The Chicago Bulls staged another rally from yet another substantial halftime deficit Friday but again fell short in a 103-97 loss to the Orlando Magic at the United Center.

It was the Bulls’ second consecutive defeat to the Magic, third straight overall and seventh in nine games, dropping them to 4-9. It also was their second loss in as many games in the NBA In-Season Tournament.

Here are five takeaways from the loss.

1. Alex Caruso starts strong before a midgame exit.

Caruso replaced Torrey Craig in the starting lineup as coach Billy Donovan tinkers with rotations to try to snap the Bulls out of their early-season slump.

Caruso offered an immediate antidote to the Bulls’ recent pattern of slow starts, draining his first three 3-pointers and recording a block and steal in the opening six minutes.

The Bulls pulled ahead 9-4, but the Magic answered with a 19-7 run to close the first quarter with the guard off the court. Caruso was one of three players to finish with a positive plus-minus rating (7), but the Bulls struggled whenever he was on the bench.

This issue was exacerbated when Caruso exited the game in the third quarter after he landed awkwardly on his right hand while diving for a ball. After several minutes of playing through visible discomfort, he subbed out the game with 5 minutes, 6 seconds left in the quarter.

Caruso had several fingers taped on the hand before heading to the locker room. He returned briefly to the sideline, then went back to the locker room to have his shoulder wrapped with an ice pack.

Caruso did not reenter the game until the final three minutes of play. He logged only 23 minutes because of the injury. He still made an impact, hitting free throws and nailing a 3-pointer in the final minute.

2. Another stagnant 1st half poses serious questions.

For the second consecutive game, the Bulls scored only 33 first-half points.

It was a 24-minute slog in which the Bulls shot 11-for-37. Without Caruso, the Bulls shot only 7-for-31 (22.6%) from the field in the first half. The bench added just one point — an Andre Drummond free throw — while shooting 0-for-9.

The Bulls also coughed up 12 turnovers in the first half, which the Magic converted into 19 points.

Slow starts have become a norm for the Bulls, who average the second-lowest first-quarter points in the league (26) and the fifth-lowest points in the second quarter (27.5).

“We shoot like we trying not to miss,” DeMar DeRozan said. “We play like we trying not to make a mistake instead of just shooting to make it and playing. “You’ve got to understand, there’s going to be mistakes. That happens.

“We just overly try to be conservative in a sense that put us in a lot of situations that make it seem like we in mud, we can’t get a rhythm. But as soon as that sense of urgency kicks in, we find a way no matter how the game is going.”

3. Zach LaVine powers a fruitless 2nd-half turnaround.

The Bulls fell behind by 20 points in the opening minutes of the third quarter. But after hitting that low point, their stars sparked a rally.

LaVine scored 13 points in the third quarter and DeRozan added 11, with each player hitting a 3-pointer. The Bulls scored 32 points in the third, nearly matching their first-half production. This comeback cut the Magic lead to 12 points by the end of the quarter.

In the fourth, the Bulls trailed 15 points with seven minutes left. But LaVine took over, scoring 12 points in the final frame on 5-for-9 shooting.

LaVine sank back-to-back 3-pointers to cut the Magic lead to five points with 5:28 remaining, then fed Drummond for a slam dunk. With a turnaround jumper, LaVine cut the deficit to one. On the next play, LaVine grabbed a turnover and passed ahead to Coby White, who threw down a shattering dunk over Paolo Banchero for a one-point Bulls lead with 3:13 left.

Still, it wasn’t enough. The Magic grabbed a pair of offensive rebounds to drag out one of their last possessions and regain the lead, then stripped LaVine when he attempted a 3-pointer. A pair of missed shots from LaVine and Nikola Vučević sealed the loss.

4. Lack of bench scoring adds to woes.

The Bulls’ stars produced — LaVine scored 34 points on 12-for-20 shooting. DeRozan added 23 points on 10-for-20 shooting. And Caruso provided 18 points despite his midgame exit.

But the Bulls bench scored only eight points. Craig made one 3-pointer and Drummond scored five points.

Part of the issue stemmed from moving Caruso out of the secondary unit, where he typically operates as a playmaker and distributor in addition to a defensive specialist. But the bench couldn’t buy a shot, especially in the first half. Ayo Dosunmu and Patrick Williams both went 0-for-3. Jevon Carter didn’t take a single shot.

5. What does this mean for the In-Season Tournament?

The Bulls fell to 0-2 in the tournament, sitting at the bottom of Eastern Conference Group C.

The Boston Celtics defeated the Toronto Raptors 108-105 Friday, moving the Celtics to the top the group with a 2-0 record.

