BOSTON — Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas gave a rare state-of-the-team address Tuesday.
Karnisovas has been very regimented in terms of when he speaks publicly, keeping the schedule of preseason media day, the trade deadline and a postseason wrap-up.
On Tuesday, however, Karnisovas read the room and opted to go off-script.
‘‘We see what everyone is seeing and are just as frustrated,’’ Karnisovas said in a quick conversation with Bulls beat reporters. ‘‘We’re disappointed, but I’m not running from it. It’s my responsibility.’’
It is, and he seemingly gets it.
The Bulls dropped to an embarrassing 5-14 after being humiliated 124-97 by the Celtics. They have lost five games in a row and are failing in almost every category that matters.
The next question Karnisovas will have to answer, however, is how he will change it because change certainly is coming.
The idea that coach Billy Donovan is in danger isn’t — and hasn’t been — on the table. Karnisovas has made that very clear whenever he has met with the media. The feeling from the front office — fair or unfair — is that Donovan is doing everything he can to turn this ship around and remains tireless in that approach.
The change will come, then, with the roster construction.
‘‘Continuity’’ was the path Karnisovas and the front office chose after last season, and it has brought them to a dead end. Now it’s about management finding the best way to burrow out of it, but that likely won’t be until closer to the trade deadline in February, when all the teams are sitting at the table.
Until then, however, Karnisovas only can hope the Bulls will play better to raise the trade value of as many players as possible. It doesn’t mean he is in on a full rebuild, but it keeps his options open.
And Karnisovas isn’t alone in his hope for a turnaround.
Veteran forward DeMar DeRozan again found himself trying to explain how the Bulls continue to find themselves stuck in the mud, especially after a destination training camp in Nashville, Tennessee, in which they built relationships and found common ground about how to have tough conversations with one another.
‘‘We’re still connected, for sure,’’ DeRozan said of his teammates. ‘‘That’s where a lot of the frustration is coming from because everybody is comfortable having those tough conversations that we didn’t have before. It’s having it all click on the same page, and that comes with winning. Everyone is eager and hungry to want to win; we’ve just got to put it together.’’
Then again, guard Zach LaVine threw a small grenade into things when he and his representatives did nothing to squash a report that LaVine wants to be elsewhere. The Bulls have gone 1-6 since that report came out.
‘‘From my perspective, being in the league so long, it’s just really hard for me to get caught up in that,’’ DeRozan said when asked whether the topic of LaVine’s future has been a distraction. ‘‘I’m not even lying to you all; I just don’t see it. With anything in life, when something seems to be going wrong, it’s easy to point at something else.’’
Donovan openly has questioned his players’ ability to handle adversity in crunch time and has talked about the toughness it takes to do so. DeRozan, however, sees a group that has more of an issue with basketball IQ than with toughness.
‘‘It’s just a lack of understanding and IQ with certain points of the game that become critical, and it kind of steamrolls for us from there where we miss shots or make mistakes defensively, turning the ball over,’’ DeRozan said. ‘‘The next thing you know, we’re down 10 when we just got back in the game.’’
