Chicago Bulls: Breaking Down Aspects of Stifling Defense Against Brooklyn Nets

The Bulls have owned the defensive end of the floor in this series. (Image from sportsgeekery.com)

Forget the 134 points the Chicago Bulls gave up in triple overtime in Game 4. And let’s ignore the dismal defensive performance from Game 5 on Monday, April 29, for just a second. Because contradictory to what those scorelines indicated, the stifling, stingy and downright gritty defense of the Bulls is the biggest reason they’re up 3-2 on the Brooklyn Nets in the first round. And it’s the only hope they’ll have of competing with the Miami Heat in the next round should they advance.

The Brooklyn Nets were constructed to be a team that could contend in the East. And yet, they’re still on the brink of elimination against a Chicago team with no Derrick Rose. How has Tom Thibodeau’s squad done it? How have they produced wins over a resurgent Deron Williams and Brook Lopez, one of the best scoring posts in the league? Well, as is usually the case when a phenomenal scoring point guard is taken out of the mix, the defense has to step up. And step up it has.

Da Bulls were already a gritty, grind-it-out kind of team before D-Rose went down last year. Defense has always been the main emphasis for Thib’s team, which has helped Chicago stay in games when the shorts weren’t falling. But whenever they’ve had to play without Rose, they’ve morphed into a nasty, physically dominating defensive monster that bullies opponents in the paint with force, harasses perimeter guards with effective ball pressure and terrorizes offensive sets with intelligent defensive schemes. The Chicago Bulls defense isn’t on the brute squad, they are the brute squad.

Joakim Noah is the anchor of Chicago’s defense. He patrols the paint like an overly aggressive meter maid hovering around a line of illegally parked cars and is averaging 2.3 blocks per game in the series. Even more impressive is the fact that Noah is playing through the pain of plantar fasciitis in his foot and has only logged 26 minutes per night. His gutsy performance in Game 2 was nothing if not heroic and it’s the reason the Bulls were able to steal a game on the road. In fact, the argument can be made that if Noah had been healthy for Game 1 (when he only played 13 minutes), this series would have been over already.

Jimmy Butler deserves credit for his defensive efforts as well. Luol Deng has been a defensive stopper on the perimeter for quite a while now, but Butler has taken a lot of that pressure off Deng with effective on-the-ball defense. Sure, he got beat chasing Joe Johnson around a screen that allowed him to send it to double overtime in Game 4, but that one bad play was the exception, not the standard. Don’t forget that it was his block on a Gerald Wallace put-back attempt at the buzzer that prevented Brooklyn from evening the series, shown at the 1:08 mark of this video:

In my opinion, though, Kirk Hinrich has been the unsung hero of the Chicago Bulls’ stifling defense, as evidenced by the 110 points Brooklyn put up Monday night without him in the lineup. Before the All-Star break, Deron Williams’ season was in tatters, but then he went on a tear and posted 22.6 points and 8.1 assists per game to close the season. He was healthy, he was responding to criticism that he was no longer an elite point guard and he looked poised to lead the Nets against a Chicago team without a real scorer. Truth be told, nobody could stop D-Will in Game 1 as he posted 22 points, 7 assists and 3 steals. But like Thibodeau’s teams often do, the Bulls adjusted. In the three wins after that, Hinrich limited Williams to 19.3 points on 35 percent shooting with physical defense that we’ve seen before. In other words, he’s harassed the living hell out of him. And without him in the lineup, Williams had a productive night again for the Nets, who surged in the fourth quarter to send the series back to Chicago.

I could go on and on as I list each individual’s contribution to the team defense, but it’s important to note that that’s the key to Thibodeau’s nightmare of a squad: It’s a team defense. The double teams are all carefully calculated. The weak-side rotations are intelligently crafted and it’s all but apparent how many times they’ve rehearsed them in practice. Chicago has really benefited from a lack of offensive presence from both Gerald Wallace and rebound machine Reggie Evans, as it’s allowed the Bulls to completely ignore them at times. Whenever the normally dangerous Deron Williams-Joe Johnson pick-and-roll occurs (which normally results in a Johnson post-up), the Bulls have overloaded their weak-side help with whoever’s guarding Evans or Wallace. That’s come back to hurt them on a few individual plays (and overall in Games 4 and 5 when Wallace actually made some shots), but a couple of buckets here and there from those offensively inept players isn’t going to hurt Chicago in the long run. Here’s an example:

Luckily for the Bulls, Deron Williams hadn’t capitalized on his size advantage over Nate Robinson until Monday night. But Robinson has been able to hide within Chicago’s defensive schemes, like when was assigned to guarding the completely inactive Wallace in earlier games. Scoring on the Bulls is already hard enough as it is, but when you’re looking at constant weak-side help from guys that can sag off Wallace and Evans, it becomes even more difficult. Lopez has been brilliant at times (with flashes of brilliance early that usually fizzle as the game wears on) while Williams and Johnson have been somewhat consistent, but Chicago’s defense has limited them and prevented breakout playoff performances we often see this time of year. Whenever Chicago has won the rebounding battle, they’ve won the game. And one of their wins came when they were outrebounded by one board. So if Hinrich is back in the lineup for Game 6 and Thibodeau emphasizes cleaning the glass at home, I don’t think this series will go to a Game 7. Only eight teams in NBA playoff history have come back from a 3-1 deficit to win the series. And as long as the Chicago Bulls’ defense holds at home, I don’t anticipate Brooklyn becoming the ninth.