You know what’s fun? Watching sports teams that aren’t cracked, splintered, hollowed-out shells of what they might have been or were supposed to be.

Then again, how would we know?

Welcome to Chicago, where the baseball is inferior, the hockey is revolting and the basketball is 48 minutes from merciful oblivion.

In the time you’ve taken to read this far, the White Sox have committed three more errors and lost another key player to a ruptured something-or-other. The Cubs — hey, how about that 21-0 romp against the Pirates! — still haven’t won a series since the first one of the season. The Blackhawks are rumored to be not quite finished with their lost season, but it would take a deeply deranged, twisted individual to tune in and find out.

And then there are the Bulls, who have found more ways to suffer than any pretty good team should. Unofficial season motto: ”There’s no business like woe business.” For one more night — a Game 5 on Wednesday in Milwaukee that they almost certainly can’t win — the no-show must go on.

We’ll never know how the Bulls would have fared against the mighty Bucks had they been at full strength, Lonzo Ball and all. We do know they didn’t come close to measuring up with all other hands on deck, as losses by 30 and 24 points in Games 3 and 4 at the United Center made abundantly clear. As it was, a team that played sub-.500 basketball after the All-Star break, got manhandled by all the true contenders and withstood more injuries than most already was staggering to the finish line.

But then came the news Tuesday that All-Star Zach LaVine had been placed in the NBA’s coronavirus health-and-safety protocols, unable to travel to Milwaukee with the team and will be out for Game 5. With fellow starting guard Alex Caruso in concussion protocol and also out, a series the Bulls weren’t going to win anyway has devolved into kind of a meaningless exercise.

Even setting aside the possibility that free-agent-to-be LaVine’s time with the Bulls is over — what’s a couple of hundred mil between friends, anyway? — the postseason has been one big bummer. LaVine not getting to go down with a fight in his first time in the playoffs is the rotten cherry atop the whole mess.

”It sucks,” Nikola Vucevic said.

And not only that.

”It’s frustrating and it sucks,” DeMar DeRozan said.

Billy Donovan, as steady as they come and rarely one to complain, sounded after practice Tuesday like a coach who has had just about enough.

”This has been going on for us all year long,” he said. ”I mean, this is not anything that’s new to us. Whether it’s been Patrick Williams breaking his wrist; whether it’s been Coby [White] being out with a shoulder, then out with COVID; Zach being out with COVID; ‘Vooch’ being out with COVID; DeMar being out with COVID; Alex having a hamstring issue, a foot issue — I mean, it’s gone on the whole, entire year.”

There’s plenty he left out, too. And now he has to break out the JV squad in a win-or-go-home game against the NBA’s defending champions? It can’t be much fun. No offense, of course, to White, Ayo Dosunmu or anyone else.

Where are Adam Mokoka, Shaquille Harrison and Walt Lemon Jr. when you really need them, right?

Hey, here’s a fun fact: Bulls end-of-the-bencher Matt Thomas scored a career-high 25 points on his senior day at Iowa State. He also made the last 28 free throws of his college career. So what if it was way back in 2017? This guy clearly has the clutch gene. Could it be that the answer to all the Bulls’ problems is right under Donovan’s nose?

No, it wasn’t a serious question. Get ready, though, for a heavy dose of Javonte Green. Did you know Green is the first Radford alum to make it to the NBA? You probably did, considering it gets mentioned whenever the Bulls are on national television and Green is in the game. Come to think of it, does anyone know a single other thing about the man?

It doesn’t matter. This all will be over soon enough.

For this Bulls team — tired, gasping, its best work far behind it — there are no solutions. It’s not the end of the world, but it is too bad it’s ending like this.

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Due to a forecast of cold temperatures Wednesday, the White Sox have changed the start time for Wednesday’s game against the Royals from 6:10 p.m. to 1:10 p.m.

Game tickets, parking coupons and Huntington Bank Stadium Club passes for the 6:10 p.m. start will be honored for the 1:10 p.m. first pitch.Fans do not need to exchange any game tickets, parking coupons or Stadium Club passes to attend the rescheduled game.

Wednesday’s forecast calls for a high of 40 degrees.

The Sox open a home stand Tuesday night against the Royals at 6:10 p.m.

Before the game, the Sox reinstated right-hander Matt Foster from the Family Medical Leave List and optioned outfielder Adam Haseley to Triple-A Charlotte.

Foster, 27, was placed on leave Friday. He is 0-0 with a 1.42 ERA in five relief appearances.

Haseley, 26, appeared in five games after being recalled from Charlotte on April 20, going 2-for-10 with two walks. Outfielder Luis Robert has been expected to return to action after missing three games over the weekend with a sore right groin, which he sustained running out a ground ball Thursday in Cleveland.

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Forward DeMar DeRozan was searching for the right words when he was asked about the latest gut punch the Bulls endured Tuesday and finally settled on something from the heart.

”I mean, it sucks,” DeRozan said, sounding somber. ”It just sucks.”

He wasn’t alone in that feeling, either.

What was supposed to be a last practice before heading to Milwaukee for Game 5 of their first-round playoff series Wednesday against the Bucks turned into more adversity for the Bulls, who have had their share of it all season long.

The Bulls announced guard Zach LaVine had entered the NBA’s health-and-safety protocols for the coronavirus.

The team announced on Wednesday morning that LaVine would not play in Game 5.

