CHICAGO (670 The Score) – In a season that’s had its fair share of ugly performances by the Bulls, their outing Tuesday was perhaps the worst of them all.
Playing at home, the Bulls lost 105-95 to the NBA-worst Pistons, who were playing on the second night of a back-to-back. Detroit improved to 9-49 with the victory – and 2-1 against Chicago this season.
The driving force in the Bulls’ miserable evening was their abysmal 3-point shooting, as they went 2-of-29 from behind the arc. That matched the fewest 3-pointers made in an NBA game this season, and the Bulls’ 6.9% shooting from deep was the worst mark in the league in that time frame.
“This is an outlier game for us shooting the basketball, but it happens sometimes,” coach Billy Donovan said.
Bulls center Nikola Vucevic hit a 25-footer with 4:58 left in the second quarter for the team’s first 3-pointer of the night, and wing Dalen Terry hit a 3-pointer from the right corner with 11:27 left in the fourth quarter to give Chicago a one-point lead. That would be all the Bulls got from long range, and the Pistons controlled the final 11 minutes of the game while gradually pulling away.
Vucevic was 1-for-7 on 3-pointers, while guards Coby White, Alex Caruso and Ayo Dosunmu were each 0-for-5. Dosunmu had shot 53.6% from deep on high volume in his past 10 games.
“I wouldn’t say (we were) pressing,” Dosunmu said. “I was actually laughing. I was like laughing in my head, because when you look at it, what were we, like 2-for-30? That’s just crazy. What are the odds of that happening? But you take it. It’s the beauty of basketball. You know, some nights you go 6-for-6 or 7-for-7. Some nights, the ball doesn’t go in. That’s when you really have to focus in on those details. That’s when you have to grind it out, get to the free-throw line, get more stops than usual. Because at the end of the day, shots aren’t always going to fall. That’s just the way it goes. I think we got some great looks tonight, but like I said, it was kind of amusing to just to see the great looks that we got that didn’t fall.”
The Bulls forced 20 turnovers and committed only six themselves, and they attempted 23 more shots than the Pistons. Donovan had no criticism for the team’s effort – “Our guys really competed and played hard,” he said – but the long-range woes were too much to overcome as the Bulls dropped to 27-31.
“It wasn’t like we were down by 25 because of it, right?” Donovan said of the shooting woes. “I thought that the loose balls, the offensive rebounds, the hustle plays, the transition, we still had opportunities to overcome it, and I’ve always talked about the things that we can control. And I did think to a certain extent the frustration got in a little bit. I thought it was a very, very physical game on both sides, and when you’re not shooting the ball particularly well or things are not going your way when you’re shooting the ball, you have to manufacture other things to try to offset that. Your margin for error really, really shrinks.
“It was a struggle kind of game for both teams to score … You’ve got to find some different ways.”
Cody Westerlund is an editor for 670TheScore.com and covers the Bulls. Follow him on Twitter @CodyWesterlund .
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