NEW ORLEANS — “For three quarters, we were very soft, no resistance,” center Nikola Vucevic said Saturday, visibly ticked off as he began a postgame interview with Chicago Sports Network’s K.C. Johnson after the Bulls’ one-point escape over the one-win Wizards at the United Center.
Adding to Vucevic’s frustration was teammate Jalen Smith trying to be funny in the background and crowding Vucevic as he was talking.
“Move, man,” Vucevic told him, not in a joking mood at all.
His message apparently was lost on the Bulls.
Visiting the two-win Pelicans on Monday night, they were at it again, playing without urgency and with spotty defense and physicality on their way to a 143-130 loss. This after almost blowing a 21-point lead in Portland, getting dog-walked by the Heat and having to overcome a 16-point deficit to beat the Wizards, all in the last week.
With the Bulls now 9-8, coach Billy Donovan stood behind everything Vucevic said.
“I have a good relationship with Vooch, and Vooch is a really smart player,” Donovan said. “He understands what winning looks like and the things you have to do on a regular basis.
“Listen, there’s a huge gap. Vooch has three kids. There’s guys on this team that are basically sophomores in college. I like guys that speak the truth and lean into what the truth was. Everything he said [Saturday] was nothing that he was off base with. I felt that way, too. You can win games in this league and be going in the wrong direction, and you can lose games and feel really good like, ‘OK, we’re starting to do things the right way — we just didn’t get the result we needed.’ That’s what Vooch’s point was, that that is not sustainable.”
None of of his teammates was going to argue that it was.
“He has every right to be upset,” second-year forward Matas Buzelis said of Vucevic, who was sidelined with a sore knee Monday. “We’ve got to be better for sure.”
It would help if that started from the opening tip. The Pelicans, averaging a league-low 108.6 points per game, jumped out to a 37-30 lead in the first quarter. That grew to 22 points in the second quarter as they outrebounded the Bulls 29-18 by halftime, including 9-2 on offensive rebounds.
The poor play left the Bulls in an all-too-familiar position: scratching to get out of the hole.
Two free throws by guard Coby White cut the deficit to eight with 1:38 left, but that was as threatening as the Bulls could get. They were outrebounded 55-33 on the night. Guard Ayo Dosunmu led them with 28 points.
“Coach is telling us a thousand times to box out,” Dosunmu said afterward. “On film, we’re going to the glass, not boxing out, just standing around. Coach is telling us to get into the ball. Coach is telling us what we have to do in order to play physical. And we’re doing that sometimes in the game but not doing it the full game. [Donovan is] being completely honest with us. He’s telling us if we don’t do this, we’re going to get these results.
“We keep saying the stove is hot, and we keep touching the stove.”