MINNEAPOLIS – At last check every Bulls guard was accounted for after the game with Minnesota on Thursday.
Not one left behind.
It doesn’t mean that one might not be wearing Timberwolves blue by the Feb. 5 NBA trade deadline, especially with there still rumors circulating about the two teams in talks, but for now Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu and Tre Jones were each on the team flight.
Good news for Billy Donovan because as the coach reminded the media, he needed all of them.
The Bulls don’t have an elite talent like an Anthony Edwards. Heck, they don’t even have a Julius Randle. What they do have when everyone is healthy is a system that uses depth to try and shrink the talent gap. A system that worked against Minnesota, pulling out the 120-115 win.
“We’ve got to rely on each other,” Donovan said. “For our group the whole has to be greater than the individual parts. If we can move the ball on offense, space correctly, generate really good shots, make really good decisions, take care of the ball, can we control the backboard defensively? Can we stay true to who we are identity-wise and still stay afloat by playing to that identity and style?”
And maybe that’s just one of the issues with this roster. A lot of boxes have to be checked on a nightly basis rather than simply having that superstar that can be given the ball and simply go into takeover mode.
“The mentality has to be we all need each other,” Donovan continued. “We have to accept that if we have six-to-eight guys every night in double figures, if we can share the basketball, there is not one primary guy that teams are trying to stop.”
Evident by the fact that seven Bulls players finished in double figures, led by 22 points from White.
Not that it was easy. The latest test came with just over six minutes left against the Timberwolves and the Bulls (22-22) down a point in the back-and-forth affair.
A Rudy Gobert put-back with the foul. No check for the “control the backboard defensively” box.
An errant Nikola Vucevic mid-range. There went the “generate really good shots.”
A Josh Giddey turnover on an attempted pass to Vucevic. And go ahead and uncheck the “take care of the ball” box.
All the good things Donovan saw his group throughout the night all but disappearing in a two-minute period, giving the home team the five-point lead.
Good thing for the Bulls that this is not the same Minnesota team that went to the Western Conference Finals just last year. The roster is mostly the same, but the product has been off. A good reason they have been discussing adding a guard from the Bulls in the first place.
The Sun-Times reported back in early December that White was on the radar, but the fact that the free-agent-to-be was insistent on shopping in July was a stumbling block.
The other guard that caught their attention was Jones, and he helped his cause with a driving layup with 31.1 seconds left to give the Bulls the one-point lead. After two Jalen Smith free throws, Edwards had a chance to play hero but missed the corner three.
White iced the game from the line.
“We’re feeling good, we like where we’re at,” Giddey said of the third straight win. “We’re at .500 now. This was a really tough test for us. They were pretty whole right now, no real injuries, and a really great win for us on the road against a good team. It gives us momentum moving forward.”