Bulls take two steps forward, one step back losing to the Knicks late

There was no flinching from Caleb Wilson as he was trading blows with Landry Shamet down in the post. Not a second thought from Matas Buzelis when he came from behind on 290-pound center/left tackle Andre Drummond and blocked his shot.

Even Josh Giddey was all for some contact, posting up reserve guard Tyler Kolek and making him pay for trying to trade paint, hitting him with a floater.

The Bulls coaching staff – with the loudest voice being Tiago Splitter – had been pleading with the starters to start matching the physicality of opposing teams in a competitive fashion, and for the first three quarters on Wednesday, they finally seemed to get the message loud and clear.

The problem was there was a fourth quarter and that’s where the defending champions made their mark. Specifically, Finals MVP Jalen Brunson. Thanks to his 38 points (14 in the fourth), the Knicks outlasted the Bulls 133-127.

“We were focused for a longer period of time for the game, which is good, but the game still has 48 minutes,” Splitter said after the loss. “That fourth quarter wasn’t good enough. Of course they have great players. Brunson took over the game, and we tried a little bit of everything, but I think we competed for the most part.

“We got better (Wednesday).”

That the Bulls (1-4) did, and while no one was celebrating moral victories, it was undoubtedly another step forward in the rebuild.

“I told you I wasn’t going to take long,” Wilson, who finished with 20 points, said of his development from game to game. “Every game I just take the data, learn from it, watch games over, and it just happens for me. As long as I can see it, I’ll know what I need to do better, learn from it and it’s going to get better. That’s the good thing about me and us as a team, we’re young so we have a learning curve that we’re going to get to. It’s not like we’re a bunch of 30-year-olds. Once we get to that point, we’ll be great.”

“Great?” not there yet. Start with serviceable. Baby steps.

Considering New York was in town in front of a sold-out crowd at the United Center, however, steps that needed to be taken, and not only from Wilson.

The blowout loss in Boston on Monday felt like yet another rock bottom in the early part of this season, and not just because of the lack of physicality in that game, but the simple things like effort on rebounds. The Celtics beat the Bulls in a lot of ways, but 19 offensive rebounds didn’t go unnoticed.

Not that 16 offensive rebounds by the Knicks was major improvement, but there was at least an effort to find a body and hit a body. It was more bad bounces than bad technique. That can be lived with.

“You saw (Splitter’s) team in Portland (last season), they were good at rebounding, and we’ve got to do it more,” Giddey said. “It sounds so simple but it’s not as simple as it looks. It just kills a team’s spirit when you consistently offensive rebound, so we’ve got to look at it that way and try to get better at it.”

The good news is the rebounding and physicality will continue being tested, as the Bulls go back to Boston on Friday, play in Philadelphia on Monday, and a rematch with the Knicks next week.

“For sure technique and communication, also just covering for each other, sacrificing for each other to make tough plays,” Wilson said of the ongoing progress. “I feel like if we continue learning how to play with one another it will lead to a lot better things happening.”