Billy Donovan & Arturas Karnišovas speak at Bulls media day 2025 | CHSN Chicago Bulls

Billy Donovan & Arturas Karnišovas speak at Bulls media day 2025 | CHSN Chicago Bulls

[Music] Well, uh, welcome and thank you for coming. Uh, I’d like to start today, uh, with where we left off, then talk about where we are headed. Um, the last, uh, 20 games of the season gave us a glimpse of our future. And, uh, we established our offensive identity, baseball, movement, threes. Most importantly, we showed cohesion and we got better. We were 14th on offense and ninth on defense. Uh those numbers are encouraging. Uh this year uh excited for the season with an established and young core. Uh we are building a strong foundation that will continue to develop while learning to win together. Uh Josh is back. Uh we are happy to resign him to an extension. He’s part of our future. Uh Kobe affirmed his spot as a leader last year and we look forward to his continued growth and contribution this season. Um those two players showed us that they have star potential. Uh Matas returning for year two. Uh IO and Troy are back from injuries and ready to play. Uh Julian, Pat, Dalon, Noah had a good summer of work. Uh vets like uh Vu and Javon are back and critical leaders to the success of our group. Uh in addition we added Isaac Ooro among other skill sets. He brings the toughness to defense uh that we want to cultivate. On the team side we have flexibility as we have many players going into free agency next year. We will be able to evaluate long-term fits while staying competitive. Uh excited Hello. excited about the team. Sorry about that. Uh we like our group. They work well together. They have good work ethic and a desire to compete. Uh key factors this year um would be player development. You know those young guys must continue to take step forward and contribute to us in order for us to grow as a team. I believe that our biggest strength is the depth of our team. Um we have to get more defensive minded. uh versatility and creativity to be essential to our defense. Uh focus will be on establishing onc court toughness and physicality. Uh defensive emphasis will be on creating turnovers, taking charges, fighting through screens, uh picking up full court, trapping, playing zone, protecting the rim, etc. I want to acknowledge that our coach Billy Donawan was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Congrats, Billy. Thank you. and uh several of the players came out to Springfield to support him. Uh that says something about the kind of coach Billy is and the relationship he cultivates with his players. Billy has done a great job with the group last year and will continue pushing them to play a specific way this year. Uh Billy and his staff have done a tremendous job preparing the group. I trust Billy 100%. We made huge strides last year. We’re aligned and players are bought in. We are confident in this group and excited to show our fans the team that plays with consistency, toughness, and pride every night. Building while competing is a goal. Every decision tied to that. And now we will take your questions. Oh. Uh Casey Johnson, Chicago Sports Network. Hi, our tourist and Billy. Uh, our tourists, uh, are all 20 people here and are every is everyone able to practice tomorrow? Uh, they’re all here. Um, Kobe is going to be limited. Uh, he had a, you know, calf strain in August. Uh, but we work, you know, we’re working him back uh, slowly. Uh, and he’s going to be limited in training camp uh, and preseason. Uh, hopefully we can see him at the end of preseason. Uh but our focus is on uh uh him being ready for a regular season. Julia, Chicago Tribune. Uh Arturz, what’s kind of your impression of where the Eastern Conference is at just with some of the upheaval, injuries, etc., and did that affect or impact kind of some of the offseason decision-m that you guys had coming into this year? Yeah. So I I think there are two things is you know you’ve noticed the shift a little bit that a lot of uh teams are trying to make their roster deep so they can sustain you know the you know 82 games and if any injuries happen you you can survive the injuries and the next man in line uh you know plays and um and then the second one is the parody of Eastern Conference because you know you talk to a lot A lot of teams right now they think they’re in and they can compete. So u yeah Joel Lorenzi with the athletic. Hey Arturus, you uh you mentioned your intent for trading for Isaac was to sort of cultivate this this level of toughness. I think if OKC maybe showed any things that you maybe need four or five of Isaac, I guess what are the first steps for you in terms of building a defensive identity? Where does he fit into that? And what are the pieces you think you may be missing? Well, I think we were, you know, talking about, you know, playing better defensively. You got to start bringing people that, uh, play tough defense, and he was the first one in our mind. Uh, other than that, I think a lot of what we’re going to do defensively, and Billy can uh, talk about that, um, is that we’re going to have to do different things defensively. Would that be zone? Would that picking