As the Bulls’ iconic introduction for their starting lineup played out at a fan-less United Center Wednesday night, Artūras Karnišovas pulled out his smart phone to record the moment.
Hopefully, the executive vice president stopped filming there.
Head coach Billy Donovan will take care of the gory duty of showing the game film to his players, who meekly succumbed to the Hawks in a joyless, late December regular-season opener. Bah humbug, indeed.
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It’s hard to know where to start with the general awfulness.
- The Hawks’ 42 first-quarter points marked the most allowed in the opening stanza of an opener in Bulls' franchise history and fell just two points shy of the most points scored in the opening period in NBA history.
- The Hawks’ 83 first-half points marked the second-most points allowed in the first half in Bulls’ franchise history and only the fourth time in NBA history a team broke 80 points in the first two quarters of its season.
- The Bulls trailed by as many as 40 points in the third quarter.
But those are just numbers. They don’t explain the lack of effort, the inability to stop straight-line drives, rotate to help or, in the most glaring example, run past half court on a possession in which the Hawks looked like they would score on a layup but instead scored on a putback.
“We’ve got to get physically tougher in terms of just on the ball and having some resistance in preventing the ball from getting downhill and to the rim and being able to close back out,” coach Billy Donovan said. “I thought things opened up too much.”
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Donovan even surprisingly played two-way player Adam Mokoka first-half minutes, a nod to the lack of defense and veterans like Thad Young, Tomáš Satoranský, Denzel Valentine and Garrett Temple not playing due to injury or lack of practice time as they returned from injury or quarantine.
“We’re not this fast, explosive foot-speed team. Part of the reason I played Adam (Mokoka) is because the guy can really guard with his feet and he can handle guys 1-on-1 at times,” Donovan said. “I thought we didn’t have really good built-in help where it needed to be and then our guys on the ball got beat too easily. Therefore, you look at the number of shots they took in the paint, it was drastically too high. That’s going to require the guys to make a lot of multiple efforts. I think we’re willing to do that. I just don’t think we did it particularly well today.”
The blowout loss underscored the simple fact that Karnišovas, Donovan and general manager Marc Eversley are new. The roster is not.
In fact, rookie Patrick Williams and Temple represent the only changes to a 22-win team that let its two best perimeter defenders go in Kris Dunn and Shaq Harrison.
Trae Young noticed. He scored 37 points on just 12 shots with seven assists in just 26 minutes. He repeatedly burned defenders with rip-through moves, getting to the line 14 times and making 12 foul shots.
Zach LaVine started on Young in what LaVine called “a collective decision” and, in guarding the other team’s best player, an assignment he said he welcomed. But Young pushed LaVine into such foul trouble that LaVine, who still managed 22 points, picked up his fifth early in the third quarter.
The Hawks shot 53.8 percent overall, including 40 percent from 3-point range. Time and again, the Bulls failed to locate shooters in transition.
And their half-court defense, which featured plenty of zone in the second half as Donovan tried to mix things up, wasn’t much better. The Hawks shot 25-for-37 in the paint and piled up 50 points there.
“We just weren’t in our shifts,” Wendell Carter Jr. said. “Trae Young is a hell of a player and he caught us a lot on the screen-and-rolls in terms of drawing fouls. Gotta learn to just know the scouting report on certain players, know that Trae Young is good at stopping as soon as he comes off that screen.
“Individually, when you can say you gave it your all, you gave it your all. But I feel like tonight, none of us gave it our all, including myself.”