Mully & Haugh Show
Billy Donovan & Arturas Karnisovas talk Zach LaVine, Lonzo Ball
Good morning, all good here. [MUSIC] >> I always think about basketball, I'm thinking about winning and that's why I'm here. I'm not here to stay in the middle, it's a result driven business. I mean, you spent three times a day with Billy. I was a great leader, great coach and I got to do a better job to help him. >> Yeah, there's definitely going to be conversations. We'll sit down to talk and they'll put my brain and I'll talk to them about stuff that always happens. And they've been really, really good and I appreciate them. I want to be clear on this, like when the season starts, right? I am totally try to invest everything I have into the team and into the group as best I can. [MUSIC] >> Mullion Hall, Chicago Sports Radio 670, the score. We are broadcasting live from the performance studio with the light. It's welcome in, our tourist counter to show this. And Billy Donovan, the boss and the, we kept teasing it as breakfast with Billy. We've got breakfast over there and it's really Billy, the boss and breakfast. What do you think, that's where we're showing you. >> Well, I actually, when I heard that, and I knew he was from Jersey. I thought Bruce Springsteen was going to be sitting next to him. >> [LAUGH] >> Well, AK, you're wearing your colors, man, that is kind of the national book. >> Explain the shirt. >> Of the, of the Lithuanian national team, right? >> Got the shirt, though. >> Yes, so basically the Nike came out a couple years ago with this shirt that kind of reflected, you know, 1992 and 1996. And all, all the years that the Lithuanian Olympic team was wearing. So I decided to put it on. >> It's a t-shirt that any deadhead could appreciate though, right? >> Yeah. >> Actually, you know, the summer when dead was at the sphere. I've never seen Billy happier in my life when he went to see them live. >> This summer? >> Yes, and he came the next day. I mean, he was absolutely shining the way he was describing how great was the concert. And I've never seen him have you. >> What was it like, Billy? >> Yeah. >> Oh, it was a great experience. I had a chance to see them in Madison Square Garden in like 1988, 1989, and then they were in the sphere when we were there for summer league. And someone had called me, had tickets and went to the show, it was great. So I really enjoyed it. He was just disappointed that he couldn't come. We got in the day later. >> Very much. Well, you were busy once you get in Italy, did you have some adventures abroad this summer? >> I've done things that I've never done before, so, you know, experiences that- >> What prompted that? >> Yeah, I don't know. I think, you know, I'm getting to that point where like, you know, you live once, you try to experience certain things and, you know, certain, you know, experiences I didn't plan, but they haven't, and I'm glad- >> One example. What was one example this time? >> Yeah, so when I went to Italy, you know, we were planning to go on a hike. And the translation, English translation, hiking and extreme rock climbing and mountain climbing kind of got lost there. So when we show it up with my wife, you know, to do hiking at Mount Intavolata, two guys showed up with, you know, harnesses and carabiners and belays. I, you know, I didn't have these words in my vocabulary before, but like, you know, I'm like, what is going on right now? And what are we going to about to do in four hours and five hours of that experience was like I've never obviously done that before. I'm not trained, you know, so it was an interesting experience. >> Billy, don't you always do some international travel just to keep up with some of your players, right? Everybody's living all over the world. >> Yeah, this summer didn't work out that way. A couple of years ago, I went over to Montenegro to see Vuj, but he was playing with the Olympic team there, so there was a lot of training going on there. So it didn't make a trip overseas to see any players. I saw Gar and Dragach, you know, that year as well, which was a great trip, but nothing oversees this season. >> But did you get together with, I don't know, maybe Zach Levine? Was that one of your trips? >> Yeah, so like what ends up happening for me, at least, you know, we had probably about five days of summer league practice, and then we end up going to Vegas. And then after Vegas, I made a trip to LA, spent some time with Zach, spent some time with Io, Kobe, Daelin, spent some time with Lonzo. They kind of all, you know, relatively close to each other. So, you know, we go out there and do that. And then, you know, a bunch of guys came down to Miami to work out, went down to Miami and visited with them there. So, you know, even though the trip wasn't necessarily overseas this summer, you're certainly going out at periods of time of the summer to visit with players and spend time with them. >> And just that you were visiting with Zach, I think, is something that we're addressing now because the pretty