up full court? Would that be trapping? Because, you know, we were one of the last teams in terms of creating turnovers. So, defense’s focus continuing obviously offensively to do the same things that we’ve done last year. Uh, but with a focus on, you know, getting better defensively. We we’ve done those things at the end of the year much better. Uh, you know, with, you know, saying that the last 20 games, you know, we were 14th offensively and ninth defensively. But I think we saw what happened in uh in the playing game and the level of physicality went up and we couldn’t handle it. So those very specific things we’re going to have to do this year uh going into season I’m sorry Drew Stevens the bigs turus this organization has not won a playoff series in a decade since you took over is reported one winning season. What do you say to the growing pocket of Bulls fans who don’t believe this organization is serious about winning more championships? Well, you know, going back a year ago when we, you know, got into this transition and we in this, you know, starting our second year, uh, I think we were messaging the fan base that this is the way we have to do it. Uh, we have to be patient. We have to be do the right way and we can’t skip steps. So I think for this team, you know, for next year, we got to show growth and we got to get better every year. Um, you know, again, we we saw the glimpse at the la, you know, last year. Uh, you know, we also saw our, you know, you know, how we, you know, played against Miami and and those lessons are learned. But, uh, I think, you know, this group is pretty young and, uh, there’s a lot of potential there. Joe College sometimes Arturus, what uh how serious are you guys about trying to get a deal done with Kobe at some point or at least start talking about that or is it kind of set in stone that he is going to test free agency and you guys will just have to be bitter in this? Well, you know, I’m not going to talk about, you know, the negotiations or conversations. We we had a lot of them. Uh, but what I can tell you is that, you know, we we love Kobe. Uh, he’s, you know, improved the last two years, has been great last year. And, you know, hopefully he’s going to be here for a long time. When the time comes, we’ll, uh, we’ll talk to him and his representation. And the second part to that, Kobe probably is the closest fringe allar, but you’ve talked about roster depth and pointed around the Eastern Conference. A lot of those deeper rosters have all stars. You guys do not currently have an all-star. How do you change that? How do you I mean, how do you justify saying, “Well, we’re just going with depth, but you still don’t have those dudes.” Well, I think I think the team success as well is is essential to getting your guys to be allstars. I think we are focused on winning and uh you know those guys have to get better this year and uh team success will establish them if if they are good enough to be allstars or not. I mean you argue you know you can argue that if if if Josh and Kobe had those kind of months like they had in March in January or December they could have been there. So, I think it’s we got to focus on our internal development and uh continue adding, you know, players in the draft and, you know, just continue developing guys internally. Billy, um, obviously there’s quite a bit of talk of your offensive transformation last season and the style of play, how you completely overhauled that. You’ve heard our tourists talk about the way you closed last season defensively, especially with the addition of Isaac. What is the plan to kind of form a defensive an identity that can carry you through 82 games this season? Yeah, I mean I give our guys a lot of credit, you know, Casey, because I think that the transformation offensively in terms of changing that style really speaks to I think one the condition they came in and how they practiced and got ready to do that, right? So that was a I think a good evolution for the group. The other part of it too defensively, you know, as you go through the off season, you really start to break down how do you get better? How do you improve? The first thing we have to look at is the fact that teams took four more shots than we did per game. And I think our net rating was minus 1.6 and we had the 13 13th best I think effective field goal percentage. So we shot the ball pretty well from pretty much all errors in the floor. But we really need to find ways to generate more opportunities and more possessions for ourselves. So, for example, when you start to break it down, I think the first thing you look at is we’re 29th in the league in forcing turnovers. Now, that doesn’t mean we need to run around and gamble and go for steals, but when you look at where steals come from, a lot of times it comes from deflections, active with your hands. We’re 29th in the league there. 