'Billy Ball' alive and well for Bulls, but don't buy fool's gold
“Billy Ball” is a good way to describe the up-tempo, shoot-from-the-hip style of basketball that coach Billy Donovan has switched to with the Bulls this season, but he just sees it as an extension of a mentor’s coaching tree.
Rick Pitino coached Donovan in the mid-’80s during their days at Providence and briefly with the Knicks. And when Donovan was later kick-ing around Wall Street as a stockbroker, it was Pitino who talked him into leaving New York to join him as an assistant coach at Kentucky. His philosophy was to lean into the three-point shot and play “racehorse basketball” up and down the court, with that combination of pressure breaking teams in the clutch part of the game.
“Billy Ball”? Try “Pitino’s Bambinos” — the nickname of the Providence team that put Pitino on the map, with Donovan excelling as the starting point guard.
“I don’t like [the term] ‘Billy Ball,’ ” Donovan said. “I just think, as a coach, the same things that go into winning haven’t changed. What you have to do to win hasn’t changed at all. You’ve still got to rebound, you’ve still got to get out in transition, you’ve still got to defend, and you’ve still got to share the basketball. There are certain things that are just staples all the way through, and certain things that I believe in.”
Five games into the season, he has the Bulls focused on those essentials. They entered Thursday first in the NBA in pace (106.73 possesions per game), have dug out of two 20-point deficits to win games and are third behind only the Celtics and Warriors in three-point attempts per game (44.2).
To put that last stat in perspective, the Bulls ranked 26th in three-point attempts last season with 32.1 per game.
That should put to rest any questions about Donovan’s coaching acumen. But the applause should stop there. Although Donovan has shown he can adjust his philosophy to new personnel, as all top-tier NBA coaches do, the Bulls’ 3-2 start is likely still a mirage — fool’s gold. While they may have a coach and an offen-sive philosophy that works, they don’t have “that dude” — a player on the level of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic or Nikola Jokic. And until the Bulls’ front office figures out how to get one, they’re likely to go no further than another meaningless play-in game before starting their summer early, as they have done the last two years.
The above-average start could help showcase assets such as guards Zach LaVine and Lonzo Ball and center Nikola Vucevic, but the Bulls’ focus has to be on making sure they keep their top-10 protected 2025 draft pick out of the Spurs’ hands while hoping for some lottery luck in order to draft a talent such as Duke guard/forward Cooper Flagg or even Rutgers guard/forward Ace Bailey, who are widely projected to be drafted first and second, respectively, next June.
So call it “Billy Ball,” “Pitino’s Bambinos” or whatever else you want to call it. But buyer beware.