John Paxson and Co. are no strangers to drawing a line in the sand, placing the responsibility of improvement on the Bulls players themselves.
The vice president of basketball operations made that very clear several times leading into this season.
So on Monday, coach Jim Boylen was just doubling down on that mentality.
The topic was toughness, and according to Boylen, a coaching staff could only instill so much. At some point this 2-5 team either learns toughness, accepts it and runs with it, or they don’t.
“I think they need to take more responsibility for their preparedness,’’ Boylen said of his players. “I think they need to take more ownership of their readiness to play. The head coaches in this league have never been expected to coach effort. Effort has to come from each guy. Those are the things that I talk about. You control your effort and competitiveness.
“We had a good September and October, good training camp. I think we set the course of what we want to do. We had a poor game [in Indiana on Sunday]. Let’s see if we respond.’’
They might want to start.
It isn’t like the schedule becomes more favorable for this underachieving roster. This week alone will see the Bulls host LeBron James and the Lakers, head down to Atlanta for a back-to-back, and then host Houston.
For a team that has made a habit of looking somewhat soft, especially in the closing moments of games, it’s a bad reputation that’s developing.
The two faces of the franchise — at least the two that the front office has deemed the pillars of this rebuild — Lauri Markkanen and Zach LaVine, don’t exactly scream out grit. Both would fall more in the finesse category, but that doesn’t mean they can’t improve in that department.
The question thrown Boylen’s way, however, was how? How does an NBA coach instill intangibles like that?
“You have guys that innately have that,’’ Boylen said. “Some of us are born with it, some of us have that, some of us don’t. Some of us have different degrees of that. Some weren’t raised to play that way. Some guys it’s the only way they could get on the floor, if they played that way. Sometimes your individual talent, skill level, determines how much physicality you need throughout your career. It’s just the way it’s always been. Guys that couldn’t jump or didn’t move that well had to grab hold, clutch to compete. Guys that could jump over people, run around people, and run by people, maybe didn’t have to do those things as much.
“Then there’s guys somewhere in between. And then there’s a few guys that have it all, right? They can run people over and run by them, jump over them, do all those things. How I do it is I show them on film the situation. I show them in practice the situations where I thought they could have a higher level of urgency or physicality or competitiveness or toughness. That’s how I do it. And in those moments I hope they learn that it’s acceptable, it’s OK to hit somebody once in a while within the game. It’s OK to be physical.’’
Boylen isn’t looking for his players to join some sort of “Fight Club,’’ but there have been too many offensive rebounds given up, too many 50-50 balls lost, and too many opposing players driving the lane without discomfort.
“As they learn and get stronger, and feel more comfortable, they grow into that tougher mindset,’’ Boylen said. “So yeah, I think you can talk about it, coach it, expect it, demand it, but playing more physical is an individual, conscious decision. Playing hard is an individual, conscious decision.’’