The Bulls will conclude the group stage with two road games: against the Toronto Raptors on Friday and Celtics on Nov. 28. But with two losses, it’s unlikely they will be able to advance to the quarterfinals.

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DeMar DeRozan returned to the court with the Chicago Bulls on Friday night at the United Center after missing Wednesday’s game for personal reasons.

DeRozan was away from the team for two days to attend to a family matter. The Bulls offense struggled mightily without him, scoring only 94 points in the loss to the Orlando Magic.

It’s rare for the Bulls to need to make do without DeRozan. He missed only 14 games in his last two seasons in Chicago, several of which were due to late-season load management and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Bulls gained appreciation for what they lose whenever DeRozan can’t be on the court.

“He’s almost like another point guard, another playmaker for us,” coach Billy Donovan said. “At times we got sped up the other night, especially in the first half with the turnovers, and we’ve got to take better care of the basketball. Usually in those situations, he’s the calming force for us.

Potential trade partners for Zach LaVine

A Yahoo Sports report Friday listed several potential destinations for guard Zach LaVine as the Bulls listen to trade suitors: the Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, Philadelphia 76ers and San Antonio Spurs.

Each of these teams offers different pros — connections to his agency, Klutch Sports, and veteran All-Stars. But the common thread is an expectation to participate in the playoffs, either this season or in the near future.

The report also suggested the Bulls could be preparing for a full rebuild, a prospect that the front office previously had treated as an impossibility. This doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of the entire roster, but it could mean shipping off key pieces such as Alex Caruso to begin a new era.

Tournament court a slip-n-slide

After the initial weeks of the NBA In-Season Tournament, the Bulls have been generally enthusiastic about the challenges in the inaugural event.

Forward Torrey Craig said there’s been a heightened preparation and environment for tournament games. Donovan has attempted to emphasize the four group-stage games as the Bulls hope to get to Las Vegas for the semifinals.

But they still are uncertain about one aspect of the tournament: the court.

Fans already were skeptical when the NBA last month debuted the unique colors teams would utilize on their home courts throughout the tournament. In person, they’ve earned mixed reviews. The Bulls court drew particular ire for the blood-red hardwood, which created a stark image — and a lack of contrast for TV viewers — during games.

“It’s a little red,” Donovan joked.

For the Bulls, however, it isn’t the aesthetic that causes concern. It’s the surface.

Players throughout the NBA have complained that the In-Season Tournament courts are slicker than their typical playing surfaces. Craig slipped four times in the first game against the Brooklyn Nets. Donovan noted that some of the decals on the court appeared to be particularly slippery. Guard Coby White found several dead spots where the ball didn’t bounce evenly compared to the rest of the court.

“I play hard so it makes me conscious and a little worried of how hard I can cut or go to the basket or play defensively,” Craig said. “That’s always in the back of my head.”

The Bulls will play at most one more game on their In-Season Tournament court this season — and that will happen only if they win Eastern Conference Group C and host a quarterfinal game.

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The band is staying together.

The Orioles entered Friday’s nontender deadline tied for the most arbitration-eligible players in MLB with 17. With a number that high, it was expected that at least one player — perhaps more — would be let go and become a free agent.

Instead, Baltimore signed four players, including shortstop Jorge Mateo and outfielder Ryan McKenna, and tendered contracts to the remaining 13, including slugger Anthony Santander, starting pitcher John Means and outfielders Cedric Mullins and Austin Hays.

Mateo was seen as the most likely candidate to be nontendered given his struggles in 2023 (.607 OPS) and the Orioles’ logjam of young infielders. But Baltimore values Mateo’s speed and glove at shortstop, agreeing to a one-year contract for 2024 worth $2.7 million, according to a source with direct knowledge of the deal, to avoid arbitration.

The club did the same with McKenna, whose versatility as a right-handed hitter against lefties, pinch-runner and late-inning defensive replacement has made him a common fixture on manager Brandon Hyde’s bench in recent years.

The Orioles also agreed to one-year deals with left-handed reliever Keegan Akin and outfielder Sam Hilliard, who the club recently claimed off waivers. McKenna and Hilliard each signed for $800,000, while Akin agreed to a $825,000 contract, according to a source with direct knowledge of the deals. The figures given to Mateo, McKenna and Akin are all in line with what projection websites predicted, while Hilliard received about $300,000 less than what was estimated.

