[From the FanPosts. As much as I love stats, I love more when they support my observations. I'm very scared that I don't know what I'm talking about when doing recaps and the like -ed.]

Lots of recent posts about how things feel different recently.  The Bulls have won 6 of 7, but no game has been easy on that stretch, and it's particularly concerning with the playoffs a week away.

There have been some ideas about what the cause is: Noah's health, Boozer's health, Rose/Watson/Gibson/Bogans being banged up, teams finding success using small lineups.  I looked at the basketballvalue lineup data to try to test these, and you download the spreadsheet here.  As a qualifier, because of the sample sizes, this post is meant to try to figure out what happened instead of what's happening, if that makes any sense [ed. note: great line, ha. Much more after the jump].

Individual Plus Minuses

Player Orating, Drating, and Raw PlusMinus, last 7 games:

Player	Min	Orat	Drat	Net	Raw+/-
Deng	277	113.4	102.5	10.9	55
Rose	266	112.4	105.0	7.4	37
Boozer	223	109.1	109.8	-0.8	-1
Brewer	140	106.5	101.5	5.0	9
Noah	136	104.8	101.6	3.2	8
Gibson	134	112.0	106.4	5.6	13
Bogans	125	108.2	111.7	-3.5	-8
Korver	108	110.5	106.4	4.1	15
Thomas	102	114.6	113.5	1.0	2
Watson	97	105.4	107.6	-2.2	-4
Asik	73	116.2	94.2	22.0	29

OVERALL	336	110.4	105.5	4.9	31

Rose and Deng have been the lead dogs all season, and it seems they've kept it up these last seven games.  Asik, who is #1 in the NBA in Net Rating (Bulls are a ridiculous +15.04 per 100 possessions when he's on the court this year) is still on track, and he's been so good I'm wondering why his minutes are going down and not up.

Boozer, Bogans and to a lesser degree Noah stand out on the negative side.  Their plusminuses are okay, but considering how often they play with Rose and Deng, there shouldn't be that large a disparity.  Lineups with Rose and Deng and WITHOUT Boozer and Bogans outscored opponents 101-68 in 42 minutes.

The Starting Lineup Issue

Bulls' starting lineups (Rose, Bogans, Deng, Boozer, and either Noah/Thomas), last 7 games:

107 minutes played, 106.0 ORating, 113.1 DRating, -7.1 Net

It's important to mention that the difference between a 113 DRating and a 101 DRating in 107 minutes is 225pts allowed vs 200pts allowed, so bad luck could have something to do with it.   But it's concerning considering they've played Memphis, Milwaukee, Philly, Minnesota, Detroit, Toronto, Phoenix, a bunch of unremarkable teams, and I wouldn't have expected them to be negative over what was supposed to be an easy 7 game stretch.

Playing Against Small Lineups

Simmons and yfbb mentioned the Bulls seem to struggle against small lineups.  I went through the opponent lineups of the past 7 games and rated them on a subjective Small Scale.  Here's the system:

0: Opponent played a lineup with two legit bigs (examples: Randolph/Gasol, Brand/Hawes, Davis/Amir)
1: Lineup with one tweener big (Arthur/Randolph, Mbah a Moute/Bogut, Thaddeus/Brand)
2: Lineup with two tweener bigs (Arthur/Powe, Warrick/Frye, Daye/Maxiell)
3: Small forwards playing inside (Battier/Gasol, Iguodala/Hawes, JamesJohnson/Amir)

3's were very rare, so I combined them with 2's for the following table:

Against	Min	Orating	Drating	Net
0's	158	112.8	103.4	9.3
1's	152	109.2	107.5	1.7
2's/3's	26	104.1	106.3	-2.2

I'd love to try this for a full season but it's too much work.  I'm guessing these aren't significant because of the sample sizes, but it supports yfbb's observation that going small has worked against the Bulls recently.

What should the Bulls do in this scenario?  Against small lineups in these 7 games:

Bulls		Min	Orating	Drating	Net
Booz+Taj	13	96.2	138.5	-42.3
Kurt		39	103.8	112.8	-9.1
Noah		78	108.9	104.8	4.1
Asik		44	113.6	106.1	7.5
DengPF		4	128.6	50.0	78.6

I listed lineups with Deng at PF for reference because I remember finding last week that the Bulls are like +15 net per 100 poss with Luol playing PF this year.  I forgot to save the excel, but I'm gonna dig up that stat before the playoffs, and I think that's one option if the opponent goes super-small.  For most small lineups, the easier answer is Noah and Asik seem like perfect bigs to play against small lineups because they move so well.  

I suspected the Bulls' two worst options were playing a Boozer/Taj frontcourt (giving up a lot defensively, especially against small teams who can penetrate), and playing Kurt Thomas (not his style).

yfbb specifically brought up the Suns game when talking about the Bulls struggling against small lineups.  The lineups that killed us late featured Warrick playing PF.  For the game, here's how the various Bulls lineups fared against WarrickPF lineups:

Gibson/Asik: 4.9 minutes, +6
Gibson/Thomas: 2.7 minutes, +2
Gibson/Noah: 1.3 minutes, +2
Deng/Gibson: 2.3 minutes, -3
Boozer/Noah: 1.5 minutes, -5
Boozer/Gibson: 5.4 minutes, -7

Boozer had a tough game.  Nevertheless, the Bulls did okay overall vs the small lineups, and I think in general the Bulls are deep and flexible enough to handle any style of play.  The bigger issue to me is that the Bulls' starting lineup was never that good to begin with, and with these injuries they've really struggled.