open dialogue last season about whether he would be coming back, what he decided to do with the surgery, all of the things. And out here we are on the brink of training camp. And Zach Levine is coming back to Chicago, member of the Bulls. Could you just address how those conversations went in the off season and the fact that he is back here now, how he fits into your plans this year? >> Well, I mean, I've always enjoyed talking to Zach and we've always had, you know, a relationship that we've been able to communicate. And, you know, like I said, anytime that, you know, we've needed to sit down and talk. He's always been very open-minded about that. I think, you know, when you're a player and you're going through an injury, like he went through and he's really disconnected, so to speak, from the organization, from the team, because he's doing his rehab. It was right after the all-star break that he had surgery. You know, naturally, you're going to want to know, okay, like, what direction are we going? How do I fit into this, all those kind of things? So, it was really once the summer, once July started, it was more like he was, you know, back playing, he looks in really, really good shape. I think it's the first time, to be honest with you, in the last year or so, that he's actually come back to training camp. You remember, he came off knee surgery, so he looks a lot better. And then it's, you know, more about how we're trying to play, how he fits in, you know, those kind of things. And, you know, like I think the big thing is, hey, we've got a lot of younger players, and we're going to go younger, we're going to go, you know, older, how's all this going to work. And we have open, honest conversations about it, and we talk about it. >> Our church, there was an expectation that maybe he would be moved. There was a perception that maybe he wasn't able to be moved or traded, because there wasn't a market for Zach Levine. How would you address that? >> Well, I think last season was very difficult for him, for organization, for everyone. And, but like Billy said, you know, the last two years has been, you know, injured, it's very frustrating for a player. And now he's finally fully healthy. He looks great, and we'll, you know, looking forward to seeing him in a training camp. >> Is he still open to be traded? Are you open to trading him, and does he need to sort of rehab his reputation around the league because of the reason you spoke up, because of injury, coupled with his contract, et cetera? >> Well, you know, people forget that two years ago, he was an all-star. So, and he's an ultimate pro, he's a great guy, a great person, he likes his teammates. So, again, I'm looking forward to seeing him in a training camp, and, you know, we have a vision how we want to play. You know, we've obviously spent this summer talking about it with Billy, and, you know, that we want to play more uptempo, and he fits into that, and we'll see how that works. >> So, much curiosity about what style of play you will be with the new players. There's a lot of changes going on. Now you've got Basilas coming in as a draft pick, and you're bringing Josh Giddy, who had a terrific Olympics, and you saw some of his capability. And you bring Zach, and you got Kobe White ready to take another step. How fun is it for you? This is almost like a lot of the same guys, but there's feels like a reset to some degree, because they're in different roles, or because Demardah Rosen isn't here. Alex Caruso isn't here. Guys who maybe had played into those roles so well for so long, now you're kind of, it feels new. >> Yeah, you know, Arters and I, you know, speak all the time, but even, you know, coming at the last season, and having to overcome, you know, the loss of players, so to speak, with Patrick Limb's situation, Zach's situation, Tori Craig. There was just a lot of things that ended up happening. I think everybody knows the way Alex Caruso plays. He's so reckless a lot of times. His availability, you know, was up in the air. So, you know, I think last year I was pretty honest from the standpoint that, you know, we were not a team that was built to play really fast. We just weren't built that way. And I think, you know, as a coach, you always want to try to play to your player's strengths. And obviously, the job that Demard did for the time that he was here was remarkable, and he was great closing out games in a total pro, and he was great with the younger players. I think as some of the roster has changed, there is a mix of younger players, and there's a mix of some older players, and how well we can gel and mesh together. I think the other part is going through the experience in Oklahoma City when we had Chris Paul, Shane Guilders Alexander, and Dennis Shooter. We played all those three guards together, you know, and I think when you look at our backward situation, we have some talented backward players, but they're only affected with the balls in their hands, right? So, what kind of sacrifices can we make