DETROIT — There was fight from the Bulls.
No, really, with just over a minute left in the first quarter Monday night at Little Caesers Arena, Pistons center Isaiah Stewart and Bulls reserve guard Dalen Terry got tangled up on a rebound, then got tangled up with each other. Terry tried to go after the 6-8, 250-pounder before teammate Jalen Smith grabbed him and calmed him down.
It was a much different attitude than the Bulls exhibited a night earlier, when they allowed the Rockets to waltz into the United Center and give them a humiliating beatdown.
On Monday, that attitude, combined with more physicality, better communication on defense and diving for loose balls, added up to a 122-112 win. Center Nikola Vucevic led the Bulls (6-9) with a game-high 29 points and 12 rebounds, including a ridiculous 6-for-8 from three-point range.
Such an effort against the Pistons (7-9) wasn’t a huge surprise, with Vucevic and many of the Bulls still simmering after their embarrassing performance Sunday.
“It was a little bit of that Houston game, but also me being the oldest guy on the team,” Vucevic said. “I spoke to [assistant coach] Wes [Unseld Jr.] before the game, asking him anything defensively I can do to help the team — something I’m not doing well — and he just told me whatever I do, be aggressive with it. I got it going early, especially with the threes. That helped a lot.”
Guard Zach LaVine hit six of his seven three-pointers in the fourth quarter to quash any ideas of a Pistons comeback.
Coach Billy Donovan appreciated all of it, calling it a team effort. But he was most proud of the new aggressiveness, even if Terry took it over the line.
“Just grit, toughness, fight back,” Donovan said. “At some point, you have to make a stand physically, and we tried to make a stand physically. That was certainly not what we did at all [Sunday] night.”