This was supposed to be the soft part of the schedule for the Bulls.
Coming out of the regular-season gate against the Pistons, Knicks and Cavaliers, coach Billy Donovan’s crew was looking forward to mid-November into early December.
Time to feast.
They’ve done nothing of the kind.
So call the 123-116 road loss to the lowly Hornets on Friday just the latest slap of embarrassment to the face of the suddenly fading Bulls (9-9).
Eliminated from advancing out of Group C for the in-season NBA Cup tournament several nights ago, both teams were playing for pride rather than reaching the knockout round.
The Bulls, however, were playing for even more than that. They were trying to separate themselves from a growing reputation of being soft in the physicality department.
Donovan knows opposing teams have seen that on film and have taken advanage of it the last two weeks, and he knew it wasn’t about to come to a halt.
Adding to the defensive issues and the lack of physicality was again being without Isaac Okoro, who has been sidelined with a back issue. That made the task even more difficult.
“With Isaac being out, and there’s times with Isaac that we can put him on different players, and he’s an outstanding defender, and he’s guarded some of the best players in this league throughout his career,” Donovan said. “But with him being out, we don’t have the luxury to just rely on one guy stopping one guy.”
Those concerns became reality for Donovan as the Hornets scored 32 in the first quarter and followed that up with a 35-point second quarter.
That’s not exactly what’s expected from the Hornets, who average 115.3 points (20th in the NBA), but the same could be said for the Pelicans on Monday. Their offense was near the bottom of the league in scoring and still scored 143 on the Bulls.
Thank goodness for Coby White.
White’s 14-point third quarter put his team back in charge heading into the fourth, and that’s when the Bulls again slipped into some bad habits. That meant getting outrebounded in the fourth quarter, including allowing five offensive rebounds.
“It’s a mentality,” Donovan said of the defense and physicality. “When you get into the season, you’re always fighting human nature. Human nature tells you you’re sore or you’re tired. There are a lot of physical things you have to do that are challenging. I think we’ve been pretty clear on those things. There’s a level of consistency that has to be a lot better in those areas. They’ve just got to do it, and they’ve got to do it when they don’t feel good.
“When you get into 20, 30 games, most of these guys don’t feel good. I don’t know any guy that’s 100%. It’s battling human nature all the time. How you do with internal talk, how you’re getting prepared, focusing on the things that you have control over. A lot of it is the controllable stuff.”
The pressing question is, so now what will the Bulls do with this?
The schedule breather continues through this week, facing the two-win Pacers twice and hosting the Nets on Wednesday, with the only bump in the road being a Monday showdown in Orlando.
Then business picks up again in the middle of the month.
The Bulls will play back-to-back games with Cleveland, back-to-back games with Atlanta, then end December on a six-game homestand against Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Minnesota and Orlando.
