The Chicago Bulls have become the early season favorites in the Eastern Conference
The Chicago Bulls have been the second most injured team in the NBA this season, behind only the Oklahoma City who began the year without the reigning MVP Kevin Durant, then immediately lost multiple-time All Star Russell Westbrook. The Bulls’ lineup, meanwhile, has been nothing more than a game of musical chairs. Seven players have started a game in November with 10 players seeing action in nine or more games. But only one player, Mike Dunleavy, has started all 12 games so far this season.
Most notably, superstar and oft-injured point guard Derrick Rose has started and played in just five of the 12 contests. Pau Gasol, Jimmy Butler and Joakim Noah have each started and played in 10 of the 12 contests, while even Taj Gibson has missed a game, but also started four of them.
The string of injuries have been nightmarish for Head Coach Tom Thibodeau, yet he has guided the Bulls to the best record in the Central Division and ahead of the offseason-winner Cleveland Cavaliers as well as the franchise who has taken the crown in the East the past four seasons—the Miami Heat—and behind the Washington Wizards and Toronto Raptors, two upstart teams from a season ago who made little noise this offseason other than by keeping their own core pieces.
First of all, it is important to remember it is extremely early. So any and all data presented should immediately cause us to put on Small Sample Size Glasses. The man games missed to injury should only solidify our hesitancy to make too much of the data.
But, as we examine some of the early season trends we notice they are a bit out of line from the Bulls team we’ve become accustomed to in the Tom Thibodeau era. And thus the implications of that data should be encouraging.
The Bulls have been rather superb in 2014-15 thus far, posting a 108.2 O-Rtg—good for ninth in the league. Surprisingly, they rank lower (10th) in D-Rtg at 104.3, according to Basketball-Reference.com. They are still a good defensive team, no doubt, but perhaps their identity is flipping just a tad. Or, again, small sample size, dummy!
There are some more periphery stats which indicate the defense is excelling, at least in some key areas. Despite allowing the third most attempts “at the rim” of any team, behind only the Nets and Pelicans, they have limited opponents to the second worst field goal percentage on those shots, among all 30 teams league-wide. They trail only the Pelicans in blocks per game with 6.4 per contest, according to NBA.com.
Undoubtedly it is correlation that both the Pelicans and Bulls show up on the highest percentage of opponent shots near the rim list and the blocks list. But that could be, at least to some extent by design (For the Pelicans, it almost certainly is the case, as they are near the top of the league in steals per game, indicating that Monty Williams is simply instructing his guards to disregard staying in front of their men on the perimeter in favor of being aggressive in trying to create steals and turnovers for leak out opportunities).
For Thibodeau and the Bulls it is a bit more complicated. With the exception of Aaron Brooks, the Bulls really do not possess a defender on the perimeter who figures to have enough foot quickness to stay in front of the league’s most explosive penetrators. And yet, like New Orleans, this isn’t that big of a deal since Joakim Noah, Pau Gasol and Taj Gibson are all stone walls on the back end who do not allow a clean look at the rim.
And despite allowing so many opportunities at the rim, they allow the 12th fewest foul shot attempts. Any questions that could have been posed about the overarching defensive philosophy seem to be answered by how dominant the Bulls’ interior defense has been this season. In some way, shape or form, the Bulls are comfortable with teams taking the ball to the basket, as it will result in a made field goal less than half the time, and points of any kind at a similarly low rate.
Overall, the Bulls’ defense comes in fifth in Effective Field Goal percentage against, indicating once more that teams simply have a tough time scoring the ball against Chicago’s strong defense. One more friendly reminder: Small Sample Size. But the Bulls are still really good defensively, which comes as no surprise, as it has been Thibodeau’s calling card dating back to his time in Boston as Doc Rivers’ assistant on the Celtics 07-08 championship team. It’s been Chicago’s calling card as a franchise since Thibodeau took over.
It is, however, a bit surprising to see just how wonderful the Bulls offense has been through 12 games, discounting last night’s abysmal effort on national television against Sacramento.
Despite ranking 20th out of 30 teams in PACE (Possessions Per Game) at 92.7, the Bulls rank seventh in the league with 101.3 points per game, an 8.1 percent increase from the 2013-14 finish.
The offense’s Effective Field Goal percentage is .513, good for eighth in the league, while they are taking 24 percent as many free throws as field goal attempts. Another way to say this is that for every four field goal attempts they are taking approximately one free throw.
What are the Bulls doing differently on offense this season than in year’s past?
They’ve always emphasized ball movement, and as a result been one of the better passing teams in the league. Adding Pau Gasol certainly has not hurt that emphasis. A few things jump out when devouring the numbers.
Jimmy Butler has been the Bulls’ most impressive player this year overall, with 1.9 Win Shares in just 12 games. Surprisingly, 1.4 have come on the offensive end, despite his reputation as a sterling defender. In years past, Butler was viewed as mostly a 3-point shooter. But in 2014-15, he is taking 78 percent of his shots inside the arc, and making almost 55 percent of those.
Digging a little deeper, we see that of those 78 percent inside the arc shots, he has been quite wise in his usage, taking 34.4 percent at the rim (with three feet). Of the inside the arc shots, 21.3 percent have come from beyond the free throw line, which is too high to be considered wise usage among snobby advanced metrics guys, but at least he’s making 46.2 percent of those shots.
He’s been assisted by a teammate on 61.5 percent of his 2-point makes and 100 percent of his 3-point attempts, which again proves that the Bulls move the ball well offensively, and that Butler is doing a wonderful job of moving without the ball on offense. Of his total 3-point attempts, 26 percent have been corner threes, a general spot where he’s shooting almost 43 percent from. In other words, to become even more efficient, Butler should aim to up his corner 3 usage rate.
It’s not just Butler who has been instrumental offensively. Pau Gasol has provided 0.5 Win Shares. And, along with Butler’s improvement, that is the missing piece from a season ago (Gasol has also contributed 0.6 Defensive Win Shares).
Gasol’s Assist percentage (percentage of teammate’s baskets he assists on while on the floor) is 9.8 percent, which is really solid for a big man. Of course it doesn’t compare to the ridiculous number that Joakim Noah has posted, at 22.3 percent. While on it, it should be noted that ever since Thibodeau went to more high post offense with Noah as the facilitator a year ago, the Bulls offense has taken off.
But Gasol rebounds at a higher clip than everyone on the team but Noah (notice a trend here?). His free throw rate (percentage of free throws taken against number of field goals attempted) of .340 is second to only Butler among regulars (Rose is higher, but it seems wrong to call him a regular at this point).
His usage percentage is actually higher than Butler or Noah, meaning that at least statistically Gasol has been the guy with the ball in his hands most for the Bulls. It seems to be working. His PER is 21.5, again second on the team to Butler.
There are other factors; overall they are shooting a high percentage from deep while not jacking a ton of 3s. They are moving the ball well, rebounding it well (overall) and getting to the free throw line. That is a formula for success.
They have waded the water of injuries, especially to Derrick Rose, by relying more and more on Jimmy Butler and Pau Gasol both offensively and defensively, while Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson have continued their steady play from years past.
In truth, I’d still probably bet on the Cavaliers to win the Eastern Conference by seasons end. But this Bulls team hasn’t been healthy and is still among the league’s best. It will probably come down to those two. Which one can get their stars aligned in time may very well be the one who goes to the NBA Finals as representatives of the Eastern Conference.
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