{"id":383932,"date":"2025-11-16T22:56:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T22:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/383932\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T22:56:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T22:56:11","slug":"chicago-bulls-embrace-a-pragmatic-identity-after-skid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/383932\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Bulls embrace a pragmatic identity after skid"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chicago Bulls aren\u2019t running from reality.<\/p>\n

After opening the season on a winning streak and a losing streak, the Bulls know there\u2019s no margin for error.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t criticism. It\u2019s a simple pragmatism, something that coach Billy Donovan delivered with flat certainty after the Bulls crumbled to the Detroit Pistons<\/a> in their fourth consecutive loss Wednesday: \u201cWe\u2019re not talented enough not to play desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t new language. Coaches and players alike have adopted this blunt approach to discussing their roster \u2014 and the requirements that come with it. The Bulls don\u2019t have an All-Star<\/a>. This is the first full season of a reconstruction project around young talent. And that means this roster doesn\u2019t have any wiggle room. There isn\u2019t a star waiting in the wings to bail this team out of a bad game. The price of a win is steeper.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not the most talented team out there,\u201d forward Isaac Okoro<\/a> said. \u201cWe got to beat teams with our hustle, our grit, being relentless for the whole 48 minutes of the game, with our toughness.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what exactly does it mean for a team to embrace the limitations of its construction?<\/p>\n

The Bulls found clarity in building an identity around the balanced responsibilities of their roster. That identity \u2014 scramble on defense, win the boards, beat opponents down the court, hunt the extra pass \u2014 weathered the injuries of Coby White and Josh Giddey. The Bulls generate more than two-thirds of their points through assisted shots. Six different players average 14 or more points per game.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look around the NBA and in the past, teams that people don\u2019t look at as talented \u2014 they still win games by just doing the dirty work,\u201d Okoro said. \u201cNo one on our team is going to come in and score 30, 40 points every single night. As a collective, we all have to buy in as a team. Everyone has to come and contribute in whatever their role is. Everyone knows their role on the team. They\u2019ve got to be great in that role.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Bulls are still struggling to translate clarity into results. The work starts at the beginning. While the Bulls have set a decently competitive pace on offense this season \u2014 ranking 11th overall in scoring with 118.6 points per game \u2014 this relative offensive success has been diminished by slow starts.<\/p>\n

The Bulls rank in the bottom third of the NBA in first-quarter scoring, averaging only 28.7 points in the first 12 minutes of their games. That number dropped to 25.7 first-quarter points over the last six games, a span in which the Bulls dropped five losses \u2014 and their sole win in that span required a massive comeback effort<\/a> after the Bulls fell into a 24-point deficit against the Philadelphia 76ers.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Bulls gave up an average of 31.5 points to their opponents in the first quarter. Chicago\u2019s first-quarter scoring and opponent scoring both rank eighth-worst in the NBA, creating a negative margin of 5.8 points.<\/p>\n

Some teams have the luxury of fighting from behind. The Bulls know they aren\u2019t one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like we\u2019re just casually walking into games where we shouldn\u2019t be doing that,\u201d Okoro said. \u201cFrom the start of the season, our identity is being the most conditioned team from the start of the game, so by the fourth quarter, their legs are tired. We have to bring the energy from the start of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with the sluggishness of these recent starts, the Bulls still feel they\u2019ve struck on something uniquely effective in their style of play this season. Only one of Chicago\u2019s first five losses \u2014 a blowout to the undermanned Detroit Pistons \u2014 disappointed Donovan. The other losses encapsulated the difficulty of slowing the most talented rosters in the league, an inevitability the coach had already accepted before the season began.<\/p>\n

The Bulls are closer than expected to their ideal of outplaying their talent ceiling. And that\u2019s a meaningful step for this team \u2014 especially with Giddey and White returning to their roles this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the idea that collectively doing it together, helping each other on both ends, maybe you can offset a team that\u2019s got incredible talent,\u201d Donovan said. \u201cI really, really believe that if guys play together like that, you can play with anybody. This is a group of guys that understand and value the importance of having to rely on each other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago Bulls aren\u2019t running from reality. After opening the season on a winning streak and a losing…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":383933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[23604,960,3127,5386,1818,20510,6326],"class_list":{"0":"post-383932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-billy-donovan","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-bulls","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-illinois","13":"tag-isaac-okoro","14":"tag-nba-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115561849534101951","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}