CHICAGO -- Mix 'n' match quiz question: One of the following NBA head coaches spent a chunk of his summer trekking to an exotic destination with college and high school buddies. Another one stayed home to study video, work the phones and drop by the gym whenever he felt the itch.

Now connect the activity to these choices: San Antonio's Gregg Popovich and Chicago's Vinny Del Negro.

Did you guess right? You didn't if you assumed that Popovich, the unsmiling veteran with, for public consumption anyway, an all-business, no-nonsense demeanor on the sideline was the grinder this entire offseason. He jetted off to the Amazon, experiencing first-hand the lush rain forests and big, honkin' snakes and insects for a once-in-a-lifetime (and he does mean once) adventure.

Del Negro, younger and, in terms of coaching chops, more of a lightweight, was the fellow who went all Woodenesque, flooding his summer with Xs and Os the way teenage girls spray them on Valentine's cards.

"Pop's been doing it a long time,'' said Del Negro, who played for Popovich from 1996-98, the last two of his six seasons as a Spurs guard. "He's been through it and he's been very helpful for me -- I bounced some things off him during the season, after the season ... He goes to the Amazon and does his trips, but he's earned that time off. I'm not ready for the Amazon yet. I've got a lot more work to do before I get to the Amazon.''

Said Popovich before the two squared off in the Bulls' season opener last week in Chicago: "What Vinny does, he takes it seriously and he works his [butt] off. In the summertime, he didn't just go on vacation. He talked to a lot of us, wanting to discuss basketball and how we do things here and there, why we do this and why we do that. All of us continue to do that during the summer, but Vinny has no problem with learning. No matter where the info comes from, and that's a hell of a good thing.''

VDN II, as NBA fans in Chicago might shorthand the 2009-10 season, hasn't started out all that differently from VDN I. Less than a week into the games that count, the Bulls have a victory on Opening Night, same as then (they beat San Antonio 92-85 Thursday). They have a road loss at Boston in Game 2, same as then. And they have an early slip under .500 that has the critics out again. A year ago, Chicago lost three of its first five en route to an 18-27 start that even had team chairman Jerry Reinsdorf voicing his non-support of the rookie head coach on a morning radio talk show. Now, after a 95-87 loss Sunday at Miami in which they got outscored 12-4 in the final three minutes, the Bulls are 1-2 and facing doubts from outside, if not within.

One play that got singled out later came with 47.4 seconds left, out of a timeout. Bulls guard Derrick Rose passed to Kirk Hinrich but Hinrich was off-balance, unable to handle the ball. So he passed right back to Rose, who already had stepped out of bounds. It was Miami's defense and it was player error, sure, but it also apparently was the same play Chicago had run out of the previous timeout, so there was a coaching decision involved as well.

If that has the airwaves crackling again with questions about Del Negro's fitness for his position, well, let's just say he is more suited to handle the barbs and second-guesses now. First, he's a better coach today than he was a year ago, when he'd been hired with no coaching experience at any level rather than candidates such as Dwane Casey and Chuck Person, possibilities such as Doug Collins and Tom Thibodeau and the guy who got away, Mike D'Antoni.

And second, Del Negro surely still has callouses from the treatment he endured last season. He had run-ins with players that led to fines and factions. His tactics on the court (for instance, judicious use of timeouts) often drew fire. He was patronized by perceptions that senior assistant coaches Del Harris and Bernie Bickerstaff were everything from Del Negro's training wheels to his puppetmasters. Then there was the wind in which Reinsdorf seemed to let him twist after Chicago had fallen to 19-27 in late January.

The Bulls' boss used a tough adjective ("embarrassing'') and a noun ("disaster'') in describing 2008-09 to that point, and implied he would give the team an "F.'' Asked about the coaching, Reinsdorf said: "All I know is what we have right now is not good and we have to get better. They are playing hard in the last half-dozen or so games. We had some games where they were mailing it in and I felt like standing up and booing with everybody else. They're not mailing it in anymore.''

Things got better. The Bulls went 22-14 the rest of the way, including a 12-4 rush at the end to reach the postseason. Then-general manager John Paxson acquired scoring wing John Salmons and center Brad Miller in February. No one has forgotten yet the seven-game thriller against Boston in the playoffs' first round.

Del Negro didn't get much credit for that ride but at least he didn't hear as much blame. He had the team focused on defense, effort, rebounding and harmony in October, and got good results on all fronts. That always gets dicier in November: The Bulls looked soft in allowing Boston to shoot 58 percent and purr to 33 assists in their 118-90 loss, then followed up with Sunday's misfire in Miami.

Still, Rose missed nearly the entire preseason with a sore ankle tendon and hasn't taken the big stride forward most expect from his Rookie of the Year level. Ben Gordon's 20 points per game are gone, as is Harris, and Bulls management has strived for salary-cap flexibility in what is widely considered a "transition'' year before 2010 free agency anyway.

Most coaches have bullseyes on their backs at some point. The ones in Chicago lately have had it in uppercase. But Del Negro won't struggle for lack of trying.

"I don't want to say that it's easier but there's more of a comfort factor,'' Del Negro said of his second stint. "I know the guys. I know the work we've put in. We've been together longer. So all those things help. But there still are always quick decisions, things that have to be done and you want to be as prepared as possible to put your team in areas where they can be successful.''

Do that often enough -- more like the second half of the Bulls' 2008-09 season than the first -- and a coach gets to call it his team. Do it less, and it invariably becomes someone else's team. Del Negro feels more "we'' than ever in Chicago.

Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA for 25 years. You can e-mail him here.

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