CHICAGO — Winning is a paradox for the Chicago Bulls.
The Bulls have allowed opponents to score at least 120 points in four of their past six games. They also won all four games. That dichotomy has fueled a four-game winning streak for the Bulls, who are nearly back at .500 after winning five of six games to go 14-15, including two consecutive wins over the Hawks in Atlanta.
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It may seem counterintuitive, but that’s been the reality since the start of the season — when the Bulls are at their best, their defense seems to fall by the wayside.
“Listen, we’re not a great defensive team,” coach Billy Donovan said. “But we can do better, we can improve. We can have a little more control over what we can do.”
The Bulls were never going to be a defensive powerhouse. Donovan warned of the team’s defensive deficiencies at the start of the season. Even with so much hope after a 6-1 start, the Bulls gave up at least 120 points in two of those wins. In fact, they only won five games in which the opponent scored less than 120 points.
This Bulls team was always destined to win despite their defense, not because of it. But that’s not an excuse or a fact that will let the Bulls off the hook.
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“We’ve got to figure it out,” linebacker Coby White said. “We don’t want to be one of those teams that just wants to outdo teams. We know what the reality is. We’ve got to do more of the little things and get a few baskets here and there.”
The Bulls play fast. As the rest of the league picks up the pace, the Bulls remain the second-fastest team in the NBA. This pace is focused almost entirely on offense. Such quick play leaves the game wide open, requiring both defenses to communicate effectively, switch quickly and react sharply if they want to keep up.
This is a boon to the Bulls’ offense, which can pick apart defenses on the fly, force points in transition, and knock down 3-pointers when the defense has yet to settle. But that only made life harder for the defense, who was forced to play at the pace the Bulls had set and often fell apart as a result.
It would be easy to blame it on effort. The Bulls often looked disorganized on defense, which meant they were inconsistent at the rim (allowing 21.6 baskets per game) and allowed open shots from the perimeter.
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The defense, in particular, had trouble switching. The Bulls’ lineup has several glaring weaknesses — notably, center Nikola Vucevic and guard Josh Guiddy both have poor screen options due to their lack of mobility from the perimeter to the rim. The Bulls often choose to simply force two players to switch – relying on the weak-side help defense to support both players – but miscommunication is a major distraction in these situations.
When Donovan talks about the Bulls’ defense, he still focuses on the fundamentals: defense, communication, paying attention to gaps and lanes.
“I’m not saying we have to be perfect, but we have to focus on those things,” Donovan said.
A simple fact of basketball is that a team that doesn’t defend well has to work harder on the other end of the floor. Donovan will at times be tempted to use more fancy defensive strategies – such as shifting to specific areas of play – to counter his team’s lack of natural defensive discipline. These fixes should help in the short term, especially when the Bulls face specific sharpshooters or need to adjust to a lack of length at the rim.
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But in the long run, the Bulls’ focus is on profit. This team isn’t going to hold its opponents to less than 105 points per game, but it can do so with the intent of improving in these fundamental areas.
“We have to help more,” Donovan said. “We have to be a team that has to help each other out more. It’s going to be hard to win by giving up that many points and expecting to score as many points as we did.”