In addition to Santander, Means, Mullins and Hays, Baltimore tendered contracts to the following players: first basemen Ryan Mountcastle and Ryan O’Hearn; left-handers Danny Coulombe, Cole Irvin and Cionel Pérez; right-handers Tyler Wells, Dillon Tate and Jacob Webb; and infielder Ramón Urías. The Orioles and the players’ representatives can negotiate over the next two months or wait for an arbitration hearing to decide their 2024 salaries.

Like Mateo, McKenna and Akin, Tate and Urías were seen as potential nontender candidates. Tate didn’t pitch in the major leagues in 2023 because of a forearm injury, while the team had to weigh Urías’ reliability and versatility versus the potential of its young infield prospects.

Arbitration is a system that provides pay raises to established big leaguers who have yet to spend enough time in the majors to become free agents. Players who have at least three but fewer than six years of MLB service are eligible for arbitration. MLB players become free agents after six years of service.

Having 17 arbitration-eligible players is something executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias described as “an earmark of having a good roster these days” during his end-of-season news conference in October. That tally will also likely mean a higher payroll in 2024.

The 17 players the Orioles either signed or tendered contracts to Friday are collectively estimated to make more than $55 million in 2024, based on the averages of MLB Trade Rumors, Cot’s Baseball Contracts and Spotrac’s projections. In 2023, those players combined to make about $30 million.

The largest projected salary among the Orioles’ arbitration players is Santander, who is projected to make $12.8 million in his final year of arbitration — about $5.5 million more than his 2023 figure.

Means (projected $5.6 million) and Coulombe (projected $2.5 million) are the only other Orioles in their final year of arbitration. Mullins (projected $6.2 million) and Hays (projected $5.8 million), O’Hearn (projected $3.3 million), Tate ($1.5 million) and Mateo all have between four and five years of service.

The remaining nine players are all arbitration-eligible for the first time: Ryan Mountcastle (projected $3.9 million), Wells (projected $2.2 million), Urías (projected $2.1 million), Irvin (projected $1.9 million), Hilliard, McKenna and Webb (projected $1.2 million), Pérez (projected $1.2 million) and Akin .

McKenna and Wells have yet to reach three years of service, but they were granted “Super Two” status by being within the top 22% among players between two and three years of service. The Super Two cutoff this season was two years, 118 days, according to The Associated Press. McKenna and Wells can now have four years of arbitration instead of three. Starting pitcher Dean Kremer was six days short of Super Two eligibility.

Teams and tendered players have until mid-January to negotiate. If an agreement hasn’t been made by Jan. 12, the two sides will put forward their preferred 2024 salary for the player. If a deal still can’t be reached, a panel of arbitrators will pick one of the two numbers — and no other possible value — after a hearing in late January or February.

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Amid the Orioles’ poor start to the 2022 season, manager Brandon Hyde expressed confidence in not only the club’s future, but also his place in it.

“I’m in this for the long haul,” Hyde told The Baltimore Sun last April. “I’ll be here when we’re winning.”

At that point, early in his fourth season leading Baltimore’s baseball team, Hyde possessed one of the five worst winning percentages of any manager in major league history. Hired as a first-time manager before the 2019 season to guide the club through a rebuild, Hyde had overseen as many campaigns with more than 100 losses as every preceding Orioles manager had in the franchise’s first 65 years in Baltimore.

Tuesday night, little more than a year and a half after his declaration, Hyde was named the 2023 American League Manager of the Year. In his fifth season at the helm, the Orioles won 101 games, winning the AL East and possessing the circuit’s top record. Hyde, 50, joins Frank Robinson (1989), Davey Johnson (1997) and Buck Showalter (2014) as Baltimore managers who have won the honor since its introduction in 1983. Hyde joins Showalter and seven others as managers who won the award after never playing in the major leagues.

“Just proud of what we’ve accomplished up to this point,” Hyde said Tuesday. “This is definitely not an individual award. I don’t look at it as that at all. I look at it as a team award and an entire coaching staff award, really an organizational award of what we’ve done here in five years.”

He received 27 of 30 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and came in second on the other three ballots. Texas’ Bruce Bochy received the other first-place votes and finished second ahead of Tampa Bay’s Kevin Cash. Miami Marlins manager Skip Schumaker won the National League award.

Joe Maddon, the former Chicago Cubs manager whom Hyde considers a mentor after spending three years on his coaching staff before coming to Baltimore, announced Hyde as the winner on MLB Network.

With infielder Gunnar Henderson named the AL Rookie of the Year on Monday, 2023 marks the third season in Orioles history the team has had multiple winners of the BBWAA’s annual awards. Robinson’s 1989 honor came as reliever Gregg Olson was the AL Rookie of the Year, which outfielder Al Bumbry took home in 1973 as Jim Palmer was the AL Cy Young Award recipient.

