Chicago Bulls: 5 holiday wishes for a struggling franchise

3. Make a commitment to defense — at least to making an effort

The Fred Hoiberg-led Chicago Bulls are not defensive stalwarts, to say the least. Their defensive rating of 110.4 is good for 21st in the NBA. While that’s not the worst, they still are in the lower third in the league.

To be fair to Hoiberg, he is hamstrung by needing to play poor defenders in LaVine and Parker at the same time for large stretches of most games. LaVine has the athletic ability to be a decent defender, but just hasn’t shown that he has the basketball IQ to be a consistently strong defender. He takes poor angles moving through screens and is very bad off the ball.

With Parker, he is clearly not fond of putting forth much effort on defense, but he actually has been performing better of late. That being said, the bar is fairly low for him. The Bulls do have a tough-minded young guard in Ryan Arcidiacono filling in at point guard while Kris Dunn is on the mend. The Villanova product has shown that playing defense is as much about desire as it is about athletic ability.

If this franchise wants to start competing for a playoff berth in the near future, some sort of commitment to defense will have to be made. Here’s to holiday wishing that it comes soon.