The Chicago Bulls are just 2-9 through 11 games this season, but their on-court improvement has been evident.

Friday's 125-117 win over the Atlanta Hawks was validation that the team's process throughout the early part of the season could finally result in a victory. Head coach Tiago Splitter applauded his team's resilience in withstanding Atlanta's second-half comeback attempt and finishing the game in overtime.

"We've been playing against very good teams," Splitter said. "Of course, we lost a couple of those bad, but we had good moments throughout those games and I think we deserve this win. We've been fighting for this. We've been talking about this. We've been working a lot to get better. We've been watching a lot of film. We knew we were going to go through a tough patch, but the guys really deserve this win."

Of the Bulls' first 13 games, 11 are against teams that reached the playoffs a season ago. That includes a 10-game stretch against playoff teams, and Chicago was 0-7 in that period before beating the Hawks.

Splitter has placed an emphasis on needing his young team to stay focused for an entire 48-minute game. That's been an issue so far.

The Bulls led by as many as 22 points against the Spurs on Wednesday before San Antonio came back and won. The game prior, Chicago was in a tight contest against the 76ers and allowed Philadelphia to pull away in the third quarter. The Bulls also held double-digit leads against the Knicks and the Wizards, but lost both games due to allowing big second-half runs.

Norman Powell, who scored a game-high 33 points against Atlanta, said the difference was his team's execution and attention to detail.

"We didn't have great focus coming into the second half [in those games], kind of trying to feel our way into the game because we're up, we're feeling good," Powell said. "Those teams are gonna jump on you. They know what they're doing wrong, and they're going to make adjustments and then come out strong in the second half. I thought we did a great job of matching their physicality and their intensity and executing how we wanted to."

The Bulls shot a league-worst 27.2% over their first nine games. Despite that, Splitter was adamant that their shot quality has been good and that the team just needs to make the looks their offense generates.

In Chicago's last two games, those attempts are finally finding the bottom of the net. The Bulls made 35 of their 79 three-pointers (44.3%) against the Hawks and Spurs

"It was always going to come back to league average at some point," Josh Giddey said. "We weren't going to shoot that bad for the entire season. Guys trust the work, we trust each other, we make the extra pass, we get good looks. It's a team kind of effort. We don't have a guy that we're gonna be able to give the ball to and let them go to work. We've got to do it by committee and I think we've done that these last few games. It hasn't resulted in wins, but that's the process we've got to trust and the outcome will be what we want more often than not when we play the right way."

Giddey finished with his first triple-double of the season, totaling 15 points, 14 assists, 10 rebounds and three blocks. Splitter shared Giddey's sentiment about the Bulls' on-court process.

"This is the way we want to play," Splitter said. "Sharing the ball, moving the ball side-to-side. We shot the ball well. This team, they [make you] turn the ball over. They've got great defenders at point of attack and we suffered a little bit, but we found shots at the rim and threes. We made 20 threes, so that's the game right there."

After being blown out in several of their first few games, the Bulls are finally giving themselves the chance to win. Whether that actually results in victories or not matters less at this stage of the young team's development, but games like Friday's win over the Hawks are sure to provide a significant boost to Chicago's morale, at minimum.