Chicago Bulls: What is wrong with this team defensively?

Thus far, the Chicago Bulls have sported one of the worst defenses in the NBA. As such, there are plenty of issues to pinpoint.

If the Chicago Bulls have learned anything through these first 13 games, it’s that no scheme will make up for a lack of competent personnel.

Much was made of new Bulls head coach Billy Donovan implementing a more conservative approach to defense this year — substituting Jim Boylen’s blitz-heavy strategy with more drop coverage — and thus far, the results haven’t been as encouraging as the preseason hype surrounding the change.

Following their win over the Dallas Mavericks on Jan. 17, the Bulls now rank 27th in defensive rating, with their 113.7 points allowed per 100 possessions 3.5 per 100 worse than league average.

With a defense that bad, you can’t point to any one issue. Among other problems, this team is horrendous when defending pick and roll ball handlers (27th in opponent’s points per possession), hemorrhages spot-up points (23rd in opponent’s PPP), and hands out wide-open 3-pointers like they’re free samples (27th in opponent’s attempts per game).

New scheme or no new scheme, this regression from their 12th-ranked defense in 2019-20 was expected. You don’t lose guys like Kris Dunn and Shaquille Harrison in free agency and assume that everything will remain the same, especially when the plan to replace them is essentially “hope that Coby White and Zach LaVine become better defenders”.

This play here against the OKC Thunder encapsulates much of what’s wrong. Here, George Hill gets by White off of an Iverson cut that flowed into a ball screen. Hill gets to the paint and while Lauri Markkanen and Wendall Carter Jr. are ball watching, 40.0 percent 3-point shooter Isaiah Roby is left open on the wing. Chicago was fortunate that this shot didn’t go in.

Roby gets another chance not long after thanks to that same proclivity to swarm the paint and ignore everything else and this time cashes in.

It was breakdowns like these — combined with 24 team turnovers — that led to the Chicago Bulls coughing up a huge lead (as high as 22 at one point) and losing in overtime.

Believe it or not, it was actually worse earlier in the season. Remember that game against the Atlanta Hawks, when the team apparently struggled to fathom why drop coverage on screens was ineffective against a club filled with shooters.

These plays were there for the Hawks all night:

And, again, it’s easy to point to tactics here, but the players available ultimately dictate the results we’ve seen. This play against the LA Clippers, for example, had nothing to do with the scheme. Here, Paul George is matched up in the high post against Coby White, who he enjoys a size advantage over. Garrett Temple remains in George’s orbit to help, but George — who is a good playmaker — simply kicks it over to Kawhi Leonard on the left elbow for an open 3.

The reason this Lou Williams/Ivica Zubac pick-and-roll worked wasn’t because of some faulty scheme — Carter appropriately played drop coverage against the rolling Zubac — but rather because they got a poor defender — White, who ranks in the 16th percentile in opponent’s PPP when defending P&R’s — into their preferred action. Sometimes, it’s just that elementary.

Unfortunately, it also means that the Bulls won’t be fixed anytime soon unless some of the biggest defensive sieves patch things up. It’s not like the team is devoid of good defenders; Temple (2.6 Defensive RAPTOR), Denzel Valentine (3.4 Defensive RAPTOR), and Thaddeus Young (2.1 Defensive RAPTOR) have all gotten off to good starts on that end. And there are aspects of defense the Bulls do excel at: they rank fifth in opponent’s transition PPP, a respectable 14th in defending off-ball screens, and they’re elite at defending the roll man (fourth in opponent’s PPP; the increase in drop coverage has helped in this regard).

However, the Bulls’ defense still stinks despite all these things being true, mainly because teams don’t heavily rely on these parts of offense to generate offense. With a few exceptions, today’s NBA is about spreading teams out and forcing rotations out of the pick-and-roll.

Thus far, the Chicago Bulls have proven to be inept at stopping this, and until they do, expect a lot more final scores in the mid-100s.