After rough loss in Milwaukee, no shortage of problems to correct for Bulls
So far in preseason, the Bulls looked like a promising team with plenty of offensive firepower against New Orleans, then a disheveled group that couldn't play any defense in Wednesday's loss at Milwaukee.
Reality doesn't have to fall somewhere in between. These are games that mean almost nothing and the only meaningful goal is to be ready for the regular-season opener in Philadelphia on Oct. 18.
While getting blistered by the Bucks, it was obvious the Bulls still have a long way to go. Shots didn't fall, the defensive effort disappeared and the Bulls trailed by 30 before the end of the third quarter.
Back at the Advocate Center for practice on Thursday, coach Fred Hoiberg said the bus ride home only made him feel worse about the Bulls' performance in Fiserv Forum's NBA debut.
"Generally, you come out of the game and you think things aren't as good or bad as they seem. But last night was every bit as bad as we thought," Hoiberg said. "I thought their physicality took us out of anything that we wanted to accomplish.
"We had the wrong guys taking the ball out of bounds. We had no rhythm on the offensive end. Defense was awful all night. Lot to learn from. We'll have a good film session, a good hard practice, and hopefully make strides in the right direction today."
Milwaukee's cuts, screens and ball movement made the Bulls look silly on defense. That's not a great sign, since even though they beat the Pelicans on Sunday, the Bulls still gave up 116 points to a team that played its starters less than half the game.
Defense in general is one of the biggest questions facing the Bulls this season. Most of their starters are not considered great individual defenders. So letting the effort slip when shots don't fall would be a particularly bad habit.
"We've had a really good camp. You can't take that away," Hoiberg said. "You can't let one really bad experience take away from the progress we've made to this point. That being said, it shows you that we have so much to work on.
"When you get outrebounded by 21, that shows Milwaukee played harder than we did. When they get to the basket at will; when you don't stay in front and the help isn't there, that shows we're not locked in. When the adversity hit, we tried to do it by ourselves and go one-on-one."
The Bulls shot just 32.4 percent on the night. Through two games, they've hit 11 of 59 attempts from 3-point range, good for a measly 18.6 percent.
The NBA has been trending toward more 3-point baskets for several years, so the poor long-range shooting definitely counts as a wrong turn. Justin Holiday is the only Bulls' player who's made 2 shots from 3-point range in the two games combined, and he's 2-for-13 from behind the arc.
"You have to grind out possessions when the ball isn't going in the hoop," Hoiberg said. "We didn't do that. We split into individuals when times got tough. That's probably not the worst thing in the world to hit adversity at this time of year."
So the plan is to learn from the mistakes and keep practicing. There are still three more preseason games to try to get it right.
"I think we're all aware that we didn't do a great job of moving the ball around on offense, using the shot clock, getting those optimum shots," Robin Lopez said Thursday. "And it's kind of a chicken and the egg situation - once we find that rhythm, we'll start hitting those shots, but we've also got to make a conscious effort to get those opportunities for ourselves."
Twitter: @McGrawDHBulls