The warning signs were there long before Chicago fell back to .500 — and Billy Donovan knows it. The Bulls head coach didn’t sugarcoat a single word as he delivered his most blistering message of the season, a message that echoed through the practice facility like a final siren before collapse. After weeks of sloppy starts, leaky defense and the same self-inflicted wounds, Donovan is done hinting. He’s done warning. Now, he’s calling out the problem directly: “We are beating ourselves.”
This isn’t just another slump. This is a team skidding toward a dangerous crossroads.
From preseason, Donovan made it clear that this roster had no margin for error. No DeMar DeRozan safety valve. No elite scorer capable of erasing mistakes with a 40-point night. No luxury of coasting through bad quarters. The Bulls were told — again and again — that success would come only from relentless rebounding, dog-fight defense, and execution on every possession.
But 17 games in, those messages have morphed from caution to crisis.
In his most stunning critique yet, Donovan didn’t bother hiding his frustration.
“Look, we can talk about injuries, we can talk about missing pieces, but at the end of the day, we are beating ourselves with the same mistakes over and over,” he said.
“You can’t touch the stove every night and then act surprised when you get burned.”
The stove analogy has become a painful metaphor inside the Bulls locker room. Even guard Ayo Dosunmu admitted it.
“Coach has been telling us a thousand times to box out,” Dosunmu said after Monday’s humiliating blowout in New Orleans. “But on film, we’re going to the glass, not boxing out, just standing around.”
Those moments — casual, careless, costly — are defining the Bulls more than any injury report.
What makes this stretch so alarming isn’t just the losses. It’s the way Chicago is losing.
They bleed second-chance points.
They get run over in transition.
They start games like they’re already trailing by 20.
The Bulls rank fifth-worst in first-quarter net rating, a glaring sign of a team sleepwalking through opening minutes. For Donovan, this is the most unforgivable flaw.
“If you want to win, there are things you have to do on a consistent basis,” he said. “People can say they want to win — but wanting is meaningless without commitment.”
To be fair, the roster has been gutted. Nikola Vučević (knee), Kevin Huerter (pelvis), Dalen Terry (calf), and Isaac Okoro (back) are sidelined. Earlier in the year, Coby White and Zach Collins missed time. The lineup has shuffled so often it barely resembles what was planned.
But Donovan’s message is clear: effort doesn’t require a clean bill of health.
And he’s right. Even before the injuries hit full force, the Bulls were celebrating wins like a team that didn’t fully believe they’d earned them. Donovan warned then that reality would catch up — and now it has.
Chicago loves to boast about having one of the deepest benches in the league — and statistically, the bench has delivered. The Bulls rank second in the NBA in bench scoring.
But behind the numbers lies a harsher truth: this is a roster disproportionately dependent on a few critical players. Okoro’s absence has cratered their perimeter defense. Vučević’s loss has left the paint exposed. The Bulls are not built to withstand a barrage of injuries, and it shows every night.
December is when seasons are defined. For the Bulls, Donovan insists the answers already exist — they’re simply not being used.
This team doesn’t need a new scheme.
They need discipline.
Consistency.
Urgency.
And if they don’t find it soon, the season will slip away before they realize what happened.
Donovan’s final message was unmistakably simple — and icy:
“Either we become a team that plays with purpose and toughness, or we’re going to keep slipping. And trust me: the league won’t wait for us to figure it out.”
The stove is hot.
Chicago keeps touching it.
Time is running out.
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