TORONTO — One of the first steps of building a new culture for the Chicago Bulls included the purchase of Hello Kitty suitcases.
Four of them, to be specific. The gaudy, bubble-gum pink, hard-shell carry-on bags are the newest accompaniments for the team’s four rookies — Caleb Wilson, Dailyn Swain, Jaylin Sellers and Tobe Awaka. They’re not the most fashionable look, a fact that got veteran Norman Powell to crack a smile during Wednesday’s shootaround at ScotiaBank Arena. Rookie bags aren’t an invention unique to Chicago. But for a Bulls group desperate to reset its identity, even a light bit of hazing is a crucial piece of team-building.
The Bulls are doing what they can to start on the right foot. They’ve embraced the hokey traditions necessary to bond before any games have been played. Players bang a mallet against a gong placed on a table in the center of the courts at the Advocate Center when they successfully make 20 buckets in the shooting drills that end every training session. The gong is a carryover from previous coaching staffs, but the practice is new. Most media sessions are interrupted by the sound of Buddy Hield clobbering the gong, at times knocking it to the floor in a happy clatter.
These rituals are important. They articulate a bond that actually has not been formed yet, at least not on the court, where it matters most. They remind players to practice the acts of teamwork necessary to bind a group together for the long haul of the regular season. None of this is culture on its own, really. But without committing to these basic rites of passage, a team will never find its way together.
“It happens early on,” Powell, 33, said. “There’s always work in building some type of camaraderie and chemistry. You want guys who are always talking, joking. You want a lively locker room where everybody feels together, everybody has a voice.”
For Powell, opening the season in Toronto offered an opportunity to ground himself in the past before preparing for his future as a true veteran leader. When he thinks about using his voice, Powell reflects on the teachings of his former veteran teammates in Toronto — DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry — where he played the first 5½ seasons of his NBA career.
During those years, DeRozan often teased Powell that his time as the “old man” on the roster would come before he knew it. Now that promise is the reality. Before the season opener Wednesday against the Raptors, Powell reeled at Caleb Wilson’s eager anecdotes about how he “grew up” watching Kawhi Leonard, his own former teammate with the Raptors. Powell found even more amusement in the fact Leonard Miller, a Toronto native, watched the Raptors win the 2019 championship at home as a 15-year-old kid with big NBA dreams.
“Time flies,” Powell said with a laugh.
There isn’t a simple formula for improving a team’s chemistry. But it’s easier, Powell noted, on a young roster like the Bulls’ this season. Young players are rowdy. They don’t always know how to structure their days. They eat the wrong things before games and stay up too late on the PlayStation. But they also act as sponges, malleable and absorbent to a fault. Tell a young player how to eat, how to sleep, how to train, how to recover and he’ll listen.
It’s harder with older players. With each year, NBA players get stuck in their ways. They don’t want to learn a new system. They don’t want to start fresh. Powell himself, entering his 12th season in the league, fights this urge to calcify. It’s hard for a player in his 30s to look internally for his potential, to listen with full openness when a player development coach offers a suggestion.
Yet this is what every player will be asked to do this season. And at the helm of the young bunch in Chicago, Powell — and the Bulls — feel prepared for a season of transformation.
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“I’ve been ready for it,” Powell said of his veteran role. “I’ve been looking forward to it. It just took awhile to get here, but I’m embracing it. I love talking to the guys, I love sharing stories and memories and just giving them game. I’m just giving them the right stuff — how to be pros, how to work on your game, how to be ready for your opportunity no matter what role you’re in.”