It’s the what-if that still bothers Bulls coach Billy Donovan.
He isn’t losing sleep over it, but it still feels like a lost opportunity in his Hall of Fame career.
The return of DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine to the United Center on Wednesday brought back those memories.
Before the 2021-22 season, Bulls executive vice president Arturas Karnisovas brought in DeRozan, Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso to team with LaVine and Nikola Vucevic.
The results were instant: The Bulls stood atop the Eastern Conference going into a Jan. 14 game against the Warriors with an impressive 27-12 record.
It wasn’t a large sample size by any means, but it definitely had legs.
That is, until a leg gave out. Ball’s left knee woes began in that loss to the Warriors, and he was never the same. Neither was that roster.
There were teases with that group, enough that Karnisovas let it play out way too long, but never close to anything like it had going that first season together.
With the Kings — led by DeRozan and LaVine — in town, Donovan got reflective.
“Yeah, I feel that way because I was able to see the commitment that those two guys made,” Donovan said when asked if it felt like an incomplete part of his career. “The unfortunate part was — and I’m not saying how the year would have ended — there was a very small sample size when we were whole. And the sample was a good sample.”
As Donovan pointed out, LaVine and DeRozan were the foundation pieces, but Ball was the heartbeat who really made it work.
“Lonzo, to his credit and being in the league for a while, understood the four guys on the floor,” Donovan said. “He understood how to get Zach out in transition and in space. He knew when the game needed to be slowed; he would get DeMar and Vooch into spots. And then he and Alex were just monsters on the perimeter.
‘‘When Lonzo went down, Ayo [Dosunmu] did a wonderful job, but it’s hard for a rookie to come in and handle that. Coby [White] has the shoulder injury, Alex breaks his wrist, there were a lot of things.
“I would have loved to have been able to see that group stay whole to see what would have happened. Some of it, and a lot of it, was probably out of our control in a lot of ways, and it would have been great to have seen that group stay together and what it would have looked like.”
Staying the course
Forward Isaac Okoro didn’t love starting off scoreless through the first two games (0-for-8) but was confident it wouldn’t last. And it didn’t. He had 10 points Monday and began 2-for-4 from the field against the Kings and finished with nine points.
“I’m a confident player,” Okoro said. “I know that I didn’t want to start the season the way it kind of started. I knew the shots I missed were makeable shots, and I was going to continue taking those shots.
‘‘I work on my game pretty hard, so I just have the confidence to keep taking those shots, and eventually I’ll start making them.”
