CHICAGO (670 The Score) – In a season that has included its fair share of bad losses, the Bulls’ setback to the lowly, undermanned Wizards on Monday was arguably the worst of all of them.
Against the second-worst team in the NBA, the Bulls immediately fell behind 15-0 on their home floor as they missed their first seven shots and also committed a turnover in that stretch. Coach Billy Donovan was disgusted enough with the start that he called a timeout just 82 seconds into the game, and though the Bulls worked their way back to take the lead in the third quarter and enter the fourth quarter tied at 82-all, they faltered down the stretch in an eventual 107-105 loss.
Making the loss even more appalling was that the Wizards were missing four key players due to injury/illness, as forward Kyle Kuzma, guard Tyus Jones, guard Bilal Coulibaly and forward Deni Avdija were all sidelined.
“It’s really disappointing, just calling it like it is,” Donovan said.
Donovan felt his players competed but that they had way too many breakdowns and were too stagnant offensively.
“We don’t have the luxury to do that,” Donovan said when asked if the Bulls have played down to their level of competition lately. “We don’t have the luxury to do that at all. So they were really physical with us the last time we played here in Chicago. We shot the ball a lot better. Tonight, they were just as physical and we didn’t shoot the ball as well.
“I’ve said this all year long – we just don’t have that kind of room for error. We just don’t. That’s the reality of the situation we’re all in, and we have to understand that we’re going to have to – not play perfect, but we’re going to have to do more in that first quarter than what we did.”
The Bulls’ primary problem was their offense, as they shot just 41.4% overall and were 10-of-35 (28.6%) on 3-pointers. Despite the Wizards starting three guards Monday and the Bulls having scored 68 points in the paint in a win when they beat this same team on March 16, Chicago didn’t get center Nikola Vucevic involved much offensively. Vucevic had nine points on 3-of-5 shooting from the field while adding 16 rebounds.
The five field-goal attempts were Vucevic’s fewest of the season. He had 29 points back on March 16.
Donovan felt like the Bulls missed a lot of opportunities to find an open Vucevic in the post.
“We got into situations where, the ball is being thrown back out, and we’ve got some guys, particularly younger guys, that are just catching the ball, like trying to put the ball down, and they’re not reading the defense,” Donovan said. “We missed him way too much tonight, especially in the first half. The second half, I thought we did a much better job. Now, when he did get, Vooch is a very unselfish player, so he a lot of times when he did get it in that pocket and near the lane, if he didn’t like what he had, he sprayed it out and generated shots for other guys. That’s going to happen. But we missed him too many times.”
Monday marked the Bulls’ third straight loss, the first time they’d suffered such a fate since late November, when they sat at 5-14 before starting to turn their performance around. The Bulls dropped to 34-38 and remain ninth in the East, but they’re just 1.5 games clear of the 10th-place Hawks. The ninth and 10th seeds will play each other in the play-in tournament.
“It sucks,” said DeRozan, who had a game-high 27 points and missed a 45-foot half-court shot at the buzzer that would’ve won the game. “Because all these games matter, they count. You want to be playing good basketball toward this part of the season. In the circumstances we’re under, everything matters much more. It sucks to drop games like this, to put ourselves in a hole like we did in the first quarter, dig ourselves out of the hole and lose.”
Cody Westerlund is an editor for 670TheScore.com and covers the Bulls. Follow him on Twitter @CodyWesterlund .
Local Chicago, IL
Most Popular
Comments / 0