Patrick Williams rips Bulls over effort level in blowout loss to Pacers

For the third consecutive season, the Chicago Bulls are shaping up to have a mediocre season. Despite trading away Alex Caruso and DeMar DeRozan during the offseason, the Bulls are still hovering right around the .500 mark, and Zach LaVine notably said once that as long as he's in the Windy City, there will be no deliberate losing. However, the Bulls may as well have thrown the game on purpose on Wednesday as they suffered a 129-113 loss against the Indiana Pacers.

The Bulls came out of the gates lethargic, and for a team facing opposition that's currently in the middle of a winning streak (Pacers had won three straight prior to tonight's contest), this is simply inexcusable. The effort level that they showed up with drew the ire of starting power forward Patrick Williams, calling out the entire team following the game.

“I think we just got to be better as a team. We know that. [We were] definitely not [ready from the jump]. And that's on us. That's us just being professional. That's our job to show up and play. And we didn't do that tonight, for the whole night. You know what I mean? It's the best league in the world. You can't just show up and expect to win. [You can't just] show up and kind of half-a** and expect to compete and win no matter how much talent you have,” Williams said, via Bulls on CHSN on X (formerly known as Twitter).

"You can't just show up and expect to win." pic.twitter.com/nPz6pgsNjx

— Bulls on CHSN (@CHSN_Bulls) January 9, 2025

For a team that isn't already the most talented to begin with, the Bulls can ill-afford to lack in the effort department. And for a Pacers team with plenty of youthful verve, starting the game off even half a step slow is a death sentence, and that's exactly what happened to them on Wednesday night.

Patrick Williams, Bulls suffer Wednesday night to forget

While Patrick Williams is well within his rights to call the team out for their lack of effort, he also has to put in a more concerted effort on both ends of the floor. The Bulls forward put up all of two points on Wednesday in their loss to the Pacers, and he scored those two from the free-throw line, going 0-6 from the field in the process.

But there are plenty of execution woes that the Bulls have to clean up as well; they turned the ball over 18 times on Wednesday night compared to just eight for the Pacers.