Bulls' defensive breakdowns leading to crawl in standings

It took guard Coby White almost no time to break down the Bulls’ latest defensive defects.

“I feel like our first-shot defense has been good,” White said Saturday after the Bulls’ 124-113 loss to the Celtics, almost sounding like a coach. “It’s just, you know, the offensive rebounds, which lead to the kick-out threes and to wide-open threes and defensive breakdowns. So we’ve got to limit them to one shot.

“We’ve just got to home in on those details.”

They need to home in on something because it’s those details that have the Bulls limping toward the finish line of the regular season rather than strutting.

The lack of rebounding has been a growing issue, even when coach Billy Donovan throws his jumbo lineup — with Nikola Vucevic and Andre Drummond in the frontcourt — out there, but there also has been a lack of communication on rotations, especially on drive-and-kick threes, and continued breakdowns on the back side on pick-and-rolls.

It’s reparable because the Bulls played top-five defense last season and top-10 defense in December this season.

It was there at one point.

A season-ending foot injury to Patrick Williams is being felt, but lately there has been less urgency and a lack of physicality defensively.

Celtics reserve Luke Kornet should never outrebound Vucevic. But on Saturday, he had a 13-2 advantage, including five offensive rebounds. Shame on Vucevic.

Despite shooting 57% from the field and scoring 54 points in the paint, the Bulls got hammered on second-chance points 23-2. That’s a recipe for disaster.

The Bulls are still ranked 19th overall in defensive efficiency, but they’re 29th in March.

Donovan was asked if he could feel the team’s drop-off in that category, and he didn’t mince words.

“Oh, yeah,” Donovan said. “It’s basically two things that stand out. The two things that have hurt us have been the rebounding and also the fouling. Our first-shot defense has not been bad. It’s been pretty good. It’s been the second-chance opportunities that have hurt us. And then some of the fouling, the ability to go vertical and not try to reach [and foul].”

Identifying the problems is one thing, but getting his players to correct them isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially with the team’s lack of depth.

Because of all the injuries, Donovan has had to get rookies Onuralp Bitim and Julian Phillips (when healthy) to grow up quickly and hope that second-year swingman Dalen Terry can continue showing some value off the bench.

And he has had to get all that done with little practice time between games at this point of the season.

“You have guys like [Bitim], like Dalen, like Julian, who have gotten an opportunity to play and are learning through some of those things,” Donovan said. “A lot was catch-and-shoot [for the Celtics]. When the ball got sprayed out, they were getting it off before we could get there.

“It was a combination of things. As a team, we needed to do a much better job of blocking out than we did.”