The Chicago Bulls are a team in flux. After losing to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference semifinals last spring, they have a new coach, a new system, a reconfigured lineup, and a more recuperated Derrick Rose who made it through all of last season without suffering a major injury. Now, they have their collective eyes set on the one thing that’s eluded them since the Michael Jordan era: an NBA Championship.
They’ve introduced a lot of variables into the equation, and with that comes a lot of question marks. Will Rose be able to stay healthy? Can he and rising star Jimmy Butler not only continue to coexist but actually thrive together? Will new head coach Fred Hoiberg be able to shepherd them into the greener, three-point pastures of the modern NBA? And if so, how badly will their celebrated defense suffer in the process? Do they quite simply have what it takes to present a legitimate challenge for the conference title?
Looking at the bigger picture, the early returns seem promising. They’re 9-4 to start the season and second in the East behind only their arch-rivals, the Cleveland Cavaliers, who they beat on opening night. But of those nine wins, five of them were against teams either at or below .500 for the season, the most recent of which was a gritty win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday night. The Blazers have now lost eight of their last 10, and Tuesday night’s matchup was a good case study for where the Bulls are at this point in their development.
Chicago’s offense was one aspect that was supposed to improve dramatically this season under Hoiberg’s run-and-gun system. But a closer inspection reveals that they’ve actually regressed quite a bit in that department. They’re currently ranked 25th in points per 100 possessions, a few ticks worse than their 21st ranking in 2014-2015.
However, after hovering around the bottom third of the league in pace last season in Thibodeau’s lumbering offense, they’ve managed to kick up the tempo a few notches and crack the top ten by averaging 100.06 possessions per 48 minutes thus far. So that’s something. But the enigma remains as to why they haven’t been able to convert that faster style of play into more points.
One reason is that they’re near the bottom third of the NBA in effective field goal percentage, which in itself is strange since they are currently a top five three-point shooting team. They also rank in the top five in assist percentage and in the top ten in assists per game. So what gives? Well, for starters, it turns out the Bulls are the absolute worst team in the league at finishing at the rim: They rank 30th (dead last) in field goal percentage from less than five feet away from the basket. Meanwhile, the league’s true contenders – the Spurs, the Warriors, the Cavs – all rank in the top five in that department.
At least part of the reason for that is that Hoiberg’s new system has distanced itself from the Bulls’ trio of big men: Pau Gasol, Joakim Noah, and Taj Gibson, thus categorically (yet only theoretically at this point) redefining who they are. Noah, Defensive Player of the Year in 2014 and No. 4 MVP voting that same season, has been relegated to the bench and has gone scoreless in five games for the Bulls so far this season. He’s averaging career lows in points, rebounds, blocks and minutes played, per NBA.com.
Gasol, likewise, is averaging at, or near, career lows in points, minutes, and shooting percentage. The common denominator here is that none of them are three-point shooters. Gasol is the only one of the three who can at least somewhat spread the floor with his shooting; although, his range doesn’t reliably extend out to the three-point line. The Bulls would also like to minimize the number of mid-range shots they take, given the league’s ongoing obsession with value and efficiency; although again, they haven’t exactly moved on from that, either.
The player who’s overtaken Noah’s spot in the starting lineup, Nikola Mirotic, has been a mixed bag so far, to say the least. The idea was to try to mimic the types of deadly small-ball lineups the league is trending toward. But the problem with Mirotic is that he’s perhaps not the deadeye marksman from long-range that he’s been billed as, despite what his wholly irrational confidence would indicate. He shot just 31.6 percent from three last season and was shooting an unimpressive 31.3 going into their showdown in Portland. He’s streaky, at best, as evidenced by his going 3-of-4 from downtown against the Blazers on Tuesday.
Doug McDermott, by contrast, is shooting 48.9 percent from downtown on a comparable number of attempts, good for third in the league in that category. So Hoiberg still has a lot of tinkering to do before he figures out the lineup configurations that will work best for what he’s trying to accomplish.
Also, the Bulls still don’t actually take that many threes. They rank 21st in three-point attempts so far this season at just a little more than 22 per game. I also came to find out, they still rank second in the league in the number of shots they attempt from 15-19 feet away, which are some of the most inefficient shots in all of basketball. Only the Indiana Pacers — with mid-range enthusiast, Paul George — take more shots from that area. And Chicago doesn’t even shoot a very good percentage from that distance. They’re not even in the top ten. Once again, true contenders – the Hawks, Cavs, Thunder, and Warriors – are all in the top five even in such a low-efficiency area in the half court.
