Billy Donovan reveals why getting Bulls to playoffs matters so much

Billy Donovan’s Chicago Bulls are scorching hot right now. After losing DeMar DeRozan and trading away Zach LaVine, they’re not only a play-in team with ease right now, they’re one of the NBA’s hottest teams over the last few weeks. They’re pretty much locked into the play-in game, a reality that seemed out of the question earlier this year. Donovan opened up on why making it to the playoffs is so important this year.

Billy Donovan wants the Bulls to make the playoffs

To make the playoffs, Chicago would need to rise to the sixth seed, which can theoretically still happen. They just need to win out and have the Detroit Pistons lose out. They’d also need to do 2.5 games better than the Orlando Magic down the stretch.

Otherwise, they’ll be relegated to the play-in tournament. If they’re the seven or eight seed, they need one win to make it to the playoffs. If they’re the nine (which they are now) or 10, they need two wins. Getting there is important to Billy Donovan.

Via Audacy, he said, “There’s something really, really powerful in players that are younger, at some point in their career, they’ve got to impact winning. Even though where we’re at right now as a team, we’re in the play-in, but we’re still kind of at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. But the reality is we have a chance to play meaningful games, and that’s going to help (rookie) Matas (Buzelis).”

Donovan has tried to instill in his young players that every game and every possession matters, but these games in which the Bulls have a chance to do something hammer that point home even better than he could.

“Those things are meaningful. That really, really plays a major factor in player development, and it also puts these guys in situations that they haven’t been in before. And I think when you take the focus off of winning, you miss a big point of what’s going to happen in the future,” the coach went on. “At some point, these guys are going to be put in a situation of where now winning becomes important. You want to make a run. And if they don’t play in these meaningful games, I think it hurts their development.”

It’s all about developing young players in Donovan’s eyes. While tanking and adding more young players might be something other teams try to do, Donovan wants to see the young players he has get valuable experience to one day become winning players.