Sounding off: Vucevic vents after Bulls drop third straight home game
If the Bulls were planning to take a step forward, this would have been a good week to do it. The schedule featured a season-high five-game home stand, with every opponent hovering around .500 or worse.
Instead of grabbing that opportunity, they fumbled it out of bounds. They dropped to 1-3 on the home stretch with a bewildering 110-94 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday.
This one was a head-scratcher because Atlanta played without its top three scorers. Trae Young (rib), Jalen Johnson (shoulder) and DeAndre Hunter (foot) were all sidelined.
Keaton Wallace, an undrafted rookie from UTSA, led the Hawks with 29 points. Former Bowling Green star Daeqwon Plowden, playing his first NBA game at age 26, went 5-for-6 from 3-point range to score 19 points, more than anyone from the Bulls.
After the game Coby White was asked what coach Billy Donovan had to say to the team. According to White, it wasn't Donovan but veteran center Nikola Vucevic who laid into the team for the recent poor performances.
“Vuc said it all postgame,” White said. “Stop doing the dumb stuff that we've been doing. Stop doing the stuff that we can control. Stop not boxing out, not rebounding, stop with the switch confusion, stop getting back-cut — stuff we've been dealing with all year. Vuc is 100% correct. He spoke up and he dug in us.”
Vucevic was calm when he explained to reporters why he decided to speak up.
“Moreso just because it was a buildup of things we haven't been doing well, things we can control that coaches keep pointing out to us and we just don't do them,” Vucevic said. “We focus on the wrong things. We have to understand it's the details that make a difference at this level.
“I felt it was a good moment to say it because we needed to understand why we lost.”
The Bulls had their worst 3-point shooting night of the season, hitting just 6 of 27 attempts. Their previous low for 3-pointers made in a game was 10. White led the Bulls with 16 points, going 1-for-7 from long range, while Zach LaVine had a quiet night with 15 points.
In previous losses to Sacramento and New Orleans, the Bulls had a lapse midway through the second half that let the game get away. They never led against the Hawks and were never really competitive after a 13-0 run late in the second quarter.
“We've got to stay together,” White said. “That was one of the messages as a team we talked about after Vuc spoke. This right here can define the season. The games are going to keep coming. It's on us to figure it out. It's going to define the true character of this room. Are we going to let it spiral and keep going downhill or are we going to take a stand and come out the next game ready to compete?
“Families go through stuff. Right now we're going through a storm. We've got to figure out how to fight through it and figure out what's blocking us from being great and get through that.”
The NBA trade deadline arrives in three weeks on Feb. 6, and as usual, the players with the most trade value are the ones the Bulls would prefer to keep, like White and rookie Matas Buzelis. There's no real obvious path for this team to take.
Donovan said after a game he's still a believer in this group of players.
“I really like this team,” he said. “I don't know what will happen, but I really like this group. They've done a 180 in terms of how we've tried to play stylistically. I think for the most part this group's been pretty good.”