Never has a December game against the lowly Hornets meant more in recent years.
But here the Bulls are, free of games for four days this week before they visit Charlotte on Friday to try to find a pulse in their rapidly dying season.
Practice, film work, heart-to-heart talks — they’ve covered it all since the Warriors handed them a seventh straight loss Sunday at the United Center. After starting the season 6-1 and going 3-13 since, they need something, anything, quick.
“I’m not really sure, but for some reason right now for us, it’s not clicking at all,” veteran center Nikola Vucevic said. “We’re struggling on both ends and just not playing to the level we know we can. [This week] couldn’t come at a better time to hopefully use it to regroup, get some good work in and hopefully play better coming out of it.”
Facing the Hornets (7-17) may be just what the Bulls need. By early November, they had beaten the Pistons, Knicks, Magic and 76ers, so there was a point when they worked well together. Then they started breaking, eventually sinking so low that the opponent often doesn’t seem to matter. During this skid, they have lost to the Nets (6-17), the Pelicans (3-22) and the Pacers (6-18) twice, as well as the Hornets, who topped them by seven points a few weeks ago.
Same old Hornets? Not really. The toughest opponent the Bulls (9-14) are dealing with is themselves.
“It just feels like the game starts, we get down pretty quick, and then snowball effect — we can’t really find our way out of it,” Vucevic said. “At one point, our defense wasn’t great [but] our offense was working, and now it’s neither working, so we just have to figure it out. A lot of things, we talk about. A lot of things, we control and know we can do better. For whatever reason, we’re not doing it together on the floor.”
There are excuses they could point to: injuries, roster construction, lack of a true star, up to eight players in their walk years, even the schedule. But much of the NBA has similar issues and still plays with energy.
Guard Josh Giddey simplified things: Blame the players and the lack of execution.
“Game-plan-wise, the coaches, Billy [Donovan], whoever is doing the scouting, gives us great game plans,” Giddey said. “They give it to us, and it’s up to us to go out there and execute them. We just haven’t done that at a high-enough level to win games. We’ve got to figure out ways to counteract [what teams are doing]. Game-plan-wise, we get everything we need.
“We’ve shown we can do it early on, and it’s about doing it at a high-enough level night in and night out, whether we’ve got guys injured or not. Every team in the league deals with things like that, back-to-backs, whatever it is. We’ve just got to find a way to get back to it.”
Charlotte would be a good place to start.