Bulls have totally inverted their vaunted 15-5 stretch

the playing style of failure has failed, it's time to make it work again

Here was Bulls’ Mumbler-in-Chief Arturas Karnisovas on media day, where he capped off a summer of crowing over last year’s arbitrary stretch of games where they played decently and pulled a bunch of victories out of their butts against a schedule mostly resting and/or tanking players:

The last 20 games of the season gave us a glimpse of our future. We established an offensive identity … most importantly, we demonstrated cohesion and we got better. We were 14th on offense and 9th on defense. Those numbers are encouraging.

This year’s team’s freefall after a now-confirmed-very-lucky start has now reached 18 games and a 4-14 record. I will be consistent with their logic and apply that as the arbitrary cutoff. We can’t even rationalize they’re playing better opponents this season, as they’ve faced the dregs of the league and a couple very-injured-while-decent teams. The Bulls themselves are quite injured, but they were also missing several players in that magical March, including the great Isaac Okoro who was playing for Cleveland last year.

Since that 5-0 start (November 1st) we have an 18 game sample. I’ll paste in what AK would surely today say if he or the Bulls cared to ever engage the fans and weren’t completely full of shit when they do deign to talk:

The last 18 games of the season gave us a glimpse of our future. We established an offensive identity … most importantly, we demonstrated disarray and we got worse. We were 26th on offense and 25th on defense. Those numbers are discouraging.

I hereby resign in disgrace. Yes, please write down ‘in disgrace’.

It’s such a fundamental problem with this front office: they cannot acquire talent, or develop talent¹. So instead of tailoring to the best players, they lean instead on a “style of play”, putting a value judgement on that style and aligning and communicating everything towards it.

This goes through ownership (no stars = no massive contracts) to the front office to head coach Billy Donovan, who has said succinctly “If we don’t run, we’re done”.

Well they are running, but they’re done.

I didn’t put up a couple factors that, like the pace, hasn’t changed much even while achieving inverse results. Some generation of offensive possessions has been consistent: a decent turnover rate, and they’ve never offensive rebounded. On defense, they have never created turnovers.

What looks to be a key difference is the quality of their offensive possessions. They are slipping drastically in defensive rebounding, and that being part of their overall poor defense means they are still running but only after taking the ball out of the basket.

The main problem is the lack of talent. But considering that an entrenched part of The Bulls, I have seen the theory elsewhere² that if they are insisting on leading with a playing style, they’re doing it backwards. They are not deeper and better conditioned than the rest of the league. The Bulls are getting hurt at the same rate - or potentially even moreseo - than more talented teams, and cannot sustain the effort.

Unlike Donovan, I don’t think it’s purely motivation. I think they are not plus athletes, and they are wearing down.

The main solution is to get better talent. But considering that an entrenched part of The Bulls, maybe there are some tactics they could employ to actually reduce the possessions. I posed this theory to Dunc’d On and they weren’t really buying it:

1. The best Bulls (Giddey, Coby, Vuc, Ayo) are undoubtedly more effective and can generate better shots in a fast pace. But I think that’s a reason of why this has always been a gimmick: isn’t pretty much every player better in a fast pace?

2. The defensive rebounding is still solid, they had it at 9th. Maybe it wasn’t updated after the Warriors game as it’s now 11th, and as shown above it’s down to 18th after the 5-0 start. I suppose better availability of Zach Collins and Jalen Smith (and probably need more double-big lineups alongside Vuc) will help stabilize this, but that introduces other tradeoffs.

So maybe it wouldn’t work to tighten the rotation and lean more on defense and rebounding. It’d also likely make for a worse aesthetic, though I believe ‘at least they are fun!’ sentiment has kind of run its' course too.

It’s a really bad situation where there isn’t much they can do, and they’re the types to never really do much. The front office and coach are in alignment here: the only way out of this tailspin is, very conveniently for all parties, keep doing what they’re doing. A meaningful change would be admitting they were wrong, and they can’t have that. If you’re dreaming of a silver lining, the delusion of the front office, while a huge hindrance in the trade market, has no impact on lottery odds.

1. Needless to say, so I’ll bury it in a footnote: they should be fired!

2. I know it’s frequent commenter MikeDC, I can’t find the link sorry Mike!