Coby White was fighting a cold.
On a priority list of combatants the Bulls guard was dealing with, however, the sniffles weren’t real high.
Frustration, anxiety about the locker room possibly starting to divide, his calf issues, his own pending free agency, losing to subpar NBA teams, sinking in the standings … all current concerns. A cold? That will pass.
“Whatever we do we’ve got to do it together,” White said when asked about a fix for the six-game losing streak the Bulls are muddling in. “That’s the most important thing. I’ve been here a long time, I’ve seen a lot of different situations, been in different scenarios, and the most important thing is we can’t start pointing fingers or anything like that. I’m not saying by any means we’ve done that, but we’re all human. So the most important thing for me right now is we’ve got to stick together. It’s still a very long season.
“I’ve been through the ups and downs here for seven years now, so the most important thing is we stick together through this.”
Easier said than done.
The Bulls are beyond banged up, evident by the team officially announcing on Saturday that rookie Noa Essengue was headed for season-ending shoulder surgery this week after coach Billy Donovan made it known on Wednesday. That currently puts the injury list at six players unable to suit up right now.
It’s been as high as seven in the last week.
And those injuries have led to embarrassing defensive breakdowns, inconsistent shooting, and as Donovan described it, a bit too much isolation ball for a team with very few isolation players.
A recipe for disaster.
Or in the case of the Bulls, a team starting the year 6-1 and the surprise of the Eastern Conference only to then go 3-12 since, losing to cellar dwellers like Indiana twice, New Orleans, Charlotte and Brooklyn.
“The season is always going to be filled with adversity, so we’ve got a chance to change the narrative,” White said. “The most important thing for me is we don’t let go of the rope and we do this thing together.”
The good news for White and the Bulls is there will be some helping hands coming back for that tug of war.
Tre Jones (ankle) and Ayo Dosunmu (thumb) are both expected to be short-term injuries, and they did get some size back into the front court with Zach Collins making his regular-season debut in Friday’s loss to the Pacers.
What remains a concern is the back issues of their best defender Isaac Okoro. He’s dealing with a pinched nerve, so his timetable is blurry. The Bulls are 1-6 without Okoro.
But even when he does return, White knows that the Ws don’t become automatic.
“Nothing in the league is easily fixable,” White said. “You’re playing against the best competition every night, the best players in the world. We’re going to have to put in the effort, fight and claw every night to get back to where we want to get to, but I believe we can.
“We’re a close group, we’ve got a lot of great relationships on this team. For us we’ve got to continue to have the honest conversations we’re having with each other, continue to grow. It’s going to take all of us and it’s going to take a ton of spirit, a ton of heart, but it is fixable, which is the most important thing.”
But what if it’s not fixed?
Then at some point the sleepy front office will have to wake up and make some difficult decisions. White headlines a list of Bulls players on expiring contracts. Besides the guard there’s Nikola Vucevic, Kevin Huerter, Collins, Dosunmu, Jevon Carter and the rookie contracts of Julian Phillips and Dalen Terry.
An unfixable team would have to lead to wholesale movement, right?
“We got a lot of season left,” White added.
That might not necessarily be a good thing.