It is the second time this season LaVine has been in the protocols and the third time in the last year. He also had a contact-tracing scare last summer with Team USA but avoided testing positive.

”Before basketball . . . just health-wise, it just sucks,” DeRozan said. ”He’s got a family of his own. It just sucks being in that situation, feeling that way. First and foremost is for him. Second of all, us not having him. Him missing a full opportunity of playing in a playoff series. I mean, it’s frustrating. I can’t even imagine how he feels. The most important thing now is he comes out of that thing being healthy.”

DeRozan said he spoke with LaVine on the phone, and it obviously wasn’t the most upbeat conversation. The Bulls are down 3-1 in the series and face elimination.

”I think he was more frustrated than anything, honestly,” DeRozan said. ”He was just frustrated. I think your frustration outweighs anything else, regardless of how he felt. I was just trying to be there, keep him positive mentally more than anything.”

In an extra bit of bad news, the Bulls said on Wednesday that guard Alex Caruso, who was in the concussion protocol, would also miss Game 5.

With LaVine out, the Bulls will miss the 19.3 points he has averaged in the first four games of the series, and it would mean the Bucks would have one fewer key piece to focus on defending.

DeRozan was getting double- and triple-teamed before LaVine’s illness, so imagine what the Bucks’ defense would have in store for him without LaVine.

”Playing without him was extremely tough,” DeRozan said of regular-season games when LaVine was sidelined. ”He’s Zach; it’s hard to replace that. What he brings, who he is, the attention that he brings, it’s a different dynamic when Zach isn’t out there. So not to have him and playing those games without him, it was definitely tough.

”We’re just going to have to figure out [Wednesday] night, and [it’s] next guy up. We’ve got to find energy to fight for him, as well.”

The Bulls already faced an uphill battle in trying to turn the series around, but the task would be even more difficult without Caruso and LaVine.

”We never really cared for the outside noise,” center Nikola Vucevic said of the Bulls being written off. ”You can’t focus on that. There’s so much of it nowadays — media, social media, fans on social media, whatever it is. You just have to focus on yourself, your team and what we can do to go out there and extend this series.

”People are gonna write what they want to write, say what they want to say. It is what it is. We’ve gotta focus on ourselves.”

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The White Sox didn’t hit or catch the ball, and their pitchers couldn’t throw strikes.

That is how they went about trying to prevent a dreadful losing streak from reaching eight games Tuesday.

Opening a homestand against the Royals, the Sox fell to 6-10 with a 6-0 loss, their eighth in a row to match their longest skid since June 2018, a season in which they lost 100 games.

Things are beginning to spin out of control. And a team with World Series aspirations, while saying it’s early, also is starting to press.

”And you can see it,” manager Tony La Russa said. ”There was some frustration, which is good. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t be frustrated. The way to end the frustration is just to execute better and be more productive.”

Much like in their 0-6 road trip to Cleveland and Minneapolis that the Sox couldn’t wait to put behind them, this loss offered more bad baseball. The Royals snapped a four-game losing streak.

Left-hander Dallas Keuchel, who was coming off a disastrous start against the Guardians, was backed by more shoddy defense and a big zero for offense, although he walked five in four-plus innings. Sox pitchers issued 11 walks to a Royals team with the lowest walk rate in the AL.

”Tonight, it started with me,” Keuchel said.

After going hitless in the first three innings, the Royals got two runs in the fourth without getting a ball out of the infield. First baseman Jose Abreu dropped a throw from shortstop Tim Anderson for the Sox’ major-league-high 19th error before a walk and a slow roller by Bobby Witt Jr. that deflected off third baseman Jake Burger’s glove for a run-scoring infield hit followed.

”A tough play, but I have to do better,” Burger said.

A slow roller by Adalberto Mondesi to Abreu made it 2-0.

The Royals then sent 10 batters to the plate in a four-run sixth. Four of them walked against relievers Reynaldo Lopez (one) and Kyle Crick (three).

Anderson later made his seventh error in the last seven days — and the Sox’ 20th of the season — on a grounder in the eighth.

”Is there concern, is there frustration, is there disappointment? Absolutely,” general manager Rick Hahn said before the game.

Hahn, however, reminded everyone that it’s April and that he still believes in the Sox’ talent and upside.

”There’s no avoiding the frustration and disappointment, but one of the beautiful things about this sport is the length of the season really forces the cream to rise to the top,” Hahn said.

The Sox are averaging two runs in their last 11 games and are hitting .171 with runners in scoring position in their last 13. Royals left-hander Daniel Lynch held them to two hits and struck out seven in seven innings.

The Sox, who had five hits, were coming off a 6-4 loss Sunday to the Twins in which Byron Buxton’s walk-off home run against closer Liam Hendriks stirred much talk about La Russa’s decision to pitch to him with first base open. Hahn was invited into the discussion Tuesday.

”I have opinions on that, and those are for those involved in decision-making,” Hahn said. “We have those conversations internally and talk things through as a group. Again, ultimately, hopefully give Tony and the coaching staff the best information to make the right decisions.”

As for criticism of La Russa for relying too much on slumping utility player Leury Garcia, who didn’t play Tuesday, Hahn said: ”Ultimately, the manager has the lineup card, and he’s the one who will answer any questions you have about how he’s using the players and when and why.”

No one on the card Tuesday did much of anything.

”At this level, it’s mostly between the ears, the heart, the guts,” La Russa said. ”And we need to have some success to get it rolling, like [Wednesday] afternoon.”

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