(670 The Score) The Bulls had quite the roller coaster regular season.
They started 17-8 and boasted efficiency numbers early on that suggested they were in the NBA’s second tier of teams, not too far behind the elite. Soon after, they embarked on a nine-game winning streak that lifted them to 26-10. Through injuries and COVID-19 issues, the Bulls were tied for first place in the Eastern Conference at 38-21 when the All-Star break arrived in mid-February.
From there, the Bulls took a precipitous dive, going 8-15 after the break and having one of the NBA’s worst offenses in that stretch. They finished 46-36, a 15-win uptick from the 72-game regular season a year prior, and earned the No. 6 seed and a matchup against the defending champion Bucks in the first round of the NBA playoffs.
So what are we to make of all that? Was it a success for the Bulls simply to reach the playoffs for the first time in five years? Or should success be defined in another way? Bulls coach Billy Donovan joined the Mully & Haugh Show on Friday morning to address that topic – and plenty more.
“I’m really, really proud of our guys for a number of reasons,” Donovan said. “One is, I think, when the season started, there was just a lot of question marks around our team. How would DeMar (DeRozan) fit in? The team being obviously relatively new, how would all this jell and mesh? The team was basically turned over this past summer. Was there enough time for the group to get acclimated? How long would that take? I give our guys a lot of credit from the standpoint that they all cut their summers short. They came into Chicago right after Labor Day (several weeks before training camp opened).
And they built really good relationships on the court and really, really good relationships off the court. And I think that expedited some of the process. I think when you look at Milwaukee, you look at Boston, you look at a lot of teams in the East, they’ve been together for a while. So I think the feeling by all of us was how do we maybe speed up that process? Come in a month early, let these guys play pickup basketball before training camp started.
“And then obviously, we got off to a really good start. And then we were probably one of the first teams to get hit with COVID. You sit there and say, ‘OK, maybe we’ll get through this sooner than later and we’ll get our whole group back.’ And then after the COVID, we really got hit with an enormous amount of injuries. DeMar, before the All-Star break, was on an incredible tear, playing really, really well. You’re disappointed with Patrick Williams going out for five months. Zach (LaVine) was dealing with a ligament tear in his thumb to start with and then obviously dealing with his knee issues. And then really our two points in Alex Caruso and Lonzo Ball, Lonzo being out really since the beginning of January and then Caruso being in and out. So we had different guys step up at different times. But after we got out of the All-Star break and we weren’t completely whole, we clearly had the toughest schedule remaining in the NBA. We played against a lot of really good teams. I do think playing against those teams, you find out more about yourself and what you have to do.
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“It was just a year where there was a lot of different things we had to deal with, but I was really proud of the way the guys handled all of it. Now the success part of it is the result of winning and losing. Yeah, I think we’re all disappointed after the All-Star break with what happened.
“If you would’ve told me before the year started (that we’d have all those injuries) … I think everybody would be scratching their heads saying, ‘Geez, I don’t even what kind of year we would have.’ So there was just so much on our plate, but our guys handled it really, really professionally and it’s given a lot of younger guys the experience to play.”
Game 1 between the Bulls and Bucks will be at 5:30 p.m. Sunday at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. The game can be heard on 670 The Score, at 670thescore.com/listen and on the Audacy app.