The Bulls (17-20) snapped a two-game, post-All-Star break losing streak with a 118-95 win over the Toronto Raptors (17-22) Sunday night.
Here are 14 observations:
1. Availability report:
- The Raptors played without Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, OG Anunoby, Patrick McCaw and Malachi Flynn. All remain in the NBA's health and safety protocols.
- Garrett Temple missed his second game of the season with an ankle sprain Billy Donovan termed "moderate" pregame. Temple underwent an MRI, but is without a timetable to return.
2. The Bulls switched up their starting lineup, inserting Tomáš Satoranský and Thad Young in place of Coby White and Wendell Carter Jr. on the first line. That unit -- which marks the Bulls' eighth starting lineup of the season -- trailed 17-16 when Donovan made his first substitute (Otto Porter Jr. for Thad Young) seven minutes into the game, but on the whole, panned out well. They had played just three minutes together on the season before Sunday. Donovan said postgame he liked what he saw from the group, especially defensively, and that he'll continue to see how they look (but it's not set in stone for rest of season)
3. Wendell Carter Jr. responded impressively to the first reserve appearance of his young career. In 3:22 first-quarter minutes, he tallied 7 points, 3 rebounds and 1 block while affecting multiple other looks around the basket. Five of those points came in a two-possession spurt directly after he checked in, as he finished consecutive looks at the rim (one an and-one).
In eight first-half minutes, Carter scored 9 points on 4-for-5 shooting with 6 rebounds. The Raptors shot 2-for-8 in the paint in those minutes. With a third-quarter free throw, he entered double figures for the first time since Feb. 24 against the Minnesota Timberwolves, a five-game span.
It must be said: Though he maintained his offensive assertiveness in the second half, he shot 0-for-4 from the floor and picked up four fouls in 19 minutes.
But overall, Carter played aggressively at the rim -- to mixed results -- and was active and engaged on a play-by-play basis. His final line of 12 points and 11 rebounds marks his seventh double-double of the season. He played angry, but had flashes of joy too:
4. Coby White notched 13 points and 5 assists in 27 minutes, but struggled from behind the arc (2-for-8). He's now scored in double figures in eight of his last nine games.
5. The Bulls offense hummed in a way Donovan should be pleased with. At the half, eight Bulls had an assist, and the team had assisted on 19 of its 23 makes. By night's end: 35 of 44 (the second time they've cleared that vaunted 35 mark this season), and they placed nine of 10 players to receive minutes in double-figures. The ball and player movement was crisp, even as they endured an off shooting night (12-for-44 from 3-point range, many of those clean looks).
6. New starters Satoranský and Young led the way with 7 assists apiece. Patrick Williams chipped in 4 too.
7. Satoranský also stuffed the stat sheet with 10 points, 6 rebounds, 2 blocks and a steal in his 26 minutes. His activity level defensively was apparent.
8. Williams also scored a career-high 23 points on 14 shots, the most of either he'd contributed in quite a while. For the first time in his career, the rookie led the Bulls in scoring. His cutting was particularly outstanding, and the Bulls did well to find him.
9. Lauri Markkanen shot 2-for-9 from 3-point range, 4-for-12 from the field, and scored 13 points -- his first game since returning from injury that he didn't reach 20. He did at least attempt his first free throws since returning, and sparked a nice sequence with a block on Yuta Watanabe. But without his shot falling, his impact was limited, a theme Donovan has publicly encouraged Markkanen to correct of late.
10. Zach LaVine, meanwhile, had an uncharacteristically quiet night. He attempted just 10 shots and scored 15 points. Fortunately -- and perhaps encouragingly -- the Bulls didn't need a supernova performance from him. He was the last of the nine to crack double-figures. Donovan praised LaVine's floor-reading after the game in the face of what he termed a "triangle-and-two" defensive coverage by Toronto.
11. Norman Powell (32 points) and Kyle Lowry (20 points) led the charge for the zombified Raptors. Lowry was ejected with just under three minutes to play for incurring a second technical foul.
12. With Temple absent, Denzel Valentine logged 20 minutes and made two fourth-quarter 3s that made the Bulls' lead 18. Luke Kornet and Daniel Gafford registered DNPs.
13. The group on the floor for the closest thing to high-leverage minutes the fourth quarter had: White, LaVine, Williams, Markkanen and Young.
14. The Bulls carried a nine-point lead into halftime, which they extended to double-figures for most of the third. The Raptors, struggling for offense outside of Powell and Lowry, didn't dent that much and it ends a rather comfortable 23-point win. After squandering opportunities against shorthanded competition against the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat, it's a good win for the Bulls to get.
Next up: Home for the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday.
POSTGAME REPORT
Billy Donovan, on lineup change: "It has nothing to do with Coby and or Wendell. It really doesn’t. It has more to do with how that group was playing. And I think there were some lapses in some of the games... But I just didn’t like the way it looked coming back with a healthy team. And I feel like I wanted to try to find combinations of players playing together that could be effective."
Donovan's impressions of old starting unit: "The sign of a great player is somebody that makes everybody else around them better, and I don’t know if that group starting was really functioning like that. And it wasn’t at all to anybody’s fault...But I didn’t feel like the group was really helping each other. And I just figured we got to kind of shake it up and maybe look at some other things."
Donovan, on what Satoranský and Young brought: "We actually generated I thought some really good looks (early in the game), but we didn't make shots and were struggling to score. But we were not in one of those situations like we've been sometimes where all of a sudden they're scoring so easy, we're down 15 in the first quarter. That didn't happen and I thought the presence we had defensively to start the game was good... I thought Sato and Thad did a great job with their voice, their experience and their energy and the way they played."
Coby White, on reaction demotion: "At the end of the day you know all I want to do is win. Obviously we weren’t getting off to a good start with that unit, and we’re halfway through the season now and we still weren’t getting off to a good start. He had to make a change. As a coach, he has to make those tough decisions. I was all for it. I just want to win at the end of the day. It’s really no process for me. It’s already processed. I know what I’ve got to do. I’m not going to let that affect me in any type of way. I’m still going to go be me and play with that joy. Nothing can ever take my joy from the game."
Wendell Carter Jr., on reaction to demotion: "I see myself as a starter. I trust Billy a lot. I think I echo that a lot to him and let him know whenever he makes decisions, I'm always behind him. He's been a part of winning teams and he knows what it takes to win."
Carter, on idea that he "played angry": "Absolutely. It's kind of in a good way, it kind of lights a fire underneath you. Me and Coby talked about it and he's like, 'Man, we've got to come out and play as hard as we can when we get in, just show them we're capable of being starters on this team. We're capable of doing whatever is needed to win in the minutes that we play in.'"
Tomáš Satoranský, on Bulls' offensive performance: "That is the identity of coach Donovan he wants us to play with from the beginning of the season, everybody share the ball, to cut for each other with the pace and I think we have been doing that kind of consistently."
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