28th in the league in offensive rebounding. You know, we turn the ball over more than our opponents. Um I think there’s controllable things that we need to focus on to try to flip that number because that’s really really what’s going to be important. So the defensive part of it is did a good job in transition, did a good job, I think rebounding the ball, you know, as a group collectively, but the other areas activity with our hands, deflections. The biggest reason we made a jump and tourist mentioned it going from wherever we were to ninth was the rim protection. We’re 28th or 29th in charges. There’s these things physically that I think everybody inside of our team is capable of doing, right? So, that’s kind of where the focus has got to be on what are those things that are going to help generate more possessions for us. And there’s a lot of things you could do. Offensive rebounding, taking care of the basketball, deflections, charges. you know, we were not a great team on loose balls, coming up with loose balls. Those are areas, I think, where we can maybe help ourselves and and and make a jump defensively instead of just being like, okay, it’s going to be one-on-one. This guy’s got to guard this guy. This guy has got to guard that guy. Isaac is a tremendous defender. Seen him obviously very closely in Cleveland, but we don’t have everybody built like that. So, how do we generate manufacture extra possessions? That’s one of the focuses I think for us defensively is going to be on those things. Will Galaxy shio you guys are in a similar position now to the one where you took over where you have a young group and cap space coming up. Um as you guys formulate a plan or figure out how you want to move forward. What lessons did you learn from the first time that you overhauled the roster um or mistakes do you hope to avoid as you you know formulate the next plan and next roster iteration? Well, probably going back what, four years ago, 20 2122, I think we, you know, executed huge plan of revamping the the roster and did it very quickly over one summer. Uh, and I think, you know, after making the playoffs, uh, and waiting for the guys coming back from injury, um, I think it took us a while to spin out of it, uh, when there was lack of success. So I think now, you know, looking back at last year and the success that we had with this young group, uh, going into second year, uh, and having the flexibility after this year and continuing, you know, to evaluate these players right now for long fits, I think it’s going to give us, you know, huge opportunity to build this roster. And follow up on that, when you’re talking about evaluating players, uh, what is important to you with how you’re going to evaluate, especially the young group, how players impact winning. And I think Billy and I, we talk about winning all the time and uh, the the new guys that came in last year, they they found it very refreshing that we focus on winning and how every player can impact winning. So, we’re going to focus on winning every game without putting any, you know, you know, goals to, you know, on a team, uh, besides just getting better and growing together. Just kind of building off that, you said putting try not to put too many goals on this team. Is are the playoffs the goal for this year? And if so, what do you feel like is maybe different about this group, about the approach that would help you guys get over the hump that you’ve hit the last three years? Well, again, I think, you know, we don’t have, you know, at the end of the day, you know, our ultimate goal is obviously to win to win a championship, but we in a position where we have to focus on our growth and what we’ve done well last year and what we need to do this year. Uh, you know, we’ve talked with Billy, there’s a certain specific way we have to play in order to win games. We watch playoffs. We saw how physical and demanding physically was, you know, every game. So, our guys got to play that way and uh this year will show if if if they’re capable of doing it. Billy Josh Josh on our daily news. Um, congrats on the Hall of Fame. Um, throughout your plenty of years of experience, you obviously have a lot of experience when it comes to young players and development and growth. What other lessons have you learned from your coaching all through all those years that really prepared you for this specific chapter with the specific roster that you have of the young talent that you guys have? Um in terms of like when you say the development piece like you talk about anything specifically what you’re talking about any any type of areas growth on on the court off the court character etc. Yeah you know I I I als I understand when you have a young player people want to see the young player play just to see what the guy can do. You know I think a perfect example that was modest last year. You know, there was just things quite honestly early in the year that he just was not doing that I didn’t really feel like he earned the opportunity to get extended minutes. And you know, every player is a little bit different and their path to growth is a little bit different. Right. Modis is is is the kind of guy that I don’t want to say he wants to make mistakes, but he embraces mistakes as an opportunity to learn. And I think the one thing you saw from him is as the season unfolded, everything he got, he really earned and he did a really good job. The thing I’ve tried to do, I’m using him as an example