Coby White, Bulls ease past Nets

Sunday night’s 124-102 win over the Nets began the second half of the Bulls’ season.

Their first 41 games included the highs of the 5-0 and 6-1 starts that gave some hope this Bulls team could be different. Then just as quickly, the Bulls came back to reality and ended the first 50% of their schedule in a familiar place: slightly below .500 at 19-22 and in contention for an Eastern Conference play-in spot but little else.

Bulls coach Billy Donovan didn’t really see Game 42 as a milestone, but just another game during a grinding part of a grinding season.

“They just keep coming,” Donovan said. “I always think that you get to after Halloween, after Thanksgiving, after Christmas, after New Year’s and then there’s a six-week window of games before you get to the All-Star break. You’ve got to really concentrate and bear down.

“I don’t know if it’s necessarily looking at the halfway point, as much as it’s this time of year where you’re in January and the games are coming either back-to-back or every other day, can you get yourself mentally and physically focused to go the next night because the games keep coming?”

At least for one night, the Bulls showed they can keep enough focus.

The Bulls opened the back half of their season with an easy win over a Brooklyn team they lost to 112-109 on Friday night. Coby White led the Bulls with 24 points and hit seven 3-pointers, Nikola Vucevic had 17 points and 11 rebounds and Ayo Dosunmu scored 19.

“You always want to hit seven [3-pointers] in a game, but obviously that’s not going to happen every night,” White said. “For me, it’s just continue to trust the work, trust my instincts, continue to put time into the gym and tonight they fell.”

The Bulls hope that the current stretch with games every other day allows White to find the groove they need. Due to calf issues, White is not playing in both ends of back-to-backs.

“It’s very important for me, especially getting back into the flow of things,” White said. “Just taking it game by game.”

As a team, seven players scored in double figures for the Bulls, who have won two of their last three games. They also benefited from 41 assists to tie a season high, a byproduct of crisp ball movement that was too much for the Nets to handle, especially with Michael Porter Jr. resting.

“I really thought we shared the ball really well,” Donovan said. “We generated good shots. I thought we were a little more active with our hands [defensively].”

White echoed that after a game when only eight of the team’s 49 baskets did not come with an assist.

“We got a lot of the same looks that we got last game and tonight they just fell,” White said. “Everybody shot the ball well.”

Sunday night was also a different experience for the Bulls. Their last three games had been decided by just a combined 11 points. Though the Bulls lost two of those games (Friday at Brooklyn, Tuesday at Houston), they’ve generally played well in clutch situations, defined as any game where the score is within five points with five minutes left of regulation or overtime.

In 25 clutch games, the Bulls are 14-11, which makes up more than half of their games.

“In a lot of these games, there’s going to be enormous swings that go in the game,” Donovan said. “You have to be able to deal with it emotionally. I think you’ve got to be able to concentrate.”