Before the Bulls’ game Tuesday against the Pistons, someone asked coach Billy Donovan a simple question.
Donovan was asked what he wanted to see from his team in what’s left of the regular season.
The response was thought-out and somewhat wordy, but nowhere in it was, ‘‘Go ahead and play soft, embarrassing basketball.’’
No, the players came up with that one all on their own.
In the first of back-to-back games against the Pistons at the United Center, the Bulls hit rock bottom in a 132-92 blowout loss.
‘‘I’m not going to sit up here and make excuses: ‘It was one game of 82,’ or, ‘It was one of those nights.’ No,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘We have to own it all the way through. Myself, the players, the coaches, everybody. We’re all in it. We all put ourselves in that situation, and you know what? The only ones that are getting us out of it is us. We put ourselves in that situation, we’ve gotta drag ourselves out of it.’’
Hopefully with less booing from the home crowd. The players were very aware of the fans letting them know just how bad their performance was.
‘‘You heard, we heard, everyone heard it,’’ guard Josh Giddey said. ‘‘Obviously, we hate that. Every time we come out on this floor, these fans show up, show out, and we’ve got to be better. It’s our
responsibility as players to give them something to cheer for. [On Tuesday], we probably deserved [the boos]. We didn’t give them anything to cheer for.’’
That was obvious very early on.
It wasn’t merely a slow start for the Bulls in the first half; it was a disaster. And each possession seemed to get worse.
It got so bad in the second quarter that there was one possession on which center Nikola Vucevic finally stopped the bleeding with a turnaround hook shot and ran up the court with his arms up in celebration, mocking himself and how poorly he and his teammates were playing.
The numbers were even worse than what happened on the court.
The Bulls trailed 71-29 heading into the locker room, setting a season low for points in the first half. The 42-point deficit tied the franchise record for the largest at halftime, going back to a loss to the Warriors in 2018.
The Bulls finished the first half shooting 12-for-52 (23%) from the field and an unfathomable 1-for-23 (4.3%) from three-point range.
Ayo Dosunmu led them in scoring with eight points in the half.
The Bulls finished the game 10-for-47 (21.3%) from three, but most of that came in garbage time with the game long decided.
As ugly as things have been lately, the Bulls (22-32) still hold the final play-in spot in the Eastern Conference. Donovan was hoping that there would be some sort of pride in that, knowing there were still meaningful games left on the schedule.
‘‘You look at the younger guys, it would be their growth and development in terms of not only receiving minutes but being responsible in their minutes where they’re developing a mentality of things that they’ve got to do to impact winning,’’ Donovan said.
‘‘At this point in time, we’re still in a play-in situation, right? So you want to have games that are meaningful. Because I think if there is no meaningfulness in the games, then it’s like, ‘Hey, whatever.’ The urgency part is so important.’’
On Tuesday, it absolutely wasn’t. Not even close.