When Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan benched Patrick Williams on Monday, the decision came as a surprise — not because it was unwarranted, but because it was so long overdue.
This should have happened weeks ago. After Donovan yanked him from the closing rotation. After Williams failed to score a single basket against the Indiana Pacers. After he couldn’t manage a single rebound against the Charlotte Hornets.
Instead, Williams finally hit the breaking point after a relatively routine night of disappointment in Saturday’s loss to the Philadelphia 76ers. The wing faded out of the game for all four quarters. Less than 48 hours later, he was quietly benched in favor of Ayo Dosunmu for Monday’s game against the Denver Nuggets.
It worked. Immediately. Williams came off the bench to rack up one of his most efficiently aggressive performances of the season, tallying 11 points, eight rebounds and three assists in 28 minutes in an improbable 129-121 win.
For the majority of this season, Donovan has been trapped. Williams wasn’t living up to his starting role — but there weren’t any other options.
The next two available wings on the roster who could flex to guard a power forward are second-year Julian Phillips (6-foot-8) and rookie Matas Buzelis (6-foot-10), both of whom are too green to shoulder a starting role. That lack of size on the perimeter became a sticking point for Donovan, who pointed to power forward matchups as a key reason to keep Williams in the mix even as he continued to come up short.
On Monday, however, matchups gave Donovan an out. The Nuggets recently moved 6-foot-8 forward Aaron Gordon to the bench, creating a crucial need for size in the secondary rotation. Donovan moved Williams into the secondary rotation to meet this matchup, giving the Bulls a solid defensive scheme off the bench while also taking a trial run with a new starting rotation.
It’s not a surprise — nor an anomaly — that Williams played considerably better off the bench than in the starting rotation. After the win, Williams admitted that he’s most comfortable in a secondary rotation. He came off the bench for his singular collegiate season at Florida State and always found his rhythm during sporadic benchings with the Bulls.
“The second unit needs different things than the first unit,” Williams said. “I’ve always tried to be a player that tries to fill any gap. I’m not trying to say that I’m one thing. I’m just trying to be a basketball player.”
For the first four minutes of the fourth quarter on Monday, it was possible to see a better future for the Bulls.
With a lineup averaging 22.8 years old, the Bulls ran up an 11-0 unanswered streak to open the final frame. Ayo Dosunmu broke open the court in transition. Dalen Terry knocked down a 3-pointer. And Williams helped set the tone at the rim, grabbing offensive rebounds as the Bulls didn’t allow the Nuggets to rebound the ball for the entire four-minute stretch.
Every young player benefitted from moving Williams into the secondary rotation — most notably Buzelis, who logged nearly 20 minutes as the sixth player off the bench, throwing down a ferocious dunk after dropping Aaron Gordon to the floor in the fourth quarter.
This was how this season was supposed to go — young players finding their confidence, regardless of the opponent or the odds. And from the bench, veteran Zach LaVine could see the potential of the team’s young core finally playing in rhythm with one another.
“I was like, ‘Man, this, this is the way that we’re supposed to be playing,’” LaVine said. “When they give us a boost like that, it’s great. Billy looked down and told me and (Nikola Vučević), ‘We’re gonna roll with them.’ And I was like, ‘Damn right.’”
Williams still wasn’t the most assertive player on the floor. He went 5-for-12 from the floor and missed two shots at the rim. But Monday’s confidence was a sharp divergence from the status quo of the last season — and the last three years.
Few players are worse at the rim than Williams. He’s completed only seven dunks this season, showing a lack of enthusiasm for finishing above the basket. And he has taken only 91 shots at the rim while finishing at 42.9%, one of the lowest efficiencies in the league.
After three seasons of the same timidity, frustration began to break through for Donovan as he answered the same questions about Williams’ lack of aggressiveness at the rim.
“He’s tried,” Donovan said after Saturday’s loss. “It hasn’t gone well.”
Scoring is crucial, but the Bulls could look past Williams’ low-volume scoring if he was holding up his end of the bargain on the boards. The wing’s lack of rebounding went from bad to infuriating this year as the Bulls went smaller than ever and Williams remained a non-factor on the glass.
Williams averages only 3.8 rebounds per game, trailing behind Vučević, LaVine, Jalen Smith and Josh Giddey. He was non-functional on the offensive glass, averaging fewer offensive rebounds (0.6) than Buzelis and Phillips. And his rebounding is even worse when adjusted for playing time — he averages the ninth-most rebounds per-36 minutes among Bulls players who have logged at least 100 minutes this season.
These deficiencies contributed heavily to the team’s losses. It’s hard to win games with a starter logging an almost empty stat line every night. But Williams’ status in the starting lineup was also discordant from a central theme of the season for Donovan.
Since opening day, Donovan has defended a central ethos: playing time must be earned.
It’s his consistent explanation for why Buzelis — along with Phillips and Terry — hasn’t earned more minutes. Since his debut, the rookie sparked excitement from Bulls fans with his flashy dunks and athletic blocks, but he’s still averaging fewer than 13 minutes per game.
The reasoning is simple. Donovan wants Buzelis to learn from his mistakes — and the rookie makes plenty of them, especially on defense. Even for a non-contending team like the Bulls, this type of stern coaching is a legitimate path toward developing a rookie rather than throwing undue playing time at a 20-year-old who is unready for that type of workload.
But the concept of “earning playing time” rang dishonest when contrasted with Williams, who remained in the starting lineup despite clearly underperforming Donovan’s expectations. Moving the wing to the bench Monday was the first step toward leveling those expectations for the entire roster.
It’s not clear if this rotation will last. Donovan did not commit to keeping Williams on the bench past Monday. And necessity might return him to the starting rotation for Wednesday’s game against the Celtics — Coby White will be sidelined for at least one more game with an ankle injury while Zach LaVine will miss the next three games to be with his wife for the birth of their third child.
But the Bulls can’t afford to forget about Monday. Williams might not be part of this team’s long-term future. The Bulls are shopping him on the trade market as they prepare to potentially move multiple players at the deadline. After three seasons of underwhelming results, it’s become clear that a change of scenery is likely the only option to kickstart Williams’ career in the NBA.
The best way to boost that trade value is to put Williams in positions to repeat performances like Monday. And that means keeping the wing in his comfort zone — the secondary rotation.
