NEW ORLEANS — The film isn’t lying to Billy Donovan.
Opposing teams have seen the lack of physicality on full display from this Bulls roster — especially on the defensive end — and are doing everything they can to expose it. And not even elite teams. We’re talking about conference basement dwellers like Washington and New Orleans.
There’s blood in the water the last week especially, and the sharks are circling.
“I think teams are putting that on front street and making us confront it, which I think is the best thing for our group quite honestly,” Donovan said after an embarrassing 13-point loss to the Pelicans on Monday.
What’s the counter punch at this point?
It’s not in the nature of executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas to make an aggressive swing for a player in a trade less than 20 games into the 2025-26 campaign, so it has to come from within the locker room. It can’t just fall on Isaac Okoro every night.
“For our team maybe outside Isaac Okoro, we don’t have one guy on the team right now where you can say, ‘This guy is a defensive stopper, this is what this guy hangs his hat on.’ We don’t have that,” Donovan said. “So we have to do it collectively. It’s not one guy’s fault, it’s all of us. It’s the coaches, it’s the players, we all got to do it.
“We just don’t have the type of guys that you’re going to put on a guy and he’s going to shut them down.”
Not yet, and that’s where guard Ayo Dosunmu comes in. At least he’s putting his hand up as a volunteer.
“Of course it starts with me also, just being one of the guys that is always on the ball,” Dosunmu said. “We understand what we’ve got to do but now it’s about buckling down. We’ve shown it plenty of times this season, but now it’s about doing it on a consistent basis.”
If Dosunmu can handle the opposing team’s best backcourt player and Okoro can try putting handcuffs on the best wing/frontcourt player there’s hope, but it’s still a big ask if the physicality doesn’t improve overall.
Not that anyone should be real surprised, however. Karnisovas watched this far too often last season and still brought back almost the exact same roster.
Lonzo Ball was swapped out for Okoro in a trade, but that was just moving one very good defender for another. Noa Essengue was drafted 12th overall, but at just 18 years old is built more like a contortionist than a forward who is going to bring the wood.
Everything else has remained status quo.
There’s a reason the Bulls are ranked 23rd in defensive efficiency rating and it’s not because the front office had the wherewithal to be proactive in addressing the issue.
No, this will fall on Donovan and his players.
“I just think that physically sometimes we get pushed out of the way, we get driven through,” Donovan said. “There are times I look at it and say, ‘OK, this matchup overwhelmed us physically.’ I’m OK with that if I see guys really putting their body between their man and the basket, really hitting and blocking out. I gotta see that, and I’m not seeing that.
“Size does at times cause us issues, I’m just being honest, but you’ve also got to find the guys that are willing to do it. I think that’s what Arturas was probably looking at with this group where, ‘OK, we’ve established an identity, we’re playing fast, but you know when our fastbreak got taken away we really didn’t have a lot of other ways to beat you.’ We’ve got to lean into the physicality part. That’s the step we’re trying to take and see who can take it with us.”
