Rookie Caleb Wilson didn’t really need the reminder as someone recited the Bulls’ upcoming schedule to him.
‘‘It’s rough,’’ he said before hearing about a second game against the Celtics this week.
‘‘Rough’’ is one word that comes to mind. ‘‘Gauntlet,’’ ‘‘daunting’’ and ‘‘brutal’’ do, too, heading into the first of the Bulls’ two games this week against the Celtics on Monday.
Throw in two against the defending NBA champion Knicks, two against the new-look 76ers and a home game Nov. 11 against Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs, and Wilson and the Bulls are about to be tested in the next couple of weeks.
‘‘Every matchup is its own thing,’’ Wilson said. ‘‘Not every team has a Wemby; not every team has a Jayson Tatum. So every game we go out there with the approach that we need to be great players and do what we need to do because it’s about us.
‘‘I feel like, with this team, we’re really well-rounded, and I feel like that’s going to be to our benefit. I like us, so I’m excited for the opportunity.’’
The silver lining coming out of the weekend is that the Bulls’ starting five finally seems to be coming together — enough so that coach Tiago Splitter believed in them enough to try to finish the game with them Saturday against the Wizards.
That wasn’t the case Friday against the Bucks, when Splitter benched Matas Buzelis and Josh Giddey in favor of hot hands Isaac Okoro and Tre Jones down the stretch. Against the Wizards, however, Giddey had six assists and was a plus-10 in the fourth quarter, and Buzelis scored nine points in the quarter.
Both contributed to the Bulls’ comeback, which fell short, but neither led it.
No, that was Wilson, who scored 11 of his 30 points, grabbed five rebounds and handed out two assists in the fourth. It was the second consecutive game in which Wilson was the focal point in crunch time.
‘‘I feel like it shows that we have fight, but we put ourselves in that [bad] position,’’ Wilson said of the late-game push. ‘‘I wouldn’t say I’d give us a moral victory, but it’s good to know the character of the guys we have on this team.’’
That character is about to be tested by the toughest stretch the Bulls likely will have this season. But if the starting unit can continue to build the connectivity it showed against the Wizards, that will go a long way in trying to navigate that stretch.
‘‘Just an unselfishness, being able to move the ball, being able to trust each other,’’ Wilson said about the starting unit growing. ‘‘That’s all that really happened, and it led to a really good start. But you’ve got to do it for 48 minutes.’’
One positive about facing the Celtics, Knicks and 76ers is that none of those teams starts a lineup with two big men. The Wizards started Anthony Davis and Alex Sarr and staggered in Deandre Ayton.
The Celtics start Mitchell Robinson in the middle, but they’re more about the versatility they have on the wings in Tatum and Paul George. The Knicks have length up front with Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges, but they don’t start two true big men.
‘‘I’m really tall, but I’m on the thinner side, so I just try and run and be faster than everyone,’’ Wilson said. ‘‘But, honestly, I feel like the biggest adjustment in playing double-bigs is knowing you have to box out and be physical. That was one of my biggest things [against the Wizards].’’
Two bigs or no bigs, however, Wilson is going to have to be physical during the next few weeks, given what’s coming.
‘‘Like I said, it’s going to be rough,’’ he said.
Bulls slowly figuring some things out, but schedule about to turn brutal 2026
IUSTITIA.BG – Investigations 2009-2026 2026-10-25 22:36:27
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