teams who failed to qualify would hold training camps and then games against each other. Try to guess where the NBA wants to hold those games.

Yep. Sweet home Chicago. Plans are to hash things out and have games happening by September. According to K.C. Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago, the location of those games would likely be Wintrust Arena. This because it's directly connected to the Marriott Marquis Chicago hotel. That would make the logistics far easier to handle.

"The NBA is in deep discussions on a second "bubble" in Chicago for the eight teams that were not invited to play in Florida, enabling them to participate in a mini-training camp and subsequent games against other clubs with a target date of September, sources told ESPN on Thursday.

The details are still being hammered out, and teams continue to push for an alternative plan that would enable them to hold mini-camps within their local markets and to explore the idea of establishing regional sites where teams could scrimmage against each other."

Chicago Bulls will be quite busy around that time

What has a lot of people terrified is this might give the Bulls an excuse to keep Jim Boylen in place as head coach. VP Arturas Karnisovas may not want to take a chance with such limited turnaround time before games resume. It would also give him a chance to see Boylen in action personally while appeasing the Reinsdorfs who have championed keeping him on behind the scenes.

Not the scenario people were hoping for. Karnisovas will be a busy man around that time. August 25th is the set date for the NBA draft lottery. So he'll find out where in the top 7 the Bulls rank and then need to get his team ready for game action shortly after. Then by mid-October, he will have to prepare for his first draft.

It should be a fascinating couple of months.