individually, you know, where we're not going to have one guy with the ball in his hands all the time. We're going to have to be able to sacrifice and try to play to each other's strengths. I think the other part of that now is I think the way the team is constructed with the mix of some older guys and some newer guys, we have to play faster. I think one of the things we've battled the last couple of years is in some ways, and our tours, and I have talked about this, we've lost the analytical battle. You know, we just were not a high-volume three-point shooting team, and there was games we walked into where you've got teams that are taking an enormous amount of three-point shots, and we're not able to even keep up with that rate. And it's not so much about necessarily just bombing up three-point shots, but you don't want to be up against it on a continual basis, because you're just not generating enough of them, because listen, everybody, when you say DeMar de Rose, and they always say this mid-range killer, and he's unbelievable. It's a reason why he's going to be a Hall of Fame player is because that's what he does do, and you don't want to sit there and try to make a player be somebody he's not. So, I do think that the tempo that our tours and I've talked about, you know, over the summer, we've got to play that way, and we have, you know, you go back and hopefully he'll be able to get on the court. Lonzo, he's moving in that direction, but he was really a guy that enabled us to play faster, you know, moving the ball up the floor. I think the same thing can be said for Josh Giddy, you know, he's a guy that can really, really push the tempo, and he does it a lot with the advanced pass, and I think for those two guys, players love playing with them, because they know if they run, they're going to find him. And it's difficult, obviously, to play offense constantly against the set defense, you know, and when you're pushing the ball, that's when you generate rim shots and open threes, and that's what we could try to get as many of those as possible. After misses or after make? Lonzo hasn't played in so long, so I mean, I just don't even know what that would look like. I'm sure you've got a good plan in place that would seemingly have to be some kind of minutes limit or some sort of, you know, maybe natural days off within a comeback, like that's been two and a half years, basically. He's been, you know, we've been talking to, you know, obviously, just always excited about the training camp. But again, during the training camp, we're going to try to find out, you know, you know, that the loads that he's going to have to take in training camp and the grind on a daily basis will depend as, you know, rotational minutes, you know, his role and, and you know, how much is going to play. But he's been playing five and five since, since August, and he's been doing more. He had recently set back just because he got sick and he missed like a week and a half. But by training camp, he, you know, he should be ramping out. Do you envision him as a bench player? Do you mention him as a starter and controlled minutes? Because he's a guy who obviously went healthy and that's, it's always dangerous to say when healthy because it has been so long. But do you think, or is this to be determined? Well, I think the thing that Arturis mentioned, which is critical, we don't know how he's going to respond after games after practice because we haven't seen it. Right. So that's where we first got to start off with is where, you know, is it something where he plays 15 to 20 minutes and now he's got to take the next day off. Can he play 25 or 30 minutes? You know, how does he respond? You know, the back to backs, you know, we don't know, we don't know any of those things. So we're going to wait to find out now. I, I do think the one thing I look at it from this lens is it, Lonzo loves to play. He loves to play. And at his age, you know, as much as he loves to play, he wants to play beyond this year. So we have to think how else have a responsibility to make sure that he's in a position, you know, where he can play after this season where it's not one of these things where, you know, it's not managed correctly or we're not putting him in a situation to be effective. Could that be 15 to 18 minutes a game? Maybe. Could it be 20 to 25? Maybe there's just a lot of things. If you look at him as a basketball player, he's an elite point guard that certainly, you know, warrants being out on the court a lot. But is he capable of doing that physically? And those are things we just don't know right now. And until we get to training camp and he's out there, we'll have a better feel of how we can maybe manage him and allow him to be a productive player. You know, it feels maybe it's not true that you're working at cross-purpose. That you're trying to do player development, you're trying to get young guys incorporated, and you have a lot of players that are back. Does that, I mean, does that signify that you are going