Emotion doesn’t always come through accurately in Zoom meeting rooms.
Billy Donovan, however, didn’t have that problem several times last season.
Usually appearing very calm and poker-faced, the few instances Donovan did dip into a pit of anger with his team was following losses in which the Bulls coach felt his roster was simply out-toughed.
The bad news for Donovan and his players?
It isn’t like key Eastern Conference playoff teams exactly softened up with the regular season just a few weeks away.
Miami has a roster built for a street fight, Tom Thibodeau’s hard-nosed Knicks squad is mostly intact, Milwaukee has a championship trophy and the goal to repeat, and the Celtics added some veteran toughness to an already solid defensive starting unit.
So what does that mean for a Bulls team that far too often shrunk both mentally and physically when the physicality of the game picked up?
The way Donovan sees it that’s no longer a concern. At least on paper.
“There are certain players that, to me, that just comes very, very easy,’’ Donovan said of the toughness topic. “And I do think when our season started off last year, we were a little bit young and maybe not fully developed physically.
“I’m hopeful because of more veteran experience. … Like DeMar [DeRozan] is a tough guy to me. And the reason I say that is because he gets fouled all the time. You gotta have a level of toughness to create contact and get fouled. I think our team physically, even seeing Lonzo [Ball] defend, he comes across as a much more physical presence on the ball.’’
And Donovan didn’t even get into the hard-nosed style of play Alex Caruso displays most nights or Derrick Jones Jr.’s defensive mindset.
Then there’s Zach LaVine.
Considered a finesse player throughout his career, LaVine is fresh off a summer in which he played with some of the league’s elite in capturing Olympic gold at the Summer Games in Tokyo.
And while most of those Team USA players didn’t exactly fell into the “tough guy’’ category, they do have a mental toughness that LaVine was able to take note of. Whether it’s their practice routine or how they watch film, LaVine admitted that he took note.
“I think that experience definitely taught me something about what goes into winning and being part of a winning team at a very, very high level, and something I can bring back here and hopefully be a better leader going forward with trying to push us to be a playoff team,’’ LaVine said.
“We were all at the top of our game and we all couldn’t be the number one option. And we had to find a role and help the team win, and it was an incredible experience for me, and I was really honored to go out there and fight for my country.’’
Donovan’s hope is that LaVine is now poised to fight for the new-look Bulls roster. A roster that began last season with starters like Wendell Carter Jr., Otto Porter Jr., and Lauri Markkanen.
Carter did play with a certain physicality in the screen game, but Porter and Markkanen weren’t exactly the kind of guys one would feel safe going down a dark alley with. That has obviously all changed in less than a year with the roster flip.
“I don’t think that necessarily the guys weren’t tough as much as they were young and there was youthfulness there,’’ Donovan added of last year’s roster at the start of the season. “I’m hopeful that we’ll be physically tougher because we’re older.’’
