Billy Donovan Looks Inward to Address Bulls' Need for Resilience

Billy Donovan looks inward on Bulls' need for resilience originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago

Losses happen. Blowout losses do too.

Non-competitive losses, especially at home, in which both coach and players cite energy and effort as contributing factors are when warning flags maybe aren’t planted but at least pulled out of the closet and unfurled.

And so it is that, for the second time in a 16-hour period, Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan and players fielded questions about what exactly that was on Sunday night at the United Center.

In the literal sense, it was a 23-point loss to a very good Denver Nuggets team. In the broader picture, the lack of energy and execution produced a philosophical discussion about where responsibility for those elements falls.

Unsurprisingly, Donovan viewed the answer as a group problem and group solution.

“We have a lot of really good people in that locker room who care and are committed,” Donovan said following Monday’s short practice but long media session at the Advocate Center. “How do we fight when things get difficult? How do we pull ourselves out of those situations? You have to choose energy. I think it’s hard to be a good team or a good player if you’re driven by feelings. You have to be driven by choices you make.”

This isn’t the first time — or even the first iteration of the Bulls — where Donovan has cited succumbing to in-game failure or adversity. That typically leads to matters snowballing and becoming worse, which is certainly what happened against a Nuggets team that ran away and hid with a comfortable, double-digit lead most of Sunday night.

That it’s happening with a team filled with veterans and with aspirations for a playoff run is troubling. Will it fall in the occasional blip category or might it speak to larger issues? That’s for the remaining 68 games to determine.

But given that it’s been a consistent theme of Donovan’s since he arrived, what responsibility does he take for that?

“As a coach, you’re always looking at different things you can do,” he said. “The one thing you look at is we’ve got to help them make good choices.

“When you go through adversity, you have to learn as you’re going through it how you pull yourself out of it. And it could be a variety of different things. It could be guys living in the previous play, a turnover, a missed shot, a bad call, the scoreboard, how the game is going. But you just have to say to yourself, ‘OK, I just need to win this next possession.’ That’s what you have to be able to do to not have things snowball.

“In a lot of ways, people look at adversity as being a really bad thing. In my view, I think it’s the best thing. In my profession of coaching, if I never coached a game that we lost, I don’t think I’d ever be stretched in ways that I’ve been stretched over 35 years. You go through things and have to figure them out.

“I think it’s the same thing in life. When you’re in a struggle and you get to the other side, you realize, ‘Wow, that really helped me.’ In the moment, you don’t feel like it’s helping you. Those are the things you try to talk to the guys about. And it’s not just one player. It’s our group. Energy is one way to get over it. You also have to communicate. You have to be able to have open dialogue.”

Donovan was asked if it’s the coach’s job to coach energy or if that should be a baseline standard to expect from professional athletes.

“I think my responsibility and my job is to help them in every area,” Donovan said.

But Donovan and his staff aren’t playing.

“I get that. But I also think that when they’re between the lines and they’re frustrated or it’s not going well, from the bench, whether it’s my dialogue or even the bench guys helping, you can help,” Donovan said. “There are days where I’m sure you’ve gone to work and say, ‘I just don’t have it today.’ It happens to all of us. We all have to be responsible to ourselves individually to pull ourselves out of it and also to help the group.

“What I’m not in control of is choices. But we can talk about the choices that we are making and are they positively or negatively impacting the group. Certainly a choice of not choosing energy is going to negatively impact the group. We all need to be in charge of our energy — coaching staff, starters, guys on the bench. We all should be trying to provide energy for one another to help each other.”

It’s pretty clear that Sunday’s loss stung the organization. Now it’s on everyone involved to respond. And the way Donovan chose to do that is by doing what he typically does — watch the film until late at night, come to practice the next day with a plan and use direct communication to convey it.

“I mentioned this about DeMar. The thing I admire and respect most about him is his consistency of who he is every single time he walks in the building. Just absolutely zero change. I think from a coaching standpoint, it’s your responsibility to the players to be able to do that as well,” Donovan said. “Now, once we get in film sessions and practice, I think there’s a standard that we have to play to. And we didn’t play to that standard (Sunday) night. And it’s not acceptable. And I think that the players need to understand that.

"And I’m throwing myself in; I’m not putting it all on the players. I’m responsible for trying to get the team prepared and ready to play and obviously I did not do a good enough job of that. And we didn’t respond well enough.”

In other words, this is a group effort, with shared blame and shared responsibility.

One thing Donovan won’t apologize for is keeping his commitment to a standard of play. Offensively, that means avoiding stagnation with ball and player movement, quick decisions and a commitment to sharing the ball and making the right play. Defensively, that means following the game plan and not missing assignments.

“I think it’s important I’m consistent every day so the players know who they’re getting each day as a person,” Donovan said. “I’m not sitting here saying there are days I don’t come in here and I’m not mad and upset and angry and there are other days I’m happy. But I’m not up and down when I come in here.

“But I also think it’s important I’m consistent with what the standard is and what we level we need to play to with our energy. And when it’s not there, I think it needs to be called out. It’s not one person that’s dragging us down. I always look at it as ‘we’ — coaching staff, players, all of us. We have to respond better in those moments than we did.”

Click here to follow the Bulls Talk Podcast.