CHICAGO (670 score) – In a season that has included its fair share of bad losses, the Bulls’ loss to the lowly, undermanned Wizards on Monday was arguably the worst of all.
Against the second-worst team in the NBA, the Bulls immediately fell behind 15-0 at home as they missed their first seven shots and also committed a turnover during that stretch. Coach Billy Donovan was disgusted enough by the start to call a timeout just 82 seconds into the game. Although the Bulls were able to claw their way back into the lead in the third quarter and enter the fourth quarter tied at 82, they faltered. throughout the streak in an eventual 107-105 loss.
What makes the loss even more horrendous is that the Wizards were missing four key players due to injury or illness, forward Kyle Kuzma, guard Tyus Jones, guard Bilal Coulibaly and forward Deni Avdija all being sidelined.
“It’s really disappointing to just call it what it is,” Donovan said.
Donovan felt his players were competitive but had far too many breakdowns and were too stagnant offensively.
“We don’t have the luxury of doing that,” Donovan said when asked if the Bulls have downplayed their level of competition lately. “We don’t have the luxury of doing that at all. So they were very 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 it all year: We just don’t have that kind of margin for error. We just don’t do it. 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 perfectly, but we’re going to have to do more in this first quarter than we did.
The Bulls’ main problem was their offense, as they shot just 41.4 percent overall and were 10 of 35 (28.6 percent) from 3-point range. Although the Wizards started three guards on Monday and the Bulls scored 68 points in the paint in a win when they beat that same team on March 16, Chicago didn’t involve center Nikola Vucevic 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 on March 16.
Donovan felt like the Bulls missed a lot of opportunities to find an open Vucevic at the post.
“We’ve found ourselves in situations where the ball is turned over, and we have guys, especially younger guys, who are just catching the ball, like they’re trying to lay it down, and they’re not reading defense,” Donovan said. “We missed him way too much tonight, especially in the first half. In the second half, I thought we did a much better job. Now when he got him, Vooch is a very unselfish player, so a lot of times when he put it in that pocket and near the lane, if he didn’t like what he had, he sprayed it and generated shots for the other guys. It’s going to happen. But we’ve missed him too many times.
Monday marked the Bulls’ third straight loss, the first time they suffered such a fate since late November, when they were 5-14 before starting to turn around their performance. The Bulls fell to 34-38 and remain ninth in the East, but they are only a game and a half ahead of the 10th-place Hawks. The ninth and tenth seeds will face off 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 have won the game. “Because all these matches count, they count. You want to play good basketball during this part of the season. In the circumstances we are going through, everything matters much more. It sucks to give up games like this, put ourselves in a hole like we did in the first quarter, dig ourselves out of the hole and lose.
Cody Westerlund is a staff writer for 670TheScore.com covering the Bulls. Follow him on Twitter @CodyWesterlund.
