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What Went Wrong With Hoiball This Year?

By Michael RENE KANOY

Mar 10, 2016; San Antonio, TX, USA; Chicago Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg (right) reacts after receiving a technical foul against the San Antonio Spurs during the second half at AT&T Center. Mandatory Credit: Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 10, 2016; San Antonio, TX, USA; Chicago Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg (right) reacts after receiving a technical foul against the San Antonio Spurs during the second half at AT&T Center. Mandatory Credit: Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports /
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Bulls fans have been harping on how Hoiball — a pace-and-space offense — was a poor substitute for Tom Thibodeau’s slower twin-post offense.  Let’s review Fred Hoiberg‘s pace-and-space offense, how it sputtered and see what it needs.

The Chicago Bulls actually stormed out of the gates at the beginning of the NBA season looking like a different monster from the slow twin-post offense of Tom Thibodeau the previous year.

At the start of the season, the Bulls won their first few games and had more than six players consistently scoring in double figures. No one player dominated the scoring and the Bulls pace was faster. Derrick Rose, playing injured with double vision, still scored off a newly-developed bank shot jumper even if he couldn’t score in the paint. The team offense was spread out and Hoiberg was praised by the crew for allowing them to shoot the ball freely instead of having a play called on almost every possession like Thibodeau preferred. Thibs also yanked you out quickly if you put up a bad shot.

The Bulls then had a string of bad losses in December when weak opponents scored up to 42 points in the fourth quarter to overhaul double-digit Bulls leads and steal games. Jimmy Butler angrily called out Fred Hoiberg to “coach harder”.

Butler claimed that the team was lucky for getting the first few wins of the season because other teams were just missing shots and that they needed to play more defense to win.  Together with Pau Gasol, Butler requested for some of the old sets to be run so that they could play their game.

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This is where the Bulls got yanked out of their offensive rhythm and where Hoiberg got slagged for being soft on Butler instead of keeping with his system. Hoiberg also had a penchant for working strange combinations of players, often not taking note of mismatches with opponents or not scouting ahead to know player tendencies.

Butler essentially became the de facto leading scorer — at the expense of the newly-added shooters of Doug McDermott and Nikola Mirotic, who needed to get comfortable and familiar with a flow offense. Bulls fans would often see McDermott or Mirotic run to a corner on every possession and inexplicably sit there waiting for a pass that never came even if they were open for most possessions. McDermott, Mirotic and Tony Snell were playing up to 22 minutes each with very limited offense coming out of them because of the pick-and-roll, bread and butter offense of Gasol and Butler

If Butler ever passed the ball, it was with three seconds left on the clock or a hesitant pass which resulted in an off-rhythm shot from the Bulls shooters.

An open three-point shooter in Hoiberg’s system should be counted as a lay-up if anybody saw how his Iowa State teams gunned the three. Imagine forgoing free lay-ups in favor of ISO hero-ball from late December up to the February All-Star break and you get the picture.

Hoiberg also forgot that not having a good pair of defensive rebounders would tax Taj Gibson or Joakim Noah and make them vulnerable to injuries. Noah got his shoulder hurt and Taj had a broken rib, both of whom could have benefited if Cristiano Felicio was used as the power forward partner of either at center. Aaron Brooks was playing poorly as back-up guard, often causing opponents to break away by taking advantage of wasted and hurried Bulls possessions or from holding the ball too long like Butler.

Before the All-Star break, Butler scored 40 points and then 50 points against sub-.500 teams and was compared to Michael Jordan. Then, Butler got hurt playing tired; a stupid move for all parties involved.  With Butler sitting, the team could barely win because the other players still needed to acclimatize themselves as part of the offense in Hoiball. Fans had scathing opinions of the shooting crew and forum trolls decried Hoiberg as a poor coach.

While Butler sat, Gasol and Felicio were passing to McDermott more and he showed why he was traded for by GarPax. He consistently scored 20 points a game until Butler came back. Fans actually saw Hoiball work and stopped slagging McDermott for his weak defense (still a work in progress), but the trade-off in offense should have indicated to Hoiberg that you don’t go for ISO when the team could score lay-ups from range.

Then Gasol got hurt and it was Cristiano Felicio’s turn to shine. We saw a 275-pound athletic big slide to the hoop like a wing; probably because like Hakeem Olajuwon, he was playing soccer until age 13 and only quit because he grew too big and was asked to play goalie instead. His footwork as a basketball player is more advanced than some veteran bigs.

Butler then returned to action along with Mirotic from an extended hiatus. Slowly, the Bulls reverted back to Butler ISOs until bad play cost them four games in a row. During this time, Mirotic willed his game back, drilling nine threes in a losing effort to the Knicks. The Bulls continued to suffer from Gasol’s poor defense in the paint and being prone to turnovers. The season was lost even if the Bulls beat Cleveland in an anti-climactic ending.

The Bulls finally settled into what rotations worked for them by season’s end: Felicio, Justin Holidays and Bobby Portis looking good as a possible future “Bench Mob” that will allow the Bulls offense to be more effective. Even Brooks, playing slower and under control versus Cleveland looked good.

If only he started playing that way earlier, he would have been a decent backup point guard.

Reviewing Thibodeau’s “Slow, But Sure” Offense

During his tenure, Tom Thibodeau implemented a slower, twin-post offense that had the Bulls guards walk up the ball and run ISOs with Jimmy at one side, while the post players would clog the paint and bully the opposing bigs for rebounds. The Bulls would be able to recover missed shots easily and the guards staying at the top ready to swing back for transition defense helped slow down opposing teams while the Bulls bigs lumbered back on defense.

In fact, the Bulls under Thibodeau were designed to stop the pace-and-space offense and deny the corner three to opponents. If you remember the Phoenix Suns under Jeff Hornacek, running the Bulls out to double-digit leads, Thibs would allow spurts for a while then the other team’s shooting average would even out and the Bulls would catch up, slowing the game, converting on every possession, building turnover conversions one at a time and stealing the game (even coming back from 15-point leads). Thibodeau forced opposing teams to shoot the long two to beat the Bulls defense and this style worked for a while until the NBA evolved almost overnight as a league where having consistent three-point shooters scoring in bursts became the new standard for winning teams.

The Spurs beating a Miami team in 2014 with just their reserves bravely scoring threes like no one’s business.  Not even a team with three All-Stars and double-double averages could win the NBA championship.

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    • Making Hoiball Work Next Year

    GarPax should recruit the players Fred Hoiberg needs to help the Bulls win. Obviously, playing out the Gasol and Butler card the whole season was a nightmare for Hoiball. Empty stats should never be seen as any sign of progress.

    Five to six underrated players on the Bulls bench this year could have given them all they needed to save this season in the second half, but hindsight is always 20/20.

    Deferring to egos or aging veterans with empty stats is a hard lesson learned that should never be forgotten going into Hoiberg’s remaining years with the Bulls. Getting role players to back up the team might also more important than getting another ball dominant offensive option. There’s no need to have overlapping roles stunt the offense anymore–the team should have synergy to run Hoiball. Black hole players like Butler should be anathema.

    It’s a 5-on-5 game and never 2-on-5.

    Hoiberg needs to manage minutes too so the starters and important cogs don’t overextend themselves and get fatigue injuries. This is where Paxson and Forman need to do their job; get young legs and long arms to spell the first and the second unit.

    There’s no need to worry though.

    Next: Welcome to the NBA, Cristiano Felicio

    Expect Fred Hoiberg to do much better especially seeing how he finally put together the Bulls player lineups that will eventually work with the pace-and-space offense.

    If the Bulls get lucky with the right pieces in the summer, they become tops again in the East.

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