Zach LaVine, Bulls Have Players-Only Meeting After Blowout Loss in Opener to Thunder

The Chicago Bulls may have made NBA history on Wednesday night with the earliest players-only meeting into a season.

The Bulls fell 124-104 to the Oklahoma City Thunder in their opener. That prompted Chicago's players to talk amongst themselves in the locker room.

"Guys want to win," guard Zach LaVine told reporters. "You put up a game like this in game 1, you're going to have some conversations. Guys are frustrated and you should be. ... It's a good thing, but sucks that it happened game 1. It happened, and we got to go from there."

Center Nikola Vučević echoed how clearing the air was beneficial to the squad:

Vučević also addressed what looked to be a pointed exchange between he and head coach Billy Donovan in the third quarter.

"In certain moments, I felt we were a little stagnant and running similar things and I think we could've involved myself in certain situations that could've helped the team," he said. "I'll look at the film again and see. Maybe some of the things I saw were wrong and I overreacted. I'll see.

"It wasn't so much just my touches. Just stuff we were running could've been better for us in the moment. Some of it was touches, but not necessarily for me to score. Offensively we got a little stagnant and didn't play with energy and move the ball enough."

There are some exceptions, but players-only meetings are typically a foreboding sign regardless of what those involved say after the fact. To reach this point after Game 1 is even more concerning if you're a Bulls fan.

You'd expect Chicago to be past situations like this when the core of the roster has been together for multiple seasons. The whole point of running it back with the axis of LaVine, Vučević and DeMar DeRozan is that you benefit from added continuity and chemistry.

Entering the year, the Bulls looked to have a limited ceiling. They lost to the Milwaukee Bucks in five games in the first round of the 2022 playoffs and then failed to make it out of the play-in tournament last year after going 40-42.

Now, we might have to reset their expectations to be even lower.