The Chicago Bulls started their season off hot, defying the expectations of many, including me. But since starting the season 9–5, the Bulls have won just two games in their last seven, and they have dropped three straight games, including an absolutely embarrassing beat down at the hands of one of the absolute worst teams in the league, the injury-battered, talent-deficient Dallas Mavericks.
What’s wrong with the Bulls?
Chicago can’t shoot. This was a yuuuuge concern going into the season and it’s one that has been borne out about a quarter of the way through the season. Chicago ranks 27th in the league in effective field goal percentage. This is largely driven by the fact that the Bulls are shooting the fewest three point shots in the league and are, at the same time, shooting the worst percentage from three.
It turns out having Rajon Rondo, Dwyane Wade, and Jimmy Butler as your starting guard and wing rotation is not a recipe for effective shooting from deep. Worse still, the Bulls are not getting threes from Doug McDermott, as he’s been injured for 12 games this season, nor from Nikola Mirotic, who is in another one of his many shooting slumps to start the year.
Despite the Bulls’ poor performance in the most important aspect of offensive efficiency (putting the ball through the hoop), they have still managed to fight valiantly at the other aspects of offense to be an above average offensive team. Chicago leads the league in crashing the offensive glass, they get to the line at a very healthy clip, thanks to Butler, Wade, and Mirotic’s penchant for drawing contact, and as a team, they are relatively ball secure.
The Bulls’ problems with shooting are unlikely to go away, given their personnel. Doug McDermott should help some, and there’s some hope that Nikola Mirotic could bounce back from his shooting woes. They are doing about the best they could hope for in the other aspects, roughly speaking, and as a result, they are a pretty good offensive team on the year, despite almost no spacing.
Chicago’s struggles in the last seven games come down to one thing, really. They simply shot the ball from deep even worse than they have done on the year and their opponents have shot very well. During this 2–5 stretch, the Bulls have shot 24% on 129 three point shots, compared with 31.5% on the year, as a team. On the other hand, their opponents’ shot 39.6% on 154 threes, compared with those opponents shooting 35.8% from deep for the season.
That’s the sort of thing that tends to even out over the course of a long season. Chicago isn’t this bad at three point shooting, and their opponents aren’t this good from three. If both the Bulls and their opponents just shot to their season averages from deep, the Bulls would have seen a benefit of 15 net points over those 7 games. That’d be worth another expected win over those 7 games and the Bulls would have simply been 3–4, which is the roughly .500 team that they appeared to be preseason and their 11–10 record now shows.
Chicago similarly benefited to start the season by hitting from three point range at a near league average clip while bombing from behind-the-line with slightly greater frequency than they have in their recent skid. This was largely due to Jimmy Butler and Dwyane Wade making threes well-above what should be reasonably expected.
The Bulls aren’t broken. They just are what most of us expected them to be: a middle of the pack team. They started the season shooting better than you’d expect and lately they’re shooting worse than you’d expect. Over the course of enough games, you see the truth. As long as you don’t let a run of good or bad shooting luck cloud your vision.
NBA Couchside 