Bulls hold steady at No. 9 position in draft lottery

It’s starting to feel as though the Bulls are safe in holding down the No. 9 spot in the NBA Draft lottery.

Thanks to their seventh consecutive loss, a 120-110 defeat Sunday at the hands of the visiting Suns, the Bulls dropped two games behind the Bucks — who beat the Grizzlies — in the standings, which means a two-game lead in the lottery process with four games left in the regular season.

Considering the Bucks play the tanking Nets twice in the next week, even ‘‘competitive integrity’’ seemingly won’t be able to derail the Bulls at this point.

Sure, executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas always has insisted the Bulls (29-49) never would get involved in tanking, but that was before he realized his team was going nowhere again this season.

So what’s the big picture if the order stays the way it is at the end of the season? The Bulls will have a 4.5% chance of landing the No. 1 pick in the lottery and a 20.3% chance of landing one of the top four selections. The Bucks will have a 3% chance for the No. 1 pick and a 13.9% chance of being in the top four.

But where the real hit will be felt is if neither team moves up. The Bulls will have a 50.7% chance to stay No. 9, and the Bucks will have a 65.9% chance to stay No. 10. So while the odds of either team landing the No. 1 pick is only a 1.5% difference, the No. 9 selection is far more valuable on several other fronts.

The way this talented draft class breaks down is that AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer and Caleb Wilson all can make an argument to be the No. 1 pick. Each has a chance to be a franchise game-changer.

Then come guards such as Kingston Flemings, Darius Acuff Jr., Keaton Wagler, Brayden Burries, Mikel Brown Jr. and Labaron Philon Jr. All are talented, but they all have a few more question marks than the top four.

That makes for some serious talk surrounding the Bulls and the draft, but guard Tre Jones isn’t concerning himself with it. That’s why he was in attack mode all afternoon against the Suns.

With guard Josh Giddey (hamstring) sitting out, Jones was the primary ballhandler and took full advantage of it, scoring 29 points and handing out six assists. Not that he snuck up on the Suns by any means, considering he scored 21 points against them last month in Phoenix.

‘‘The competitor in me thinks anytime we go into a game, we have a chance to win,’’ Jones said recently when discussing his mindset. ‘‘Being in the NBA for six years, I’ve . . . seen that every NBA game, when both teams line up, there’s enough talent on both sides. Whatever a team does, the controllable things, if they play hard on top of that, it usually gives themselves a chance to win.’’

Jones practiced what he preached against the Suns, putting the Bulls in position to win the game after his layup with 3:26 left cut their deficit to one.

But there’s a reason the Suns are sitting in the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference and the Bulls are where they are. Dillon Brooks made a mid-range jumper to move the lead back to three and 30 seconds later connected on a three-pointer to key the 11-2 run that closed the game.

With forward Matas Buzelis (illness) also sidelined, that meant more playing time for Leonard Miller, who scored 17 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in 33 minutes.