Before the start of this year’s regular season, Chicago Bulls fans were hit with the unfortunate news that Lonzo Ball would miss at least a few months following his off-season knee surgery. Bulls fans were hopeful that Ball would be back in the lineup on opening day, as his court vision and elite perimeter defense were key components of last season’s hot start.
However, in spite of the bad news, fans in the Windy City remained optimistic about the team’s chances heading into the season. Unfortunately, optimism in Chicago has turned to skepticism from fans who are worried that last year’s return to the playoffs was not a return to relevance but an apparition instead.
The team is one game under .500 after 13 games and has not shown the defensive intensity or offensive consistency that helped them end a five-year playoff drought last season. The team’s three best players, DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, and Nikola Vuevic, are all putting up solid numbers, but it has not translated into consistent winning.
The Chicago Bulls are off to a disappointing start. However, there is still plenty of basketball to be played and time to right the ship.
For a brief time, just after the All-Star break, the Chicago Bulls held the number one seed in the Eastern Conference last season. While they eventually dropped to the sixth seed before the start of the playoffs, they were one of the NBA’s feel-good stories all year. If the regular season ended today, the team would hold the seventh seed and be forced to participate in the play-in tournament.
The good news is the season is still young, and there is still time for the team to turn the season around. Let’s take a closer look at the areas the Chicago Bulls must improve upon in order to return to their winning ways.
Chicago Bulls: Score more points!
The idea that a basketball team needs to score more points in order to win more games seems like a painfully obvious observation, but it is more complex than that. Right now, the Bulls are averaging 111.4 points per game. That is the 18th-highest average in the NBA. There are only 16 teams that officially qualify for the postseason, so the fact that they are flirting with being on the outside of the playoff picture should come as no surprise.
On the surface, it would seem that Chicago does not struggle to put points on the board. They currently have five players averaging double digits per game. In addition to their well-known “Big 3,” Ayo Dosunmu and Goran Dragić are averaging more than 10 points per game as well. However, a closer look at the team’s shooting splits sheds light on their offensive problems.
The team is currently shooting a combined 46.4 percent from the field, good for 19th in the league. In contrast, there are several teams shooting close to or above 48 percent from the field, with one team, the Denver Nuggets, shooting over 50 percent from the floor. Chicago has three of the most reliable offensive weapons in the league:
DeRozan, LaVine, and Vučević. The fact that the team is in the bottom half of shooting percentages in the NBA means that they are not creating easy opportunities for their best players. The Big 3 will always lead the team in shot attempts, as they rightfully should, but if the team created easy scoring opportunities for them, it would force defenses to collapse, create open shots out of double teams, and increase the overall percentage of made shots.
Therefore, the team’s low shooting percentage is not attributable to a lack of talent but can instead be attributed to a lower level of offensive continuity that has not created open looks for the role players, who are not expected to dominate but are still required to contribute.
Chicago Bulls: Rebound the basketball!
Hall of Fame power forward Dennis Rodman was an integral part of three Chicago Bulls championship runs in the late ’90s. Everyone in the league knew he was not a scoring threat, but he did all of the intangibles for the team, like setting great screens and going after loose balls. However, there was one thing The Worm did at an elite level that was not intangible but rather very quantifiable: rebound!
During his tenure with the Bulls, he led the league in rebounds per game every year and was once quoted as saying, “I want to do for rebounds what Michael Jordan did for dunks.” This year’s team could learn a lesson from the former Bulls legend. Currently, they are 20th in the NBA in rebounds per game with 43.6 boards per contest. There’s an old adage in basketball that the team that wins the battle of the boards will most likely win the game.
In Chicago’s case, this is proving to be true. It is no coincidence that the team averaging a league-best 51.1 rebounds per game, the Milwaukee Bucks, also has the best record in the league with ten wins and one loss. This trend has plagued the team all season. On Wednesday, the team lost a very close game at home to the upstart New Orleans Pelicans.
While Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson deserve the bulk of the credit for handing the Bulls a loss, Chicago should also reevaluate their commitment to the boards; they were outpaced 50 to 35 in overall rebounds that night. A 15-rebound deficit has a direct correlation to a four-point loss in front of the hometown fans. If the Bulls want to be a playoff team, they cannot continue to be grossly outperformed on the glass on a nightly basis.
Chicago Bulls: Spacing and ball movement
In the modern NBA, getting great looks at the basket is more important than ever before. The easiest way to achieve this is to have great offensive spacing and high IQ players who understand the concepts of making great passes along with timely cuts to the basket. Teams like the 2017 Golden State Warriors and the 1986 Boston Celtics may have been loaded with Hall of Fame players, but the beauty of their play was not their talent; it was their ball movement.
To say that this year’s Chicago Bulls rely too heavily on isolation basketball would be a gross understatement. While DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine are both elite scorers, they are not as effective as they could be without a facilitator on the court with them. This is where the team misses Lonzo Ball’s presence the most.
Ball was a pass-first player who could make sure his teammates got the ball in scoring position while staying within the flow of the offense. The Bulls are still looking for a player who will fill this void.
Ayo Dosunmu has been receiving Ball’s minutes, and while he certainly has a bright future in the NBA, he is not a true point guard. The Bulls’ top two leaders in assists are currently DeMar DeRozan at 4.2 assists per game and Zach LaVine at 4.1. As a team, they are averaging 24.2 assists per contest, which ranks 18th in the league.
The team must find a facilitator within the organization or make a trade for a pass-first point guard before the trade deadline. Otherwise, their chances of making the playoffs will decrease, and the odds of them advancing past the first round will be slim to none.
The Chicago Bulls have the luxury of having three All-Stars on their roster, in addition to several exciting young prospects. However, the first 13 games of this season have not produced the results their fanbase was hoping for. The good news is that there is still plenty of basketball to be played and ample time for the team to right the ship.
If the team spaces the floor, passes the ball, and recommits to rebounding, their talent level will lead to victory more times than not. The Bulls have a roster that is capable of making a return to the postseason. Whether or not they do so will come down to their willingness to make the necessary adjustments.