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Being the head coach of the Chicago Bulls (45-35) is probably as good as it has been since 2017, the last time the franchise appeared in the postseason. That does not mean this year hasn’t presented seven-year NBA head coach Billy Donovan with unique challenges.
Donovan guided a Bulls team that won just 22 games the year before his arrival and added nine wins in his first season at the helm.
He has followed that up by leading them to their first 40-win campaign and playoff berth in five years, a campaign that saw them sit atop the East at different points from November until February 24.
Their 6-14 record since then is the second-worst in the conference.
The former Oklahoma City Thunder steward feels like his current team is missing one critical trait they will need to make some noise in the postseason. He let it be known during his press conference following their 117-94 loss to the Boston Celtics on April 6, their third straight defeat.
“There’s got to be precision, and concentration, and focus, and this … just this intense focus. And we’ve got to get that, and I don’t feel like we have that. You know? And we’ve got to get that. There’s just this elite, laser focus of moment-by-moment playing what is going on now.”
The Bulls are 19th in deflections, 21st in contested shots and 23rd in percentage of loose balls recovered on defense.
Bulls Focus Has Faded
The Bulls are just 7-14 since the All-Star break. If we are being honest, though, the slide began before the break when Lonzo Ball went down. They rode a five-game win streak into All-Star weekend, but all of those games came against teams outside of the “above .600” threshold.
They did notch wins in that stretch against the Charlotte Hornets and Minnesota Timberwolves, two playoff teams.
However, they were also on an 0-for-10 skid against teams currently above .600 on the year.
Donovan alluded to those teams understanding how to “win the margins” while Zach LaVine said during the post-game press conference on April 6 that the Bulls are “disconnected” on both ends of the floor.
“That’s upsetting. We obviously have shown it — that fight, that hunger — but we look like a totally different team right now, so we’ve got to hurry up and get back to what we were doing and not hope and wish.”
LaVine’s words carry tremendous weight as he gets set to hit free agency for the first time in his career. He’s also not expected to be short on suitors, per The Athletic’s Shams Charania on “Unfiltered with David Kaplan,” so there are decisions to be made.
He is eligible for a contract extension that, as NBC Sports Chicago’s Rob Schaefer explained back in September, could surpass $200 million over five years this offseason.
Focus on the Margins
That disconnect that LaVine speaks of is the same lack of focus that Donovan lamented. A team that rode an early surge has gotten punched in the mouth by myriad circumstances – on top of Ball’s injury, Patrick Williams missed 65 games in the heart of the campaign after undergoing wrist surgery while Alex Caruso has also been in and out of the lineup, missing 22 games following his wrist procedure.
LaVine has dealt with a fractured thumb as well as back and knee issues this season, but the Bulls top players have mostly been healthy.
Nikola Vucevic has missed eight games this season, but seven of them came back in November. DeMar DeRozan missed three straight games from December 6 to 11. He has missed just two games since.
The bigger issue is that Vucevic has been off rhythm most nights while DeRozan’s hot stretch from mid-January through February masked a lot of glaring holes.
“We’re not as bad as we’ve played; we’re not,” Donovan told media after the game. “But you know what? We probably weren’t as good when we went on a nine-game winning streak. Probably the truth is somewhere in the middle.”
If only they had found that middle, they might have won some of those games. As Charania mentioned in that segment with Kaplan, at one point this team looked like a team to beat in the East for much of the season.
Playing Matchmaker
The Bulls are in the precarious position of being a target for top teams trying to have an easier path to the second round. The Boston Celtics sat Jayson Tatum and Al Horford in their loss to the Milwaukee Bucks that conceded the two-seed for the time being.
They were on the second night of a back-to-back after beating the Bulls the night before, so there was reason to rest both players anyway.
Still, what once looked like the Bulls best chance at moving onto the second round just waxed them on their home floor and could be looking to do the same for a multi-game series.
The only way out of a matchup with Boston is to win out while Toronto loses their last two since the Bulls own the tiebreaker over the Raptors.
Except their prize would be facing the Philadelphia 76ers who have beaten them all four times they have faced off this season while MVP candidate Joel Embiid is 11-0 against the Bulls in his career.
With how they are playing at the moment, the Bulls postseason stay figures to be a short one and risks putting a damper on an impressively quick organizational turnaround. As LaVine said, “I’m optimistic we can [figure it out] because, if I’m not, what are we doing this for?”
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