SETTING THE STANDARD
Recent acquisitions have boosted Bulls’ talent level, but Donovan needs to see it
There have been many times this season when Bulls coach Billy Donovan has used encouragement to pick up a roster that has looked mentally fragile at times.
With only 27 games left in the regular season, however, Donovan was past that. It was time to be a realist.
Just because the Bulls recently added five new faces and finally had them all in uniform Monday against the Warriors, the rest of the league isn’t going to hand them anything. Yes, the Bulls are better on paper, but it’s up to them to show that on the court. Donovan was loud and clear about that. ‘‘Adding talent doesn’t take away your problems, and if you think you’re adding talent so it becomes a lot easier, it doesn’t,’’ he said before the Warriors beat the Bulls — who lost their fourth consecutive game — 116-102 behind 32 points from Stephen Curry. ‘‘There are things we have to do that were no different than the things we had to do with the previous roster.
‘‘We’ve still got to run back in transition. If we play defense the way we did against San Antonio [on Saturday], we’re not going anywhere. If we run offense the way we ran offense [against the Spurs], we’re not going anywhere. Now, in fairness to them, it was the first time they were playing together, and we’ve got to work out some of those things.’’ And quickly.
After a practice day Sunday, the Bulls will be able to get another practice in Tuesday before visiting the Suns on Wednesday. They will get another practice in Thursday before closing the road trip Friday against the Jazz.
That’s as much practice time as the Bulls have seen since before the All-Star break. And they’ll need every bit of it.
Newly acquired center Nikola Vucevic still is getting a grasp of the terminology, forward Thad Young was inserted into the starting lineup in place of Lauri Markkanen against the Warriors and guard Coby White sat out a game for the first time in his career because of a sore neck.
Nonetheless, the message from Donovan remained constant.
‘‘We’re still going to have to figure out how we can be the best version of ourselves,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ve been around enough teams and seen enough basketball. There are teams that are really, really talented that don’t do anything. And there are a lot of teams . . .
‘‘I’ll give you an example. Last year [with the Thunder], we weren’t supposed to be any good. Chris Paul wasn’t tolerating that. He wasn’t walking in there and saying: ‘Oh, OK, we’re not supposed to be as good. We lost Paul George. We lost Russell [Westbrook].’ No, these guys are professionals. They’ve got a lot of pride. That was something that was powerful inside our locker room, [Paul’s] internal belief of, ‘When I’m on a team, we’re competing.’ ’’
The Bulls hope that Vucevic, who scored a team-high 21 points, has that kind of mentality and that it permeates through the roster.
Vucevic sent an early message by scoring nine points in the first quarter against the
Warriors, but Donovan wants all his players to play with that kind of swagger, especially with the Eastern Conference standings as tight as they are.
‘‘You want to do things at a real high standard,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘I kind of use the [term] ‘championship standard.’ You may not be a championship-level team and you may not ever play for a championship for whatever reason, but you want to do things at an incredibly high level that you’re going to need to do if you’re ever in that situation. So that’s not changed for me.’’