to be starting certain guys and then extending minutes through more guys than usual? Usually you'd like to go about 9 deep. You don't go much more than that. But does this mean you have to go 10 deep? Well, you know, I think one of the things that when people look at the development piece of a player, they only look at it through the lens of playing time. And they think, okay, the only way to develop a player is just throw them on the court playing 35 minutes, let them make mistakes and figure it out from there. You've got to be able to, I think, help a young player in particular understand the things that really go into winning and the things that go into being a successful player. Is playing time part of that? Sure. Adversity is also a huge part of that. How are they going to respond to tough games, you know, being exposed, not having the experience? I think for a young player developing a routine, you know, what do they do? How do they recover, you know, and this idea of, hey, listen, we're just going to take a bunch of young players, throw them out there and then, you know, what, just give them playing time. I think there's also things that development, you got to earn things too, you know, and I think our mentality and focus is we're going into every game trying to win. So when you look at a guy like Mathis, yes, part of his development is being on the court. No question, but he also needs to develop a routine. He also needs to understand the league. He needs to understand who he's playing against. There may be a situation that our tourist and I sit down and maybe with the amount of minutes he's getting is, hey, listen, he needs to go down the G League and get more minutes. Like, the development part is so, it's such a bigger process than just, hey, go on the court, work on a shooting and ball handling because the biggest thing that a young player has to deal with that's coming from where he's coming from or any young player coming from, you know, is the fact that there's a level of inexperience, there's a strength issue, there's a lot of things guys have to develop. So the development piece is critical, but also, what are the things that really go into winning? Because at the end of the day, you're trying to compete and win and you want to help a player develop winning habits. And as you're saying that, people are nodding their heads and agreeing with you because it all makes a lot of sense. And then the Bulls fans are thinking about, okay, where is Patrick Williams in that development? Because Patrick Williams went through a lot of the things that you just described and he had to learn how to be a professional. He's 23 years old. This is his fifth season, but people talk about him like he's been in the league for 10 years. And yet his development, I think he seems like from the outside looking in, ready to take a step, also needs to take a step to justify his draft status and what he means to this team. Well, also, you know, let's not forget that he almost missed two seasons out of four, right? You know, so he missed, you know, his second and he had injury last year. So, you know, he obviously worked extremely hard, you know, the summer to get back and, you know, we ramping him up right now, you know, for training cap. So it's going to be an important season for him. But, you know, when we are talking about us being younger, you know, you also look at, you know, Kobe, this is his sixth year, you know, Patrick is fifth, IO is fourth, Josh Giddy is fourth, you know, so we young, but at the same time, you know, there's a lot of experience there. So, again, how far has Patrick come since you have big coaching him? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting what Artur said, because I really felt when I first got here, I thought one of the most difficult things for three players in particular that they were not equipped and ready to handle was when Wendell Carter, you know, was maybe in his second year, Kobe was going into a second year, it was coming off of Kobe and then Lori marketing. And it was like, okay, these guys are going to be the leaders in the future. They didn't have enough experience for that. But I think like Artur said, with IO, with Kobe, with Patrick, these guys now have got legitimate years of NBA experience under their belt. And I do think from what Artur said, some of the injuries has probably stunted that a little bit. But I do think Kobe's a way different leader than he was when I first got here just through the experience. Same thing with IO. I think the same thing could be said for Patrick, you know, I think he's starting to understand a little bit more. But when you talk about a player coming in as maybe the youngest player in the NBA, just to throw a guy out there. Now, some of it worked out roster wise that he was given the opportunity to play quite a bit. But I do think he mentally has taken some growth and some development there in his part that he's in a much, much better place in terms of understanding who he is as a player.