as a young player. The thing I’ve tried to do with him this summer is this is going to be a totally different situation for him this year. You know, he’s no longer a guy that didn’t play maybe the first 30, 40 games and then after the All-Star break kind of got an opportunity to start. He’s going to be a different level on a scattering report this year than he was. Io, you know, went through that, I think, after his second year. It’s really not so much the uh the the the the minutes, you know, they all need minutes to grow, but it’s more how do they become impactful players where they’re impacting their teammates and how do they impact winning? And there’s a lot of different ways. So, that’s kind of where my focus on and and that that covers a wide range of things. That’s how they rest, how they eat. I mean, you can ask Modest this, you know, midway through the year, even when he wasn’t playing a lot, he said to me, “I am exhausted.” Like, there’s processes these guys go through that you got to help them with besides ball handling, passing, shooting, just how to be a pro, how to get yourself prepared to to play, how do you impact the game, how do you pay attention to scout reports, how do you watch film, do you go home and actually work and do some things or do you, you know, not do anything at night? Like, I think those are the things you try to help players with. and then hopefully those things transfer onto the court. Um Zachary Dreves with Clutch Points. Uh you said earlier um about um wanting to stay competitive but then also focusing on the inevitability of free agency after the season with many of the players. Um how do you strike that balance going into this season with wanting to stay competitive but then knowing full well about you know the future of many of the core players on this team? Well, probably we’ll stay present in the moment and we’re going to, you know, look at this year at this team, how we’re going to start, how we’re going to go through the season. And, you know, again, you know, all those very specific goals and how we want to play and how the guys have to respond. Uh, we’re probably going to have to play, you know, long rotations because, you know, we wanted to play fast and high pace. So, we’ll we’ll we’ll see, you know, during the year and that information collected is going to help us, you know, to make those decisions. Billy, I’m going to break a Billy Donovan Cardinal and ask you about starting lineups. Um, great. I know you you really like Kevin Herder starting. I think that group of Giddy, Kevin, Kobe, VC, and Modest was like seven and one, 81, something like that. Um, are you sold on that that that’s sustainable or do you have to look, you guys talk about defense, do you have to look at maybe an Auro coming in and being that defensive presence, that defensive stopper that could kind of change the look of things and and not rolling out Pat Williams, but at the same time, it seems like that lineup worked, but I don’t Do you feel it’s a sustainable starting lineup? Yeah, I think it’s a a very fair question, Joe, just because, you know, generally your second unit guys are going against second unit guys, and no disrespect to any of those guys because it’s a hard league to play in. But, you know, you there’s so many things that go into that question. One, last year we staggered Kobe a lot. You know, we played him the first four minutes and and brought him back with the second unit. But, I think those are things we’re going to have to, you know, really take a look at. I think as our tourist mentioned, we’re going to have to use our whole roster. And last year was probably the first year that we kind of rotated 10, so to speak, during the course of the game. I I think to answer your question, I I think that I would be open and I think being around these guys, they’re all pretty much open of doing what’s best. Maybe it’s starting Kevin, maybe it’s starting Isa uh Isaac. I’m not really sure yet. Um certainly defensively with Isaac being out there just on his body of work, you’d say, “Okay, there’s that guy on the anywhere probably from 1 through four, he can guard any of those kind of guys, right?” But to your point, there’s also some evidence that Kevin out there was pretty good, too. So, I think it’s going to be probably something we’re going to have to look and view because at the end of last season, one of the things that, you know, with the way the group played after the All-Star break, after the trade, Trey Jones got hurt and so did I. They’re back now. So, now you’re starting to talk about, you know, how we mix and match and rotate the players in there. And that may take a little bit of time. It may require changing some of the starting lineup with the rotations or how that works. Since this is kind of start training camp, knock on wood, we can stay whole with our health. We’re going to take a few more. Josh, go ahead. Arturus, uh, why is that 15 and five stretch in your mind more representative of this team than the 19-point loss it suffered to the Heat in what was the most important game of the season? No, I think during that 20 uh game stretch, we learned certain things and then obviously