Chicago Bulls first-year head coach Billy Donovan had a good message to send to his team following the Dec. 26 loss to the Pacers.
A difficult stretch of the home schedule for the Chicago Bulls has arrived to round out this holiday weekend. On Dec. 26, the Bulls had to take on a quality divisional foe at home at the United Center in the Indiana Pacers and the star pairing of guard Victor Oladipo and big man Domantas Sabonis. The Bulls weren’t able to get it done at home in a tough 125-106 loss to the Pacers.
And in the back end of this back-to-back set of games (also to round out a three game home stretch to start off the regular season slate) the Bulls take on the Golden State Warriors and superstar point guard Stephen Curry on Dec. 27. The Bulls and Warriors enter this game with a combined record of 0-4.
Granted the Warriors had a much more challenging stretch of games to open up their regular season. The Warriors and head coach Steve Kerr potentially faced the two top teams in the Eastern Conference to open up their regular season slate this year against the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks.
First-year Bulls head coach Billy Donovan can’t be thrilled with the way that his team showed out in their first two games of the season. They fell short in their first two games of the season, against the Pacers and Atlanta Hawks, by a combined margin of 39 points.
Donovan spoke on his team’s struggles and how they can grow together following the Dec. 26 loss to the Pacers. According to a piece from K.C. Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago, Donovan tried to hit on the point of growing as a team and figuring out how to best play together while the roster didn’t change all that much since last season.
Here’s more on what Donovan had to say on this matter, in the piece from Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago.
"“They don’t handle it. They don’t at all. They internalize their mistakes. They internalize what’s going on. And I’ve said this before: They’ve got to do this together. They’ve got to fight together,” Donovan bluntly said. “We’re probably on most nights probably not going to be the most athletic or the most talented or the most experienced. But we can be a team – we have control over it – that can have a lot more fight in ourselves.”"
Since the Bulls rotation that they started out the season with just did not get the job done in the first two games, there could be changes on the way. Donovan could have warranted frustration with how the season started out, but patience must win the day with this rebuild in its fourth year.
Change will not be immediate for this Bulls team, so they must do the best they can for the time being with the resources at hand. Bulls fans must look at this in the same light to keep their sanity since this is an already weird year in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, and there was a lot of change within the organization since spring.
Donovan and the Bulls tip off their third game of the regular season slate, against Kerr and the Warriors at home at the United Center on Dec. 27, at 7 p.m. CT. The last game the Warriors played in resulted in a loss by more than 30 points at the hands of the Bucks on Christmas Day.