The Chicago Bulls enter this season with a status to shake — that of a workforce that falls aside towards prime opponents.
The Bulls gained solely two of their 23 matchups towards the highest 4 groups within the Eastern and Western conferences final season. Both wins — towards the Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics — got here earlier than December, when the Bulls’ robust begin started to crumble due to accidents throughout the roster.
If the Bulls hope to disprove that criticism, they’ve an instantaneous alternative in Wednesday’s season opener — a street sport towards the Miami Heat, the No. 1 seed within the East towards whom the Bulls went 0-4 final season.
DeMar DeRozan eagerly welcomes the opening problem, viewing the matchup as an opportunity to set a tone within the bolstered East.
“I don’t want no cakewalk,” DeRozan mentioned after observe Monday. “I don’t want nothing easy. Playing against the best — it brings out the best in you.”
Coach Billy Donovan acknowledges the opener as an identification check for his workforce, which goals to duplicate the early success of final season by improved tempo and ball motion. After a 107-104 loss in November, the Bulls by no means got here inside single digits of the Heat once more and suffered a very brutal 26-point blowout in December.
The Bulls ranked as probably the greatest groups within the league in ball safety and protection throughout their first three conferences with the Heat. Yet Miami efficiently exploited its dimension benefit, bullying the Bulls at each place in one-on-one matchups.
Injuries typically created an asterisk subsequent to final season’s outcomes, however Donovan dismissed participant absences as an excuse for a way the Bulls fared towards prime groups, saying the workforce’s type of play towards the higher groups wasn’t “sustainable” even when the roster was totally wholesome.
“When you’re a really elite team, it means you’re good at both ends of the floor,” Donovan mentioned. “I do think that some of the things with our spacing, with our ball movement … a lot of (those losses) stemmed out of the fact that against some of those better teams — whether it be the top four teams in the East or the top four teams in the West — that was a challenge for us.”
The Bulls made minimal additions within the offseason, bringing in veteran expertise with Andre Drummond and Goran Dragić and drafting Dalen Terry. The coronary heart of this workforce stays the identical: DeRozan and Zach LaVine.
LaVine appeared unsteady within the preseason, displaying indicators of rust after spending many of the summer time in rehabilitation and restoration from arthroscopic knee surgical procedure. Although LaVine feels fully recovered from the damage that hampered him for many of the second half of final season, his incapacity to scrimmage five-on-five over the summer time might lead to a sluggish begin.
The Bulls will try to put in a quicker-paced offense with LaVine nonetheless out of rhythm and Lonzo Ball sidelined indefinitely. As one of the bodily defenses within the league, the Heat provide an instantaneous check of how properly that offense will match into the East this season.
“It’s going to be a season-long progress,” DeRozan mentioned. “You don’t figure out something in a two-week span. We’re going to have moments throughout the year where it’s going great, it’s going perfect, but nobody jumps out of the gates with something new and masters it right away. It’s definitely going to be a learning curve.”
The problem doesn’t finish in Miami. The Bulls play the Celtics on Monday on the United Center and the Philadelphia 76ers on Oct. 29, additionally at house, going through three of the highest East contenders of their first seven video games.
As the Bulls look to shake the notion of them this season, DeRozan feels his teammates have to welcome these early challenges — whereas additionally pushing apart the expectations set by final season’s outcomes.
“Last year was last year,” DeRozan mentioned. “Everybody is 0-0. … You discuss something — attempting to be a superb workforce or one of the best — you’ve acquired to compete towards it. You can’t run from it.
“We understand it’s definitely going to be a challenge, and that’s the beauty in it, to be honest. You’ve got to look at it from that standpoint.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com