Column: Chicago Bulls are headed for a reckoning at the trade deadline if things don’t turn around soon

Chicago Bulls star DeMar DeRozan said the team had to “look in the mirror” and played “like (bleep)” after Friday’s brutal 114-91 loss to the New York Knicks at the United Center.

What they will see isn’t going to be pretty.

It wasn’t just losing for the fifth time in seven games and the second time to the Knicks in back-to-back home games. It was the absence of any competitive juices that made the loss so hard to digest.

“Myself, along with a few others, we let the frustration get to us tonight, whether it felt like calls wasn’t going our way,” DeRozan said. “We’ve just got to compete. Never lose hope, no matter how difficult a situation may seem or be, you can’t ever lose hope. If you lose hope, you’ve lost the whole battle from here.

“We’ve got to get tied of this feeling of not competing and losing like this, especially on your home court. It’s not ideal where we’re at, but hey, great stories start with some type of tragedy.”

It’s not exactly a tragedy yet, but it’s trending in that direction.

Suffice to say the NBA trade deadline isn’t until Feb. 9, but the clock on the Bulls already is ticking.

The longer they wait to turn the season around, the closer they are to waving goodbye to a key player or two. The Bulls fell to 11-17 with the loss and begin a four-game trip Sunday night in Minneapolis against the Timberwolves.

With Zach LaVine safe after signing his new deal, the two stars who figure to be on the block if the losing continues are DeRozan and Nikola Vučević. While Vučević is an obvious trade piece because he’s a free agent after the season, DeRozan is a different story. He’s the team’s most popular player and was brought in last year to team with LaVine as the core to build around.

But DeRozan also could bring back value in return, and if the Bulls aren’t going to be in the playoff hunt in the Eastern Conference, executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas might as well see what he can get. Karnišovas on Friday saw former Bulls star Derrick Rose get a standing ovation and “MVP” chants for coming in and playing garbage time minutes.

“You love to see it,” DeRozan said. “It just shows you the respect and love our fans have for him and what he meant to the city.”

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If DeRozan is dealt, he’ll also get that kind of treatment whenever he returns.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski recently said the league is watching the Bulls, knowing their underachieving start could lead to big changes.

“Like a lot of teams, I think the Lakers will watch Chicago (to) see if that is an organization that decides it might pivot before the trade deadline,” he said.

“Pivot” is a word that has become popular in sports lingo. It sounds so much better than the old-school term “throwing in the towel.” And trading DeRozan would amount to a complete surrender, something Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf knows all about after the White Sox’s infamous White Flag trade in 1997.

TNT analyst and America’s opinionated uncle Charles Barkley recently told WMVP-AM 1000 that it’s time for Karnišovas to “break up” the roster.

“Yes, blow it up,” Barkley said. “You have some good players, but you’re not good enough. It’s time to start the rebuild. … They’re not going to win the championship this year or the next couple of years. You got to start the rebuild. You got to really start the rebuild and start over.”

Barkley’s new contract with TNT reportedly pays him between $100 million and $200 million over the next 10 years. When you’re making that kind of loot to give opinions, you had better have some strong ones. Let’s not forget Barkley also said in 2020 that former Oklahoma City Thunder coach Billy Donovan should’ve turned down the Bulls offer.

“Only two worse jobs than that — the captain of the Titanic and my fitness coach.” Barkley said.

No one is quite ready to get back to a rebuild, either the front office or a city weary of going through rebuilds with the Bears, Blackhawks and Cubs. The Bulls, in fact, just ditched their rebuild last year with the acquisitions of DeRozan and Lonzo Ball.

Donovan was just extended, and it’s unlikely he signed his deal with the assumption they would be starting all over again by February. Donovan hasn’t been blamed for the collapse, but he hasn’t been able to find any combination of lineups that could fix the problem. He also needs to look in the mirror.

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Donovan noted after Friday’s loss — in which the Bulls committed 20 turnovers, were outrebounded 50-39 and made it to the free-throw line only eight times — that “everything I said before the start of the year I knew was coming.”

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He pointed to DeRozan’s buzzer-beating 3s on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as the two wins that kept them from being a play-in team. In other words, this same team was going to have to play much better than last year’s to get back to the postseason. That obviously hasn’t happened, and it’s not all because of the prolonged absence of Ball.

“Our spirit and resolve has to be better,” Donovan said, then repeated the need for more “resolve” a half-dozen more times.

Is it in this team, or was Barkley right?

DeRozan said things can change quickly if the players start playing the way they’re capable of.

“We’ve just got to stay calm and levelheaded every single night we play so we don’t let that frustration get to us,” he said.

It might be too early to give up on the Bulls’ season, but the evidence is mounting.