The club’s performance this season put Hyde alongside Hall of Famer Earl Weaver as the only managers to lead the Orioles to a 100-win season. The campaign marked the second straight in which Baltimore massively exceeded external expectations.

In one of Mike Elias’ first moves as the Orioles’ executive vice president and general manager after being hired five years ago this month, he hired Hyde, then Maddon’s bench coach, as Baltimore’s 20th manager. Hyde recalled Tuesday that during both the interview process and in their initial spring training together, Elias emphasized to Hyde and his coaching staff they wouldn’t be judged on wins and losses, given far more of the latter were expected.

The Orioles went 54-108 in 2019 and 25-35 in the shortened 2020 campaign before a disastrous 2021 season in which they lost 110 games, including 19 in a row at one point.

“During those years, you just didn’t know,” Hyde said. “I had confidence that we were gonna turn this thing around, but you struggle to see when, to see the light at the end of the tunnel, honestly.”

More struggles were expected in 2022, with Baltimore projected to be among the majors’ worst teams as it had been in Hyde’s first three seasons. About a month after Hyde said he would manage Baltimore when it went from rebuilding to competing, the Orioles promoted top prospect Adley Rutschman, and the winning started soon after. They ended 2022 with an 83-79 record, the best of any AL team that missed the postseason. The finish made Hyde the runner-up in AL Manager of the Year voting, though he won Sporting News’ honor, which was voted on by fellow managers.

Despite the Orioles’ breakout success, sports books and projection systems expected regression in 2023. They instead won the best division in baseball, going the entire regular season without being swept. Under Hyde, Baltimore has set an AL record for most consecutive multigame series with at least one victory. The Orioles posted a winning record in each full month for the first time since 1983, when they last won the World Series.

“We were disrespected, honestly, going into this year,” Hyde said hours before the Orioles clinched their first playoff berth since 2016. “Just from where we were from projections, smart people thinking they know what the records are gonna be at the end of the year, casinos, et cetera. I thought we were underappreciated. Everybody thought we were going to have a setback this year. I wanted our players to be offended by that a little bit, the guys that were here last year. I thought that wasn’t accurate.

“I thought we were going to be better than everybody thought.”

As he was in April 2022, Hyde was right. The Orioles entered the year with a core composed of players who endured the rebuild alongside Hyde and young talent developed during it. With only a handful of relatively inexpensive veterans in the mix, the Orioles’ front office, as it has throughout Hyde’s tenure, handed him an inexperienced roster built with one of the lowest payrolls in the majors.

He helped make it a division champion. Despite their frugality, the Orioles’ roster featured depth on both sides of the ball, with Hyde deftly deploying his bench and bullpen throughout the year. Almost half of the Orioles’ victories came in games decided by two or fewer runs, and Baltimore’s .662 winning percentage in such games was 100 points better than the next-best AL club. They tied for the major league lead in comeback wins.

Many players credited Hyde for his role in the clubhouse culture that fueled that success. Asked Tuesday what trait allowed him to weather Baltimore’s rebuild, Hyde was tempted to say patience before acknowledging, “I was guilty a lot of nights of not being patient.” Instead, he settled on a quality several of his players referenced throughout the season: consistency.

“I have a ton of respect for him,” said first baseman Ryan O’Hearn, one of a handful of players who embraced and thrived in part-time roles under Hyde. “I think that’s a common denominator around the locker room is you have guys who go out there and play their ass off for him.”

Players also vouched for him to be Manager of the Year in 2022, but the award went to Terry Francona after he led the Cleveland Guardians to the AL Central title. Hyde’s Orioles won their division in 2023, helping him fend off Bochy, Cash and others in BBWAA voting, which took place before the postseason.

In it, Bochy’s Rangers swept Hyde and the Orioles in the AL Division Series en route to win the World Series. Days after Baltimore’s elimination, the possibility of this award gave Hyde little solace.

“That’s nice,” Hyde said. “I’m still pissed, to be honest with you.

“I don’t like to lose, and I don’t like to lose like that,” he added later. “I wanted our players to jump around again. It’s a really cool group. You didn’t want to have to get on the plane after something like that. You wanted to see them continue to play. That’s the bottom line. We didn’t want the season to be over.”

In a few months, another will begin. Hyde will spend it as the reigning AL Manager of the Year. But he and his players are out for other hardware.

“We want to take that next step,” Hyde said. “I think that they’re gonna come in with a chip on their shoulder a little bit with how things ended. I know I am.”

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