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Billy Donovan says Bulls have to get better at matching intensity

Following Tuesday’s 116-110 road loss vs. the Indiana Pacers, Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan said that he thinks his club gets overwhelmed when the intensity level goes up.

(via Jump View):

“I don’t know what the right word is, disappointed, frustrated, whatever it is. We talked about this at halftime of what’s getting ready to happen and what we gotta be able to do to set the tone coming out in the 3rd quarter. I think you have to get totally lost in competing. If you’re wrapped up in how’s it going for me and a bad call by the official or, ‘I just missed a shot.’ When you get into that mindset, and I don’t know if we were or were not in that mindset, I’m not a mind reader, but we were not lost in competing, our intensity. Like if you looked at it, their intensity level was here (points up), and ours may have been at the same level it was in the 1st half, it’s just that their intensity level went up to here (points up). So maybe we looked like that in the 1st half, but you knew they were gonna come out and do that.

“We’ve got to get lost in competition, you’ve gotta be able to embrace the competition. I said to them to start the 4th quarter, I think we were up by seven, ‘We need this, just to get lost, compete, fight, and battle.’ You have to love being in those situations and the grind of it. These difficult losses, you gotta get callous, but it also makes you understand what you gotta do. And we have not been able to make a decision to do that, quite honestly, of what we all have to do collectively. It’s not one player, it’s not one thing in terms of defensive rebounding or turnovers, it’s a multitude of things where we look overwhelmed when the intensity level goes this way (points up). We gotta be able to respond better to that, in my opinion. That’s kinda what it is. I like this group, we got a high character group, they’re good guys, relationships are good, but we gotta be able to fight to overcome some of this stuff.”

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