Bulls’ stretch a reminder of slow-burn defense: ‘We keep touching the stove’

Coby White, weeks before his return, called physicality a choice. On the heels of a dreary 143-130 loss Monday night in New Orleans, Ayo Dosunmu asserted his Chicago Bulls, cognizant of their issues, aren’t always exercising common sense.

Sentiments that suggest agency. As if this Bulls roster completely wields the fate of its defense. Its shortcomings run deeper.

Building a remarkable NBA defense is a slow burn, an agreement that often comes with years of buy-in, habit building and team construction before noticeable turnaround. It almost certainly doesn’t happen as soon as decision-makers like Artūras Karnišovas vocalize the decision to trek toward a defensive identity.

Los Angeles Lakers coach JJ Redick, asked last week where the biggest challenges lie in playing defense today, pointed to young teams using modern concepts. The exhausting amount of actions to defend, coupled with a dizzying mix of cutting and pace.

Oklahoma City Thunder coach Mark Daigneault, asked the same question, noted that today’s defensive challenges begin with top-end personnel. Stars who force decisions, a trickle effect that eventually gives teams’ role players advantages. Denver Nuggets coach David Adelman pointed to the unfathomable mix of ballhandling and shooting across lineups, which is closer to standard than ever.

Chicago’s defensive soul searching, an identity in its infancy, burst into view this week.

In a narrow win over the Washington Wizards on Saturday, the Bulls forfeited 70 first-half points. On Monday, they allowed 74 first half-points, which eventually ballooned into a season-high 143 points for the New Orleans Pelicans.

It came with caveats. Down big men Nikola Vučević and Zach Collins, Patrick Williams started at center. To begin the second half, Bulls coach Billy Donovan started Jalen Smith in place of Matas Buzelis, a move meant to improve the disparity on the glass.

The Pelicans snagged 15 more offensive rebounds than the Bulls, tallying 30 second-chance points. Buzelis finished a minus-23, collecting four boards in 21 minutes, his fifth-fewest minutes in any game this year. New Orleans posted an inexplicable 78 points in the paint, outscoring the league’s third-best team in paint points by 34.

Since the beginning of November, following the Bulls’ improbable 5-0 start, they’ve produced a defensive rating of 120.5. They are the NBA’s 26th-ranked defense. A bloodbath of paint points, a breach of their perimeter and an attack on their identity as a defensive rebounding stronghold.

Monday evoked the dysfunctional marriage between Chicago’s roster construction and the efforts plaguing a defense designed to function cohesively.

Double-big lineups, cross matching. Bullet points on the list of ways teams act creatively as defenses.

Last week, Donovan admitted he’d almost be forced to peek at a double-big lineup once his center rotation returns to shape. Pitting 6-foot-4 wing Isaac Okoro, out Monday with a back injury, on bigger wings and forwards is hardly innovation; it’s a necessity. Desperation.

Okoro, frequently tabbed by Donovan as Chicago’s lone revered one-on-one defender, finds himself stretched at the limbs, asked to defend 7-footers like Lauri Markkanen one night and stout ballhandlers like Tyrese Maxey the next.

Vučević repeatedly proves his necessity to the Bulls’ offense, though his oft-sound defensive rebounding doesn’t typically mask his deficiencies as a rim protector. Buzelis, demanding of self-induced All-Defense expectations, is on a tight leash. Smith, a tweener by skill set, seems best suited beside another big.

Guards Dosunmu and Tre Jones, proven to be disruptive, don’t have the wingspans to wrap their arms around such a listless defense. White and Josh Giddey, fringe All-Stars with their offensive talent, won’t sell wolf tickets about their defensive reputations.

The list of ailments to the Bulls’ defense reads as long-winded as the ingredients on a box of Twinkies. As constructed, their defense is an assembly line, begging for absurd detail and synchronization, notably more than most other teams. These Bulls call for overcompensation with a roster ill-equipped for that end.

“The important thing is buy-in from everybody,” Giddey told The Athletic earlier this season. “When I was in OKC, obviously the personnel (was) different, which helped. But the buy-in from everybody, the will to do it … it can be grueling to do it for 82 games, to buy into a defensive identity.

“But you see, it pays off. (The Thunder) just won a championship. Best defense in the NBA. They forced a lot of turnovers; they were disruptive. It’s not gonna happen overnight. It has to be a possession-by-possession thing. We can’t pick and choose when we wanna do it, because the best teams in the league, they do it every night.”

Karnišovas built a team capable of exacting their new offensive system. Running and gunning, attempting to outpace teams. These Bulls clutched their new offensive identity with relative ease.

While early, why does it seem as though an offensive pivot is an easier turn?

“I think it’s easier to get excited for offense,” Giddey said. “I don’t know if that’s the reason it happens or not, but it’s easy for guys when you say let’s play in transition, let’s shoot 3s, dunk the ball, whatever.”

Added Adelman: “Getting back, walling up, playing defense, playing physically, winning the defensive rebound, caring about every possession in an 82-game season is a harder sell.”

The variables that leave at Chicago’s disposal are buy-in, physicality and effort. Difficult to measure in metrics, but felt.

“I think teams are putting (our physicality) on front street and making us confront it,” Donovan said Monday, “which I think is the best thing for our group.”

This group diagnosed symptoms of focus and game-plan execution to monotonous levels. The morning of their double-overtime loss Nov. 16 in Utah, among the details they’d rehearsed, the Bulls knew Jazz guard Isaiah Collier liked to go right. That night, he did so unbothered.

White facilitated conversation following the loss in Utah. Vučević appeared publicly perturbed by the nature of Chicago’s win over Washington on Saturday, vocalizing his discontent for the Bulls’ way of winning inside the locker room afterward. Dosunmu seems tired of talking.

“At the end of the day, it comes from within ourselves,” Dosunmu said Monday. “The coaching staff, they can (only) do so much. They can put up a great scout, present it well, motivate us, give us speeches, whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, we out there playing the game, so we have to do a better job collectively as a unit and try to get it fixed.”

The things the Bulls weaponized to bludgeon teams offensively in the first seven games — energy, buy-in — now threaten to make them bleed defensively. It’s birthed the margin of error Donovan dreads. A fine line which makes it possible to defeat the Eastern Conference’s leviathans or plummet versus lottery teams within weeks.

A galaxy far, far away from a sustainable defense.

In this reality, a defensive pulse begins with exercising free will.

“Coach (Donovan) is telling us a thousand times to box out, and on film, we’re going to the glass, not boxing out (and) standing around,” Dosunmu said. “Coach is telling us what we have to do in order to play physically, and we’re doing it sometimes in the game, but we’re not doing it (for) a full game. He’s been completely honest with us. He’s telling us, ‘If we don’t do this, we’re going to get these results.’

“I don’t know why we keep choosing the same results. … We keep saying the stove is hot, and we keep touching the stove.”

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