It was a quick conversation and one Bulls coach Billy Donovan fully supported.
A lot was made of center Nikola Vucevic addressing his teammates about their struggles after the Bulls’ loss Wednesday to the undermanned Hawks, and Donovan revealed Friday that Vucevic approached him and asked whether he would mind if Vucevic made his feelings known.
‘‘I think it was ‘Vooch’ kind of came to me and said, ‘Listen, I want to talk.’ I’m always fine with that,’’ Donovan said before the Bulls’ 125-123 loss Friday to the Hornets. ‘‘I think they need to have those conversations. What ‘Vooch’ said after the game was dead on the money and extremely accurate.’’
It was the same message Donovan relayed to the media afterward: The Bulls didn’t put in enough effort on the boards and didn’t take care of the ball well enough. In other words, controllables the players chose not to control.
It wasn’t the first time this was addressed, either. Guard Coby White had a similar heart-to-heart with the team earlier in the season.
Donovan said he is all for having a group of leaders, rather than the players hearing it only from him or one other player.
‘‘Yeah, we’re all in there together, right?’’ Donovan said. ‘‘So we’ve got to be pulling the boat, leveling the boat in the same direction. That’s really what it comes down to. I don’t think all the messaging needs to come from me all the time. Sometimes coming from the players is a good thing, too.
‘‘I wouldn’t say ‘Vooch’ in any way was going after anybody or anything like that. It was more as a collective, things we need to get better at: the rebounding, turnovers, things that need to be corrected.’’
Vucevic pointed out those things several times in the meeting, then did so publicly.
‘‘We focus on the wrong things, and we have to understand that it’s the details that make a difference at this level,’’ he said.
Donovan had a couple of days to break down the film and see whether the Bulls’ effort was as bad as he and Vucevic first thought. The conclusion? It was.
‘‘The things I mentioned to you, we did not do a good job of [those], and the film showed that,’’ Donovan said.
Minute man
Forward Patrick Williams hasn’t been the only Bulls player who has seen his minutes dwindle a bit lately.
Swingman Dalen Terry averaged 15.2 minutes in December, but that number has dropped to 10.3 minutes in January after he played only six minutes each Tuesday and Wednesday against the Pelicans and Hawks.
Donovan’s explanation was straightforward.
‘‘Two things: He’s got to take care of the ball. I think the other thing, too, is the fouling,’’ Donovan said when he was asked what Terry had to do to get his minutes back. ‘‘The fouling has been a big thing. He’s got to do a good job in some of the switches when it’s guard-to-guard. He’s got to do a good job of containing the basketball. When there are drives on him, he’s got to learn and be better at showing his hands and not giving up three-point plays or free throws in those situations.”
Avoiding catastrophe
When backup forward Talen Horton-Tucker went down late in the loss to the Hawks with an injury to his left knee, the initial thought was that it was serious. Imaging, however, showed it was just a sprain.
‘‘They were a little more concerned going into the MRI of what it may show,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘We got lucky there.’’