The good news is that the Bulls’ defensive fortifications haven’t crumbled the way many thought they would with Thibs’ departure and the new premium Hoiberg purportedly wants to place on tempo and three-point shooting. They currently have the No. 5 defense in the NBA as they give up a stingy 97 points per 100 possessions. That’s especially surprising considering Hoiberg’s bold move to send Noah to the bench in favor of Mirotic, whose (again, theoretical) ability to spread the floor with his outside shooting fits better with the Bulls’ new philosophy.
But on Tuesday in Portland, the specter of Tom Thibodeau was looming large over everything the Bulls did, and it was precisely their smothering defense that allowed them to eke out a low-scoring, 93-88, win against a scrappy Trail Blazers team. Despite Damian Lillard nearly notching a triple double, Rose and the Bulls hounded him into 4-of-22 shooting from the field.
“They’re a good defensive team and they close out hard on the perimeter,” Lillard said. “I think guys felt like because they were closing out hard they might be able to get by them. So a few times we passed up open shots on the perimeter. We have to give credit to what they did for making us do it.”
“We got stops when we needed them the most, and that’s what you have to do when your offense isn’t clicking,” Hoiberg said. “We missed some good ones and when that ball got on the side of the floor it didn’t get side to side nearly enough. So again, we’ve just got to keep working, getting better down the stretch.”
Speaking of defense, one of the constants for the Bulls has been the stellar play of reigning MIP Butler, who just keeps getting better. He’s averaging a career-high 21.1 points per game so far, to go along with 5.2 rebounds, 3.4 assists, and 2.1 steals (6th in the league overall), while shooting a career best 40.8 percent from distance.
Toward the beginning of the season, we talked about what Butler would have to do to find himself in the MVP discussion, and part of that included leading the Bulls to a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. They held that distinction until the Cavs seized it with a two-game win streak that coincided with a Bulls loss to the Warriors.
In our first MVP watch, we had Butler cracking the top ten but not yet in that elite handful of players who comprise the cream of the crop. And part of that has to do with Rose. The Bulls were ostensibly happy to get Rose back against Portland Tuesday night after he sat out the past two games with a tweaked ankle, but strangely, they’ve actually been better off without his services this season. Here’s Zach Harper of CBS Sports on Rose’s on/off numbers going into Tuesday’s game:
“In 324 minutes on the court with Rose, the Bulls have scored just 97.8 points per 100 possessions while allowing 98.1 per 100 possessions. In 264 minutes without Rose on the floor, the Bulls’ offense increases by 4.8 points per 100 possessions while the defense improves by nearly a full point (0.9). The team has been much better with Aaron Brooks as the lead guard, while Rose is shooting just 37.7 percent from the field and 15 percent on three-pointers. Brooks’ ability to stretch the floor (36.4 percent from three) just fits better with what Fred Hoiberg wants the team to be on offense.”
It’s nearly impossible to imagine a reality in which Brooks starts over Rose (barring yet another injury to Rose). Instead, they’ll eventually be forced to revisit the uncomfortable question of alpha-dog status. In his first game back from an ankle injury, Rose logged nearly 35 minutes and was 7-of-20 from the field. Butler, by comparison, scored a significantly more efficient 22 points on 6-of-13 shooting, including 2-of-3 from downtown, while getting to the free-throw line four times.
Even after missing two games, Rose still has the highest usage rate of any Bulls player, and down the stretch against Portland, it was abundantly clear who was going to have the ball in his hands and assume the primary play-making responsibilities, i.e. Rose. Butler has always been diplomatic about this touchy subject, and he was downright deferential in his assessment of Rose’s performance after the game.
“He facilitated well,” Butler said. “Took all the right shots that he’s supposed to take. He had a tough task in guarding [Lillard] but he did that to the best of his ability. It’s a different game when he’s out there because he makes a lot of things look easy. He makes it easier for everybody else.”
At some point, they’ll have to re-evaluate the wisdom of that dynamic, both individually and as a team. Despite Rose’s shooting woes, they were able to grind out a win against the 6-10 Blazers, but it’ll likely be a different outcome against quality teams. Though the season is still in its infancy, they’ll eventually be forced to address lingering concerns about both their identify and philosophy before they can be taken seriously as a championship contender.
