The Chicago Bulls have come out slow in the final week of the season, losing the first quarters of their last four games and struggling to dig themselves out of first-half deficits. As he prepares his players for their first taste of single elimination in the NBA play-in tournament, coach Billy Donovan knows that is no longer an option.
If the Bulls don’t strike first Wednesday against the Toronto Raptors, their season could come to a crashing halt.
“There’s no question that at times we’re taking the temperature to see how the game’s being played,” Donovan said. “And I do think that we’ve got to come out and be the aggressor. Sometimes what’s happening is the fight is getting dictated early. You want to be the one forcing other people to respond.”
The play-in tournament, which began in 2021, has the Nos. 7-10 seeds battling for the final two playoff spots in each conference, creating higher stakes through the win-or-go-home setup of the 9-versus-10 matchup.
Series are a different challenge, allowing teams to adapt while forcing them to counter adjustments from opponents. But the Bulls will have no time to adapt or absorb mistakes Wednesday.
With their play-in position set as the No. 10 seed, the Bulls’ focus for the final two games of the season was on rest and recalibration, with veterans Patrick Beverley, DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine sitting out Friday’s road game against the Dallas Mavericks.
Even without three key players, the Bulls rallied from a 13-point halftime deficit to defeat the Mavericks 115-112. Coby White had 24 points and 11 assists, Patrick Williams added 23 points and Nikola Vučević had 20 points and 10 rebounds.
But the veteran leadership knows the most important task over the next five days will be reviving the team’s early spark to prevent another uphill climb in the second half.
“Teams are just too good,” DeRozan said. “The room for error is too small. When you’re consistently doing that, we got to realize that there will be some games where we can pull that off, but too much just has to go right and go our way. We can’t live like that.”
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