For the past few months, the Chicago Bulls have been one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference. Their rough start is not a reflection of the team that is out there competing right now. Coby White has been a revelation, DeMar DeRozan is still competing at a high level, and Ayo Dosunmu has been great as of late, too.
Unfortunately, they ran into a buzzsaw on Thursday night, taking on the league-leading Boston Celtics. Nikola Vucevic was killing the Celtics in the second quarter, but outside of that, Boston outplayed Chicago for the other three frames of the contest.
After the game, head coach Billy Donovan spoke about how deflating it was to face the Celtics, play solid defense, and still watch Boston make tough shots. (H/t Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune)
“I think that when you’re playing against a team like that, you’ve got to capitalize on some opportunities and we just didn’t capitalize on offense,” Donovan said. “When you’ve got a team that you can play really good defense and they still can make a bucket, I think that can become a little deflating. We’re challenging like crazy, I think the first half we challenged 90% of their shots. So you’re not going to do much better.”
Chicago looked like they were going to put up a fight through the first half, but by the time the fourth quarter came around, Boston had them in a chokehold.
