A Peek at the New Chicago Bulls’ Defense in Summer League
During this year’s Las Vegas Summer League, Chicago Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg has described the SummerBulls as a more tenacious defensive unit –playing against the pick-and-roll, switching, hedging and packing the paint.
The summer version of the Chicago Bulls are 3-0 after tweaking their defensive approach to getting more possessions and making them count in their first three games that led to them getting a bye in the LVSL playoffs.
Stephen Noh of The Athletic also caught on to the Bulls’ coach new adjustments for the team and provided a rundown on their ineffectiveness with Pau Gasol being the last line of defense because Gasol was too slow to meet up with stretch-forwards shooting mid-range jumpers and leaving the paint wide open to other incursions when he attempted to double team players.
The change from a slower, twin-post offense with guards always running back to a five-out, offense with Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler constantly attacking with dribble-drive penetrations in the lane with shooters on either corner left the Bulls vulnerable to run-out threes from opponents. Most of the games where they lost good leads in the fourth quarter were caused by rushing shots against defenses already in place.
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This summer’s wins were made possible because the Bulls are playing more aggressive defense against their main weakness — the pick-and-roll — while still maintaining a fast pace whenever possible and taking care of the ball when there was no good shot available.
After the first Vegas Summer League victory against a 3-0 Celtics team, Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg said, “We need to force more turnovers, and this group that we have will be able to play that way, get up and pressure the ball and try to create deflections and get us easy baskets at the other end. We really lacked that a year ago.”
Rather than rush an offensive set against a defense already in place and attempt to score score, Hoiberg is opting to have their run-outs come from turnovers generated from the defense. The Bulls were ranked 23rd among teams in opponent’s possessions that were run-outs.
With Robin Lopez now in the middle, the Bulls are also looking to avoid last year’s ridiculous, league-leading 28.8 layups converted in the paint against them. Butler, along with Rajon Rondo and Dwyane Wade and can be more confident gambling on steals or funneling strong guards into the middle with a good shot-changer like Lopez in the middle.
Given that Cristiano Felicio, Denzel Valentine, Spencer Dinwiddie, Jerian Grant and Bobby Portis are all already testing out Hoiberg’s new schemes on defense, Bulls fans should be a little more excited that they’ll have a different-looking scheme next season.