CHICAGO — Nikola Vučević sought the focus to rant, to call his Chicago Bulls soft, to turn his nose up at a narrow victory over the one-win Washington Wizards. He sensed the pups gleefully surrounding him, disrupting his sober expression.
While Vučević professed his disenchantment with his team’s play to sideline reporter K.C. Johnson postgame, Matas Buzelis, who turned 21 last month, leaped up and down, pumping his fists behind them. Jalen Smith, Chicago’s 25-year-old center, affectionately dug his chin into Vučević’s shoulder.
Vučević snapped, like a weary parent corralling hyper children in a Walmart.
“Move, man,” he told them.
Smith didn’t get the memo, or wasn’t prepared for it, so Vučević momentarily stepped away, stirred, while Smith urged him to be happy. Vučević struggled to find warmth in the way Saturday’s game played out, in what it resembled and the lingering feeling it elicited.
“For three quarters, we were very soft,” Vučević continued after the Bulls’ 121-120 win. “We gave no resistance. We didn’t do anything that we talked about. Just played really soft. It was really bad.”
Vooch called Bulls soft in walk-off. Afterward: “We just didn’t play up to NBA standards.”
Addressed the team postgame and said “I don’t think we understand that it’s just not sustainable to play this way.”
What’s most upsetting? “It’s things that we can really control.” pic.twitter.com/HIakVepBuZ
— Joel Lorenzi (@JoelXLorenzi) November 23, 2025
The Bulls (9-7) stole a win, avoiding a loss to the team with the league’s worst record. A game they once trailed by 16 points with a bleeding defense, failing to outscore the Wizards (1-15) in a quarter until the fourth while making just 12 of 44 3-point attempts. Rookie Noa Essengue made his long-awaited debut, but he was yanked after four minutes, never to return in a game Chicago needed to sit up in its seat for.
In part, Justin Champagnie forfeited a win by committing an inexplicable foul with 34.2 seconds to play and the Wizards up one. That foul put Bulls guard Tre Jones on the free-throw line for the go-ahead points, without forcing the Bulls’ offense to execute an action. Jones’ defensive instincts, which told him to blitz Kyshawn George and force a turnover on the Wizards’ final possession, cued the exhale.
Vučević, 35, craves a night where he holds a regular heart rate. A rest from the Cardiac Bulls. A chance to handily beat deserving teams and not be hogtied by the Bulls’ own volatility. He’s seemingly annoyed with how tightly this group tiptoes the line of what they can get away with to win.
“We just didn’t play up to NBA standards,” Vučević said. “We gave up 41 points in the first quarter. … We talk about it, but I don’t think we really understand it’s not sustainable to play this way.
“It’s just not going to always work in your favor. Sometimes, you’re going to play well and be in close games. But more often than not, if you continue to play this way, it’s going to be bad loss after bad loss.”
Washington’s 41-point first quarter marked its highest-scoring quarter of the season. Its 70-point first half fell two points shy of a season-best. Chicago’s interior defense acts as a feeding ground for young athletes, guards and bigs alike.
Vučević’s words sounded familiar. Those in Utah on the night his Bulls dropped a double-overtime thriller to the Jazz heard similar talking points from his younger teammates. Those in Portland several days later, after a sour win the Bulls nearly handed over to the injury-riddled Trail Blazers, also experienced this.
“I think the frustration comes because there’s things that we can really control,” Vučević said. “We gave up tons of offensive rebounds in the last three games. We’re not there to help each other on defense. We don’t focus on the scouting report where we say, ‘Take away his right hand,’ or things like that.
“The little details matter in this game. In this league, because they add up, you might take away two points here or two points there. The total may be six to eight points a game, but those games are decided within five or six points. To be able to do this, it’s a big difference.”
This template works, in theory, when Chicago can race teams out of their kicks and wear them thin. It offers them a chance against nearly anyone. But stops and defensive rebounds enable their style.
When neither works? When the Bulls’ unremarkable defense rears its ugly head? Then comes the risk of dropping a double-overtime game to the Jazz; taking a loss in Detroit against a Pistons team missing its starters; or sleeping on two unsettling wins over the Blazers and the Wizards.
Only three teams (Milwaukee Bucks, Toronto Raptors and Sacramento Kings) recover fewer loose balls than the Bulls (4.3). Only the Miami Heat, who pummeled the Bulls on the offensive glass on Friday, allow more second-chance points than Chicago (17.6). The Bulls allow the third-most points in the paint leaguewide (55.4), trailing only the Indiana Pacers and Wizards, two teams with three wins between them. Chicago entered Saturday allowing the most buckets in the restricted area per game (21.9), which would be the highest single-season mark for any team since the NBA’s play-by-play era, which started in 1996-97.
“If we keep taking the ball out of the net, it’s not going to work,” Vučević said. “This is the reality of how this team is built, what we need to do. But it’s all things that are controllable.”
Nikola Vučević (9) defends Washington Wizards center Alex Sarr during the second half at United Center. (Kamil Krzaczynski / Imagn Images)
One final stat: As of Saturday, “margin of error” topped coach Billy Donovan’s list of frequently used phrases. His most-beloved term, “physicality,” isn’t gone, just forcibly overtaken in its ranking by the early goings of this season.
Those six to eight points Vučević refers to are perhaps more vital to the Bulls than any other team with playoff aspirations. The paradox they live in — a high-powered offense that hinges on defensive rebounding and an obscure collection of defensive personnel — can be altered by only a couple of possessions.
Since their undefeated start, the Bulls are toying with the basketball gods. Fiddling with the margins. On Saturday, down several of their preferred defenders, playing their fifth game in seven days, they seemed exhausted. But in the first game of that stretch, they fell short in Utah. In the third, they were nearly undone by Donovan Clingan’s wrath on the glass in Portland. In the fourth, they never stood a chance against Miami.
“The little things,” as trite as it sounds, are deciding games for these Bulls.
“We don’t have the greats of this league that can just carry us in games like that,” Vučević said.
Vučević’s spiel comes in a conflicting package. He plays a central role in Chicago’s stylistic identity and its close calls with this margin of error. He’s necessary for spacing, burning teams from 3 this year — two of his three 3s against Washington came in the fourth quarter, part of a 28-point, 12-rebound night — and he’s essential to building an offensive-leaning team around Josh Giddey. Yet Vučević has slow feet and a limited vertical, he’s often ineffective if not outright invisible as a rim protector, and he’s an incomparable athlete to many of the young centers hounding the Bulls on the glass.
The Bulls’ perimeter defense often brings issues to his front door. He’s ill-equipped to face so many challengers at the rim.
But he’s also the only Bulls player who possesses the NBA equity — 15 seasons and two All-Star appearances — to step on this locker room’s soapbox.
“Sometimes those little habits get away from you,” Vučević said. “We have to be reminded of them. Me, as a veteran player, it’s one of my jobs to do these things. … Especially with a (young) team, it takes time to build those habits and make sure to have them. Hopefully, we’re learning this. We have guys that are willing to be coached and understand what needs to be done. It’s just the process of getting there.”
A conflicting message indeed. But one seemingly received.
“He believes that we should beat that team by a lot more, and I totally agree with him,” Buzelis said of Vučević’s postgame lament. “He has every right to be upset.
“We have to be better, for sure.”