CHICAGO — You hear all the time about the NBA’s issues, but nearly 20,000 people paid money (or accepted free tickets) to watch the winless Utah Jazz play the mediocre Chicago Bulls on a Monday night, so maybe the league isn’t doing that bad.

And to think, Bulls fans want the Reinsdorfs to sell. Would you get rid of an NBA team that fills the house — at premium prices — on a Monday night in November against the winless Utah Jazz?

Hold that thought. I need to make a correction. The previously winless Utah Jazz.

With a 135-126 victory, Utah (1-6) became the last team in the NBA to win a game this season, with some help from the defensively challenged Bulls (3-4), who were also missing their leading scorer Zach LaVine. (Not that he would’ve helped the defense.)

“About time, y’all,” Keyonte George yelled as he walked down the hallway from the court to the locker room. George, the Jazz’s leading scorer, had 33 points and talked smack to the fans after every one of them. Maybe he thinks it’s still a rivalry?

OK, back to those fans. The announced crowd was 19,621 and almost all of them were there to root for the Bulls and/or the Dunkin’ Donuts Race. They deserve better. (From the Bulls, not Biggie Bagel, who actually won Monday night.) Heck, they deserve to be able to watch the Bulls on TV without switching cable providers or installing an antenna. Is this team even antenna-worthy?

If you have watched the team in person or at home, you know that, as promised, the Bulls are playing faster and they’re shooting more 3s. But without a major defensive turnaround, they won’t be better (and will probably be worse) than the middling product they’ve been putting out the last few years.

I used to come to the United Center to watch a relevant team, but that was a decade ago. When they beat Orlando last week to improve to 3-2, it was the first time they were over .500 in two years.\

These Bulls aren’t necessarily tanking — which could cost them a top-10 protected first-round pick — and they aren’t going to win more than 30-something games. At best, they could provide some enjoyment to fun-starved fans a couple of times a week, but not if they play like they did Monday night.

You know who else deserves better? Coby White, the team’s most entertaining player. White, who had a game-high 28 for the Bulls, is a wonderful offensive player who hustles, rebounds and hits 3s. He should be a big star in this city, but instead he’s just the best player (no offense to LaVine, who has looked like himself, for better and worse, after an injury-riddled season) for a forgettable team that, at best, will back its way into the Play-In Tournament again.

THE BULLS ARE HUSTLING.@CHSN__ | #SeeRed pic.twitter.com/Ohxuodo0jb

— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) November 5, 2024

Led by White’s 6-for-9 performance, the Bulls shot 14-for-37 from 3-point range, which was about seven attempts under their average coming into the game.

Bulls coach Billy Donovan has kept true to his promise from the preseason. His team is jacking up a lot of 3s (third-most in the NBA) and they’re making enough of them to be interesting. (Do the West Sacramento Athletics own the copyright for “Billy Ball?” Can the Bulls license it?)

GO DEEPER Recent Bulls wins showing resiliency, refusal to accept defeat with young teamTo their credit, the Bulls rebound well, especially the guards. They came into the game leading the NBA in rebounding and defensive rebounding with 50.3 and 40.5 per game. On Monday, though, they were beaten on the boards, 49-36.

“I thought the physicality of them up front really hurt us,” Donovan said.

But rebounding is just part of a successful team defense. And the Bulls don’t do much else well.

The Jazz came into the game last in the NBA in shooting from the field (39.1 percent) and from 3-point range (28 percent). They shot 53.9 percent and 45.7 percent on Monday night. This was the most points the Jazz have ever scored against the Bulls. Yes, ever. Of course, when this matchup was at its peak in the late 1990s, it would’ve taken the Stockton-Malone Jazz two games to score 135.

After the game, Donovan was lamenting how his team communicates on the floor. Or I guess, how they do not.

“You know, we have got to be able to change and switch out of different coverages,” he said. “And I thought tonight we just did not do a great job after free throws, after timeouts. We were in zone one time and we had one or two guys playing man.”

He admitted that the coaches need to do a better job of prodding these professional basketball players to remember what defense they’re supposed to be in. It takes a village, you know.

The Bulls know they’re bad defensively. The braintrust dealt their best defensive player Alex Caruso to the Oklahoma City Thunder for point guard Josh Giddey. (That Artūras Karniśovas couldn’t pry a draft pick from the Thunder could be one of the great front-office malpractices in Chicago sports history.) With no Caruso, the Bulls are going to suffer through a lot of these games.

“We’re not where we need to be to win games,” said Bulls center Nikola Vučević, who scored 23 points and added 10 rebounds. “Tonight, obviously, it showed. We never were able to put stops together consistently, and the times where we get the original stop, we wouldn’t rebound. So just overall as a team, we just have to be better defensively to give us a chance.”

That’s what confused me when the Bulls were talking about their offensive plans before the season. How was this team going to get enough stops to execute the offensive plan? As it turns out, they’re still figuring that out too.

“For our offense to be even better, we have to fix our defense as well,” Vučević said. “Because if you want to play fast, you have to get rebounds and run. If you’re pulling the ball out of the net all the time, it’s going to be hard to do that.”

The good news is the Bulls have time to figure it out. It’s early November and the only defense Chicago cares about right now belongs to the Bears.

(Photo of Utah’s John Collins dunking during the second half: David Banks / Imagn Images)

Jon Greenberg is a columnist for The Athletic based in Chicago. He was also the founding editor of The Athletic. Before that, he was a columnist for ESPN and the executive editor of Team Marketing Report. Follow Jon on Twitter @jon_greenberg