(670 The Score) After sitting at a season-worst 14 games under .500 on the morning of March 5, the Bulls have reeled off eight wins in their past 10 games while playing their best basketball of the season.
That has turned the conversation from where the Bulls will fall in the draft lottery standings to what their play-in matchup will be and whether they can advance to the playoffs. As it sits Wednesday morning, the Bulls (32-40) are ninth in the East. If they were to hold that spot, the Bulls would need to win a pair of play-in games in a span of a few days in mid-April to reach the playoffs, where they'd likely face the Cavaliers, who will soon clinch the top seed in the East, barring a major collapse down the stretch.
While earning the eighth seed isn’t a high bar to aim for, it’s a goal for a Bulls team that’s a patchwork mix of youngsters and role players who have struggled to find a fit in the NBA in recent years. And coach Billy Donovan believes there would be plenty to learn from reaching the play-in round and potentially the playoffs.
“There’s something really, really powerful in players that are younger, at some point in their career, they’ve got to impact winning,” Donovan said on the Mully & Haugh Show. “Even though where we’re at right now as a team, we’re in the play-in, but we’re still kind of at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. But the reality is we have a chance to play meaningful games, and that’s going to help (rookie) Matas (Buzelis). It’s not just like, ‘Hey, the regular season is over with, we’re not playing for anything, let’s just roll him out there for 35 minutes and just see what the guy can do.’ And now what happens is the focus gets taken off the result of winning. Now, I think the results of winning are a byproduct of the things you do for 48 minutes. You’ve got to understand every possession is important. Paying attention to scouting reports is important. The game plan discipline is important. So I think the one thing we’ve tried to do all season long is to make the point that all these games are important. And let’s see what this group can do if we’re fortunate after April 13 to be in a situation that we’re playing after the regular season is over with.
“Those things are meaningful. That really, really plays a major factor in player development, and it also puts these guys in situations that they haven’t been in before. And I think when you take the focus off of winning, you miss a big point of what’s going to happen in the future. At some point, these guys are going to be put in a situation of where now winning becomes important. You want to make a run. And if they don’t play in these meaningful games, I think it hurts their development. So what we’ve tried to do as a team, whatever the perception is of how the season should go, we in the locker room have kept it on, ‘Let’s see how good we can be as a team, let’s go all in to become as good as we can be.’ And then whenever the season is finished up, hopefully it’s something we can build upon going into the next season.”
You can watch Donovan’s full interview in the video player above.