Caleb Wilson Says the Bulls' 1-5 Start Starts With Him: 'This Is Gonna Be the Most I Lose in My Life'
Six games into his NBA career, the 20-year-old fourth overall pick is talking like the locker room's leader — and his coach says the will he showed in Boston was contagious.
The Bulls are 1-5, and the player taking the most responsibility for it is the 20-year-old rookie. After Sunday's practice, Caleb Wilson — the fourth overall pick in June's draft — returned to the theme he raised after Friday's blowout loss in Boston: the losing is new to him, and he does not intend to get used to it.
"I know that this is gonna be the most I lose in my life," Wilson said, per Joel Lorenzi of The Athletic. "I'm in the NBA now, and we're not the team that we want to be in the future." Asked whether he feels an obligation to be a leader in the locker room, Wilson did not hesitate: "For sure. I feel like there's a lot of things that I do that rookies aren't expected to do either."
Wilson and several teammates were disappointed in the effort during Friday's lopsided loss in Boston, Chicago's second blowout defeat to the Celtics in five days. Head coach Tiago Splitter was pleased with the intensity Wilson brought in the second half after the team struggled early. "I think his will to play well, to be effective, was contagious," Splitter said, via Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times. "He's a winner; he wants to win. He wants to do the right thing."
The words come with a workload. Wilson has been the Bulls' most productive player through the 1-5 start, and the rebuilding team's defensive rebounding — a weakness Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune has flagged — remains a problem heading into Monday's game in Philadelphia against the 6-1 76ers.
Whether a rookie can carry a locker room is an open question. That this one is already trying, six games in, is the clearest sign yet of how the Bulls' rebuild is being organized — around Wilson, starting now.
