CLEVELAND – At least someone not named Alex Caruso was willing to play some defense for the Bulls.
Then again, Billy Donovan didn’t have much of a choice.
After yet another blown fourth-quarter lead in Saturday’s loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, there was the coach fielding questions about his own team’s softness.
Not usually the comfort zone for a guy that’s considered a players’ coach.
“I would just say, sitting in my chair, my seat, being around these guys, I think when you see the work they do, when they come in, the way they try and figure things out, way they try and get better,” Donovan said, when asked about the toughness of his 26-30 team. “I just see things that to me signify character. To me the experience in certain situations, the taking care of the ball, the experienced IQ plays, sometimes we’re short on those when we have to understand time, score, possession. ‘We just had two bad ones … whoa, whoa, whoa …’ They have to get better in those basketball moments, and in a lot of ways – the word you’re using is soft – I think a lot of it is them learning how to stop bleeding.”
There might not be enough bandages or enough time to apply them all.
With just 26 games left and hanging onto a play-in spot in the Eastern Conference, the Bulls look nothing like the second-round-playoff expectations that executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas put on them at the start of the season, or a roster that should have stood pat at last week’s trade deadline.
The Bulls do have the sixth easiest schedule left in the Eastern Conference, but with as many disappointing finishes as they’ve already had, strength of schedule gets thrown out the window.
The latest evidence of that came Saturday, facing a Cavs team that had played the night before down in New Orleans in a 10 p.m. EST tip, and didn’t arrive back home until 5 a.m. Meanwhile, the Bulls had an off-day in Cleveland, and shouldn’t have been the team that looked worn down in the final stanza.
But there they were, leading most of the night until All-Star Donovan Mitchell hit a three-pointer with 9:54 left in the game, seemingly sending the Bulls into a spiral.
And that’s the issue with this team, even going back to last season. When adversity hits, there’s seldom a counter punch. It’s almost as if they have become so used to the pending meltdown that they think it into existence.
“Me personally, no, but I can’t speak for everyone,” veteran center Nikola Vucevic said, when asked if the players were too easily falling into the “here we go again” mindset. “We’re not detailed enough in our execution. We make too many careless mistakes, and at this level you can’t do that. We talk about it, we just don’t do it. Unless we start doing it, it’s not going to happen for us.
“Teams are too good in this league, and players are too good in this league, and that’s the margin. Every team talent-wise, some teams have more, but it’s not a big gap. Where the really big difference comes in is how good are you at executing on both ends of the floor and end-of-game when it really matters. And that’s where we don’t do a good job, when teams turn it up. We’re so loose and go through the motions a lot, and that’s when it starts to hurt us.”
So is there time to turn this around? Donovan hopes so.
“I think we can,” Donovan said. “Sometimes us trying to make that extra play is where we fall short. When you get so predictable of Zach [LaVine] and DeMar [DeRozan] every time down the floor it becomes a lot easier to guard, and the rest of the group is not involved.”
