Hey, guess what? The Chicago Bulls clinched a playoff berth Tuesday night. Can you believe it?

(Waits for reaction.)

Ha ha, you should see your face right now. I just zinged you with a classic April Fool’s prank.

With their 137-118 win over the Toronto Raptors on April 1, the Bulls clinched their third straight Play-In Tournament berth. Someone call Pat Riley, because we’re talking about three-peats in Chicago again.

I guess the joke is not so funny if you’re a Bulls fan. One with higher standards, anyway.

Now, I’m not the kind of writer who thinks anything short of a championship is a lost season. People say the worst place to be is in the middle, but at least there’s pride a team can take in being a perennial playoff team. Judging by the facial reaction Bulls guard Coby White gave me when I mentioned the Bulls’ three consecutive Play-In appearances, he’s not celebrating this minor accomplishment. He likes the idea of advancing out of the tournament since the Bulls haven’t done that yet.

“The things that we’ve done this back half of the season, the way we’ve played, you know, I think it would be exciting for us to make the playoffs,” White said.

If the standings stay the same, the Bulls will play the Miami Heat for the third straight year, this time in the first game of the Play-In Tournament. The winner will play the loser of the Orlando Magic-Atlanta Hawks game.

With a playoff appearance on the line each time, the Bulls have lost to Miami in the last two Play-Ins, but this time, there’s no Jimmy Butler on the other side. The Heat had a half-game lead on the Bulls going into Wednesday, and the two face off April 9 at the United Center. The winner gets to host the 9-10 game, so maybe team president Michael Reinsdorf will give the Bulls a pep talk about gate receipts and beer sales.

The Bulls have beaten the Raptors and Hawks in the 9-10 game the past two years, only to see their season end two days later in Miami.

“It’s tough, especially to lose to the same team twice,” White said after Tuesday’s win.

This will be the fourth Play-In appearance for the Hawks, who are currently the seventh seed, and the third for the Bulls and Heat, who are battling for the ninth spot. All four teams have losing records. No one really wants to see these teams play any more games, but then again, the Heat went from the Play-In to the NBA Finals two years ago, so you never know.

A positive for the Play-In Tournament is that it keeps teams with losing records like the Bulls interested and engaged at the end of the season. But should middling organizations get to pretend that making the Play-In Tournament is any kind of real accomplishment?

It’s a conundrum.

“I get where we’re at in the totality of the league,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “The reality is we’re at the bottom of the league in the East, but we’re fighting for an opportunity to potentially have to win one game or two games, or whatever it may be, and if that happens, you’re in the playoffs.”

If the Bulls stay in their current situation, the reward for winning two games would be playing the No. 1 seed Cleveland Cavaliers, who already have 60 wins, and losing any kind of shot in the NBA draft lottery.

The Bulls (34-42) already clinched their third consecutive losing season when they got blown out by the Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday night. That also marked the Bulls’ seventh losing season out of 10 since they fired Tom Thibodeau after the 2015 playoffs. They’ve made the playoffs only twice since then and failed to win a series. This team is in desperate need of a reset, starting with a lottery selection, preferably made by a new front office.

After trading Alex Caruso in the offseason and letting DeMar DeRozan walk, the Bulls waded back into the rebuild waters, but only so far. Trading Zach LaVine at the deadline didn’t crush this team, as it’s still the ninth- or 10th-best team in the East. A smart leadership group would’ve positioned this team for better lottery odds, but the Bulls don’t have one of those.

With nothing else to play for, Donovan thinks the Play-In Tournament, along with the carrot of the playoffs, has some value for young players like rookie Matas Buzelis, one of the few bright spots in the organization right now.

“I think these guys that are going through this, these younger players, they need to feel what that feels like in those moments, in my opinion,” he said. “We don’t want to lose that opportunity for their growth and development.”

In recent weeks, there’s been a little Bulls buzz in the city and nationally after they won 9 of 11, including two over the Los Angeles Lakers, over three weeks in March. Five of their six losses in March came at the hands of actual playoff teams, which shows this team’s limitations.

White, who averaged 27.7 points in 15 games in March, was named the East’s player of the month, making him just the sixth Bulls player to earn that honor, joining DeMar DeRozan, Jimmy Butler, Derrick Rose, Scottie Pippen and, oh yeah, Michael Jordan. White needs only 15 more such awards to tie Jordan’s team record, 16 to pass him.

If the Bulls are going anywhere once the regular season ends, it has to be White who leads them. He’s already thinking about what went wrong the last two years and what they need to get over the rebuild hump and win two in a row. It’s in the best interest of the organization to lose and keep a lottery spot, but that’s not the players’ problem.

“How can we come down from that emotional high and do it again two days later and be able to have that same attention to detail, that same physicality, that same compete level?” he said. “And quite honestly, I feel like Miami, the last two years we played them in the Play-In, they physically dominated us. And so how can we match that, both games? Obviously, we gotta get past the first game. But how can we bring that competitiveness in both of those situations? Because it’s single-game elimination; it’s just like March Madness. So how can we be ourselves but also ramp it up to a whole new level?”

It’s kind of like how the Jordan Bulls had to figure out how to get past the Detroit Pistons in the playoffs, right?

“This is the path we were given,” White said. “This is our journey. This is our own personal journey as a team. So we got to make the most of it, continue to fight together, be together, stay connected. We’re still blessed and fortunate with the opportunity to make the playoffs, so we’ve got to take full advantage of it.”

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Chicago Bulls guard Coby White (0) sinks a shot during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Toronto Raptors, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley) AP