we learned a lot from losing to Miami as well and uh you know the way we kind of physically couldn’t handle you know the physicality of Miami Heat in that game and I think those are the lessons that they have to take into the season and we’ll see how they respond this year. I’m looking forward to watching them in training camp. There’s going to be a lot of competition. You know, we talked about, you know, long rotations and, you know, the guys are ready to work. Marinowski with ABC7 and Winnie City Bulls TV. I’m curious about the plan for Noah Senate. We saw Misplay a couple of games last year out at Hoff in the Estates. He’s one of the youngest players of the league. Should we anticipate seeing him playing a lot of G-League games this year? Well, in terms of incorporating him into, you know, we we we have to look at our training camp and how he does. I mean, so far we watched him in the gym and the the the great thing is that he doesn’t need the ball, you know, so he he plays really well without a ball and and we not going to put high expectations. So, what’s going to happen? We’re just going to see him in training camp and how he does in preseason and we’ll make those decisions then. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think being around Noah in summer league to to Art Turus’s point, I think the one thing that was encouraging to me is I think he’s got instinctively a pretty good feel of how to play. Like he doesn’t put himself in a lot of difficult situations. He’s very long athletically. Um he’s going to have to get better with his strength. He’s going to have to get better, I think, guarding the ball one-on-one. Um I think his shooting, he’s got good form, but that will need to get better. But I think like Artur said with his as young as he is, this is going to be a process for him. But he’s a great kid, he’s a really good worker and I think just instinctively he really knows how to play the game. And that’s a huge advantage for a young player. Even though there’s physical things that he has to get better with and there’s skill things he has to get better at, one of the most difficult things to offset is when a guy just doesn’t have a great feel how to play. When I’m talking about his feel, he’s very good cutting into open space. He understands how to space when he does get the ball. He doesn’t try to do too much and put himself in harm’s way. So maybe a better way of saying his feel is he’s got a very very good understanding of playing within himself. And and I really I think probably what’s helped him is being overseas and playing professionally. He really does a good job playing within himself. And as those other areas get better, I think you’ll start to see him evolve into the player, you know, we’re all hoping he can be. Billy, you touched on him briefly, but I’m just kind of curious since he’s your major new face, uh, a detailed scout report on Isaac, both coaching him as an opponent and what you’ve got to know about him personally since you’ve acquired him. Yeah, the the one thing I think I’ve respected right away about him and the conversations we have is everything that he talks about is always we, you know, which I admire. Like a lot of times, you know, what’s my role or they get into what they need to do or he’s really talking more about how do I impact a team? what do you need? Uh what does a team need to be? Who do we need to be? And I respect that. You know, I’ve always had great admiration for him when he was at Cleveland. We saw them a lot. You know, he always guard the other team’s best player. He’s physical. I I I do think on Cleveland’s team, you know, there probably with Donovan Mitchell and Garland and Moley. There maybe wasn’t a lot of opportunity offensively. You know, I think he’s worked hard on his shooting from the corners, he’s gotten better in that area. Um, I do think the toughness and the physicality he brings will help our team. Um, I think in my conversations with him, he’s just a veteran guy with a lot of experience and he’s gained a lot of experience still being relatively young. So, um, I really have enjoyed being around him. And I would say the thing that comes to mind to me, he’s a total team guy. Charges. I I don’t worry about that with him. We got to get some other guys to do that. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Thank you everyone.

Hear from Bulls head coach Billy Donovan and executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas at their open press conference at Bulls media day 2025.

#chicagobulls #nba #pressconference

✅: 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 – https://www.youtube.com/@CHSN_Media

📱: 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗽𝗽
▪️ https://2ly.link/243X4

🖥️ : 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝘀𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁
▪️ https://bit.ly/3D4PDaR

📱: 𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀
▪️ Find us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CHSN
▪️ Like on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CHSN
▪️ Follow on X: https://twitter.com/CHSN__
▪️ Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@chsn