DENVER — Zach LaVine still was getting high pick-and-roll sets, Nikola Vucevic still was getting the ball in the post with the option to pass or score and DeMar DeRozan still was operating in the mid-range, a part of the court he has dominated like few others.
But the three continued to look and sound disconnected from the offense after the Bulls’ 123-101 loss Saturday to the Nuggets.
A simple fix or a long-term issue? It depends on whom you talk to.
‘‘It’s not like we’re doing anything different,’’ coach Billy Donovan insisted after the Bulls’ second-half meltdown in Denver. ‘‘To me, I would be concerned if those guys weren’t getting the quality number of shots. DeMar has played in a bunch of different systems and Zach, too. They’ve scored wherever they’ve been. Same as Vooch.
‘‘I think if it was like, ‘Hey, we’re taking DeMar and making him a point guard now, and instead of taking 18 or 20 shots he’s taking 12 shots because we want him to distribute,’ [that would be different]. He’s never done this before, but he actually did some of that [with the Spurs] in San Antonio. I feel like they’re aggressive; they’re trying to move the ball. We have to do that.’’
The issue, however, seems to be when to move the ball.
The front office and coaching staff made it a point to bring back the Bulls’ core group of players, despite more underachieving moments than successful ones, with the idea of eliminating their shortcomings.
That meant changing the shot profile to shoot more three-pointers, as well as keeping the ball moving to prevent the sets from getting stagnant.
But what that has led to, DeRozan said, is a group of guys trying to play the right way and hesitating too often when it comes to deciding whether to shoot or to pass.
‘‘You’ve just gotta keep your head down and keep working on it,’’ DeRozan said. ‘‘What’s going on is not coming from a malicious place. We want to share the ball and play the right way, but you can see guys overthinking it at times.
‘‘I think we have a lot of hesitancy of trying to do the right thing over doing the right thing.’’
Repetition will solve some of that, but then there’s also an uphill battle with the math.
Yes, the Bulls have changed their shot profile a bit by taking more three-pointers early this season — 30.4 per game from a league-low 28.9 last season — but they also are missing at a much higher rate. After shooting 36.1% from three-point range last season, they are at 31% so far this season.
Donovan is banking on that to improve.
‘‘If you look at a guy like Coby [White], just over his career, he’s been a pretty consistent shooter,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘He hasn’t shot the ball particularly well [this season]. You can say the same about Zach. I’m all for taking threes, but I also think they have to be the right ones at the right time by the right guys.’’
Asked whether they were, Donovan responded: ‘‘I think, for the most part, we’ve done a pretty good job. We haven’t shot the ball well, and it does get deflating when teams are just hopping up and knocking shots down and we’re getting relatively good ones and they don’t go in. We’re trying to attack the paint and get downhill.’’
But the reality is that this group might have a limited amount of time to figure it out. DeRozan will be eligible for free agency after the season, and LaVine’s and Vucevic’s names continue churning in trade rumors.
DeRozan acknowledged the possibility of breaking up the roster being an option, but he said that would fall on the organization.
‘‘As players, you can only control what you can control,’’ he said.
