The reigning NBA champions' dream season began with a 21-point loss in Utah last October. Nikola Jokic's assessment of the evening wasn't encouraging: "Even when we provided open looks, we didn't shoot those. I think the mentality was that we didn't know what to do."
In that game, the Denver Nuggets finished with as many turnovers as they did assists. "You can't pick and choose when you play," coach Michael Malone said, calling his team out for being "outworked" in the first half.
Game 1 wasn't their worst loss of opening week. After a 25-point pounding in Portland, in which the Nuggets were outscored 80-49 in the second half, Malone said, We were embarrassing tonight. We did not defend at all. We cannot guard one-on-one right now at all."
If there are Chicago Bulls fans in your life, you might want to remind them of the above. The Bulls opened the 2023-24 regular season with a 124-104 loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday, featuring airings of grievances after the game and during it.
In the third quarter, in the middle of a 12-0 Thunder run, Chicago center Nikola Vucevic got a technical foul for throwing the ball at the stanchion in frustration. Vucevic was subbed out a few possessions later, at which point he and coach Billy Donovan had an animated conversation. Post-game, without coaches present, the players had an extended conversation about what had gone wrong.
"I kind of had just walked in there to talk to them, and they were talking," Donovan said. "And i said, 'Do you guys need space?' And they just said yes, so I walked out."
On his exchange with Donovan, Vucevic said, "I obviously expressed it a little bit maybe more aggressive than I should have in the moment of a game. But it was happening in the heat of the moment, you're trying to win, you're trying to do what you can to help the team win and sometimes, you know -- I didn't like what was going on."
Vucevic hadn't been particularly involved in the offense at that point in the game, but he said, "It wasn't so much just my touches. I think [it was] stuff that we were running that could've maybe been better for us in the moment. Some of it was touches, but not necessarily for me to score."
Donovan said the team got "stagnant," essentially agreeing with Vucevic, even if he'd have preferred the veteran express his concerns more tactfully.
"He felt a certain way and I kind of said what I felt," Donovan said. "And he's probably not wrong for feeling the way he did, but how do you channel that in a way that kind of galvanizes a group and lifts 'em up? In the moment, maybe i could've handled it better with him and maybe he could've handled it better with me. It wasn't anything disrespectful or anything else, I think he was just kind of frustrated with the way we were playing. and, you know what? I didn't blame him. I felt probably in line with him. But there's gotta be a way that we can, together, solve those issues and those problems."
The Bulls allowed Oklahoma City to get into the paint too easily, didn't help properly against guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, didn't recover well enough to 3-point shooters, didn't play with enough energy and didn't move the ball enough, in Vucevic's estimation. "You put those all together, it's hard to win a game," he said.
It could be a bad omen that this is the story with 81 games remaining in the regular season. Donovan and the players, however, described it differently. "To me, [the locker-room conversation] says that they care about each other," Donovan said, adding that he wants players to challenge each other the way they haven't previously.
"I will say the one thing i think was good, with some of the heated conversations and confrontation, is that would have never happened last year," Donovan said. "Ever. Like, there would have been a quiet group. So the confrontation piece, I think, is a sign that it's important to them and that they know there's things that we've gotta do better."
Donovan repeatedly said that confrontation is healthy, even going as far as to say, "I think it needs to happen as much as possible."
Donovan, Vucevic and guard Zach LaVine were essentially unified in their message about the players-only discussion: It is bad that all this was necessary, but it is good that they did what was necessary.
"Guys are frustrated, and you should be," LaVine said. "If you're not frustrated, that [speaks for] itself. It's a good thing. It just—it sucks to have it happen Game 1. It happened. We gotta go from there."
Vucevic described it as "very constructive," adding that "a lot of guys said a lot of good things, things that need to be said. And I think we can really use this to learn and change some things that we need to change. So it wasn't nothing crazy, no fighting or none of that."
One on-court storyline to monitor: Chicago, which attempted fewer 3s on a per-possession basis than any team in the league in 2022-23, wants to get them up this season. The Bulls shot 12-for-42 (28.6%) against the Thunder, and, at halftime, Donovan told the players that they had to stick with it when their shots aren't falling.
"You can just tell: Guys get down, they get dejected," Donovan said. "There's gotta be some resiliency and some fight to get through that."
Donovan said there is a certain standard of play that Chicago needs to reach consistently. Vucevic said that "every issue is fixable," and "now it's on us to fix it and find ways to play good basketball." If the Bulls, who have been widely projected to finish with a below-.500 record, end up exceeding their modest external expectations, then this dramatic first game will be either forgotten or framed as a wake-up call. If you were optimistic about them because they had the league's best defense after the All-Star break last season or because they added Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig to the rotation, one rough loss shouldn't sway you.
If Chicago has another mediocre season, though, or if it's even worse than that, then all of these quotes will read differently. They'll read like the words of a stale, disconnected team trying to convince itself that the sky isn't falling.
