Bulls win ninth straight, but coach Billy Donovan still wants better

Billy Donovan wasn’t looking for perfection.

The Bulls coach was much more realistic than that.

Donovan just wanted certain boxes checked, good habits reinforced.

More threes from his offense? Check.

High quality drive-and-kick threes? Check.

Sharing the ball? Check.

Less fouling and better defense? Well, it’s the dog days of the NBA season, and that’s why the Bulls are still a work in progress in the mind of their coach.

The beauty in that work is the Bulls were still winning, grabbing an impressive ninth straight win on Friday in beating the Wizards 130-122 at the United Center.

Not only was it their longest winning streak since April 2011, but it kept them atop the Eastern Conference by now 2 1/2 games with Milwaukee beating Brooklyn. At 26-10 the Bulls also had the fourth-best record overall in the league, as well as giving Donovan career-win No. 300.

And the recipe was one Donovan could embrace, especially on the offensive end. The Bulls ran Washington out of the building most of the night, finishing with at least 130 points for the third time in the last six games.

They hit 15-for-33 from three-point range, finishing with 34 assists.

“I’d like for us to take some more [threes],” Donovan said. “If we did that we’d be good. But I think one of the areas we need to get better at is we’ve got to get better at playing downhill. I think when you get downhill you force rotation, you force a second defender into the paint to help, that when your spray-out threes start to come.

“I don’t love just saying randomly, ‘Hey, we’ve got to take more threes.’ I don’t think all threes are created equally. There’s certain threes that are just bad in my opinion. You got to get the right ones.”

There were a lot of those, led by Lonzo Ball hitting six threes, while Coby White went 4-for-4 from long range.

What still remained an issue for Donovan? The defense and the fouling, with the visiting Wizards finishing 25-for-26 from the line.

“There’s going to be some nights where we go against top five, top 10 defensive teams where points are hard to come by and it becomes kind of a grind-out kind of game, and you’ve got to have something that you can control to fall back on,” Donovan said.

More “control” will be added when Alex Caruso gets out of the health and safety protocols, and the Bulls have multiple elite defenders in their backcourt.

Caruso could be out by next week, and Ball’s been back a few games now. That in itself should improve the defense.

“I think when you start talking about point of the screen defense, pick-and-rolls, certainly I do think there is an individual talent component to defense,” Donovan said. “The adage that you’ve got to play hard, yeah, that’s part of it, but there’s also a technique part of it. Lonzo is really good at it, Alex is really good at it.”

Zach LaVine led the Bulls with 27, while White chipped in 21, and rookie Ayo Dosunmu added 18. For White off the bench, it was his third game of at least 20 points in his last four.

“I think Coby is a winning player,” Donovan said. “He has a lot of great qualities and he’s had to adjust quite a bit, but I think Coby is just a basketball player. It’s been great being around him with that type of mentality.”

An assessment White appreciated.

“I think it’s dope,” White thought of his coach’s comments. “I feel like I’m making strides in all areas.”

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