The biggest story Friday in the Bulls 119-111 loss to the defending champion Golden State Warriors was Bulls starters Ayo Dosunmu, who actually is a replacement for injured Lonzo Ball, and No. 4 overall draft pick Patrick Williams being removed from the starting lineup.
The smaller story was that the player who most carried the Warriors to the victory, along with a crucial late three-pointer from non-shooter Draymond Green, was Warriors reserve Jordan Poole with 30 points and seven of 13 threes.
And, after all, some of the greatest players in NBA history spent large portions of their careers coming off the bench, from the Celtics essentially inventing the role with Frank Ramsey and then John Havlicek and Kevin McHale, to Toni Kukoč, Manu Ginobili and James Harden.
Perhaps it’s not the plan the Bulls have had for their prized draft pick from 2020, but the 21-year-old Williams, who was a sixth man in his one season in college, is rolling with the change.
A bit more nuanced than it’s his story and he’s sticking with it.
“Look around the league, there are a lot of good players who come off the bench,” Williams in his usual even-tempered, upbeat way told media after Friday’s game. “Jordan Poole had 30 tonight. I don’t think he takes offense to not starting. He is comfortable in his role and that’s where I am trying to get to, ‘OK, come in with the second unit.’ They want me to be aggressive, they want me to score. But also be a defender and a two-way player. I’m all for it. Obviously, everybody wants to start, wants to play 48 minutes. But whatever is best for the team, and honestly for me in terms of development, I’m all for it.
“It does kind of go back to playing a role like in college,” Williams agreed. “The best players don’t always start. Jordan Poole could start with any other team, but he came here and plays his role. If he doesn’t come off the bench for them, we don’t know how good they are; just take it in stride. I think it can work. Like anything else, see how it goes. One game, different games, different situations; it could be something we go to for the rest of the year or could not be. If we don’t find a stride, things could go back. For me, it’s playing it by ear and always being ready.”
Williams had seven points on three of nine shooting in 19 minutes on Friday. But with four fouls and just two rebounds. Bulls coach Billy Donovan indicated the changes to the starting lineup had more to do with the team slipping farther under .500, and especially the bad loss in Phoenix.
But Williams seemed to have regressed again, shooting one of 12 the last two games with a total of seven points. He’s averaging 9.1 points for the season despite playing about 26 minutes per game. It’s almost identical to his scoring averages his first two NBA seasons and his one season in college.
“I kinda expected it,” Williams admitted about the lineup change. “Not necessarily the changes he made but, obviously we haven’t been playing to the level that we need to play. So obviously playing with the lineups and trying different lineups and things like that; that’s just part of it when you are trying to figure out what works and what does not work. I’m with whatever to win. Right now we haven’t been winning, but you’ve got to trust the process, control what you can control as a player. I trust Billy, I trust the coaching staff, the decisions they make. Ayo’s the same way.
“He (Donovan) came to me before,” said Williams. ’It wasn’t like a surprising thing. He came to me and kinda put me with the second unit and he asked me how I felt about it, if I wanted to do it. He asked me, pretty much kind of said it was to get a flow with that second unit and see how it is, maybe be more aggressive with that second unit. I think it is going to take some time to get used to for the team, but I’m all for it as long as we start winning.
““I’m obviously still getting better on both ends, kind of figuring things out on both ends,” said Williams. “You want to start, but doing your job whenever your name is called is just as important. That’s how I take it.”
It’s a little different for Dosunmu, who as a second-round draft pick never was envisioned as a starting player. After he was drafted, the Bulls went out and spent the majority of their free agent money on a point guard. But after a brilliant start to last season, Ball had knee surgery and remains out. Dosunmu filled in well most of last season, and then retained the job this season even as both Alex Caruso and Goran Dragić seemed more prepared.
But Donovan was wary of playing them too much considering Dragić’s age and Caruso’s penchant for over exuberant play that has led to missed games in the past. Dosunmu also began to regress, playing more passively lately and rarely even attempting threes. After shooting well the first month, he was two of 15 on threes the last nine games. His season average fell below 33 percent. He made his only attempt Friday.
Typically, he was considerably less loquacious than Williams, mostly repeating a mantra he often defaults to about trying to get better.
“I just took it as it was, try to continue to get better,” said Dosunmu. “I feel like my motto no matter if I start or not, each and every day I want to get one percent better; then when you keep stacking days like that at the end of the day you always become a better player. So nothing really has changed. He (Donovan) told me to keep going, just that was a decision he thought was the best to help the team, get the mojo up, try different things out. I'm not into that (who is starting). Even when I was starting when the news broke (to begin the season), at the end of the day I want to keep getting better. That’s my mindset, just keep getting better.”
The question then was whether for these two young hopefuls for the franchise as well as 2022 No. 1 pick Dalen Terry, who is not in the rotation, what does this mean for development. Donovan said it could be a positive in that sense.
“The one thing we’ve been trying to do, and I think everybody’s talked about, is to try and get (Williams) to be more aggressive and I think being out there with three terrific offensive players in Zach (LaVine) and Vooch (Nikola Vučević) and DeMar (DeRozan), sometimes there’s not quite as many opportunities,” Donovan pointed out. “I told (Williams) in doing this I wanted him to be more aggressive offensively, that he was going to need to be somebody that could kind of give that group a little bit of a pop. I look at it that this may actually help his development, putting him in some situations where he can be a little bit more aggressive. He didn’t shoot it great tonight, but I thought he put the ball on the floor, tried to post up one time. There was other things that he was doing which I thought were encouraging. So I still think that the development part for him is in place. But he's also being put into a situation right now where he's going to have to do a little bit more because that (reserve) group’s going to need that from him.
“Ayo, I give him a lot of credit the way he responded,” said Donovan of Dosunmu shooting four of four. “He played really well. There was a lot on his shoulders (starting). I’m not saying he couldn’t handle it, but it wasn’t about Ayo and Patrick as much as, ‘Hey, we’ve got to shake some things up here a little bit.’ Throw Javonte (Green) and Alex in there and see what that looks like.”
Better Friday, but still no victory cigar.
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