Chicago Bulls at Miami Heat: Dwyane Wade’s Homecoming Takeaways

It was all about Dwyane Wade on Thursday night. The Chicago Bulls guard made his first trip back to play against his old team, the Miami Heat.

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It’s been a bizarre season for the Bulls. At every turn, they’ve zigged when conventional wisdom says they should have zagged. They’ve won games that they should, lost games that they should and then there is this recent two game back-to-back.

After falling to the Atlanta Hawks, playing the second night of their own back-to-back, Chicago went to Miami and pulled out win. It was in stark contrast of how their last second game of a back-to-back went, continuing to give everyone a reason to do just about anything other than believe that we know what this Bulls team offers for the 2016-17 season.

But to talk too much about the play of Chicago as team would distract too much from what this game was really about – individual performances. Wade and Jimmy Butler were the headline grabbers for the Bulls.

This game was Wade’s first trip back to the only home he knew in his 13 NBA seasons before joining Chicago this summer. Last week, the Bulls played a tribute video for Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah. This time, it was Chicago player that got a tribute video.

The Bulls hung on to win in Miami on Thursday night and there was a whole lot more to unpack than just Wade’s return, but we can start there.

Dwyane Wade Returns to Miami

Wade had himself a throwback game of sorts against the Hawks on Wednesday night, scoring 25 points on 58.8 percent shooting. He also had five steals. Those numbers seem a bit high for what is expected of Wade in a season where he will turn 35 years old. The most surprising numbers was his minutes played.

Know that they had a game that was important to the team, but much more so to the player, the following night, Wade still managed to clock 33 minutes of playing time. Generally, that doesn’t bode well for the following night.

It was no minor miracle that Wade played 32 minutes the following night against the Heat. And not only did he play that many minutes in a road back-to-back, but he contributed early in both games, helping to keep the Bulls from being put away early.

He played just over six minutes to open the game with four points and two rebounds in that span. Some to note about his playing time moving forward is the pattern emerging from Hoiberg and his minutes rotations for his “big three” players. Wade was the first starter to the bench tonight, not surprisingly, but he also found his way back to the court for the opening and closing stretches of every quarter.

The effect of playing back-to-back road games was evident, despite some vintage Wade moments like his spin that left Justise Winslow behind on the baseline before he finished through contact with a reverse layup.

Those callbacks to the glory days of the Wade era in Miami were bookended by tired legs and poor shooting: 29.4 percent field goals shooting and 0-for-4 from 3-point range.

There was a certain amount of appropriateness in the way Wade finished his first game as a visitor in Miami, sinking two free throws that sealed the game with 13.7 seconds left, giving Chicago a 96-92 lead. I’m sure there were a lot of feels between Wade and his former teammates and coaches, but after back-to-back 30+ minute outings, I’m sure Wade is glad to get the “W” and call it a day.

Fred Hoiberg: NBA Coach?

Take all of this with a grain of salt. I’m not a basketball coach and I don’t have that kind of IQ for what’s happening on the court and how to set the tables in this game.

Now, what is going on with this Hoiberg team? His after timeout play calls are either terrible or horribly executed and I often can’t exactly tell which is the case. If you bother to call a timeout before the end the half or a quarter that isn’t the fourth, there should generally be a good reason for it and there should be a playcall that is feasible. Any play call that suggests a single guard in the backcourt should be trying to beat the clock with no other outlet in a full-court press by the defense has either been terrifically outcoached or failed to assess the situation correctly.

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And that seems to happen a lot.

Elevator plays are rarely executed well. The offense seems to only understand what it is supposed to be about half of the time. A really frustrating series of fruitless post-ups and seemingly unsustainable mid-range volume and success finds its way into every single game. But again, it happens in every game and is repetitively that it seems Hoiberg wants them running this offense.

There’s some give and take here, because Chicago needs Wade’s scoring, which is best facilitated by letting him swim in the waters that he became a legend by swimming in. Let him get that mid-range game going, he doesn’t have the energy, the spring in his legs, to run and gun from deep 38 minutes a night.

There is plenty of room for improvement. I was particularly high on Hoiberg and gave him a pass last season because I felt bad that he, or any new coach, had to deal with Pau Gasol and the Noah-Rose combination. As we progress further into his second season with a new cast of players, it seems like Hoiberg isn’t Brad Stevens, but maybe more the Iowa State version of Stevens, which, you know, isn’t the good version of anything.

Oh, and let’s not even get to whatever it is he is trying to do with his lineups to end games.

Robin Lopez vs. Hassan Whiteside

Lopez pulled one of the shortest straws in a back-to-back of Dwight Howard and Hassan Whiteside. That’s a rough assignment for anyone, but Lopez stuck to the task and had a huge game for Chicago.

Most of Lopez’s damage was done during his opening shift in the game when he had eight points, five rebounds a block. Hoiberg still doesn’t seem to trust a lineup that features Lopez when it’s time to close things out, he sat for the end of the first, third and fourth quarters.

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Still, he did battle with Whiteside and put up a good fight. During the TNT broadcast, Charles Barkley said, “But it didn’t make a difference in the game,” regarding Whiteside’s massive 20 point, 20 rebound, three block performance and followed that remark by stating, “Lopez outplayed him (Whiteside).” Hard to remember a time when a 20-20 counted for so little, but Lopez did his job and continued to work hard.

The Charlotte Hornets, division rivals of the Heat, very aggressively attacked Whiteside last season and have done so again early this year. He’s got great ability to swap shots, but he is also prone to foul trouble and that seems to be the plan for Steve Clifford in Charlotte. Maybe to that end, Lopez attacked and worked hard. It could also just be a by-product of the aggressiveness that both Lopez and Taj Gibson have shown so far this season, going after rebounds and second-chance points.

On the stat sheet, Lopez got worked by Whiteside, but on the court he did his part. He ended with a team-high 20 shots, good for 16 points, nine rebounds and a block. That includes an incredible hustle play from Robin Lopez in the paint with just under two minutes left in the game where he went up and after a rebound, a tip, and a putback before finally getting a shot to fall. That basket, a great second- or third-chance basket put the Bulls up 90-84, which was pivotal in helping Chicago stave off the homecourt Heat.

Doug McDermott is Hot, or Not

Speaking of Hoiberg’s coaching, we’ve got the bench. He seems to have learned how to stagger his starters fairly well and his rotations are starting to tighten up.

There were a couple of blowouts early in the season and a string of games where 10 or more Bulls got in on the action. Recently, that has dropped to single digits. Against Miami, Chicago put nine players on the floor. Notably, Cristiano Felicio and Jerian Grant were DNP-CDs.

Two of the first three of the bench in the first quarter were Doug McDermott and Nikola Mirotic. I don’t care to even try to remember a time when a team featured guys six and seven in the rotation who were so streaky as shooters that offer very little, if anything, on the defensive end of the floor.

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After an extended drought from 3-point range, McDermott knocked down a couple from deep, 2-for-5 on the night. And he wasn’t alone. Mirotic also found his stroke from deep, hitting 2-for-3 from beyond the arc. McDermott, 13 points, and Mirotic, 10 points, were the two primary highlights off the bench that tried to provide the spark Chicago needed. But, it was rough.

Thankfully, they weren’t as bad as Isaiah Canaan. When Canaan was inserted into the game, after McDermott and before Mirotic, things started to get shaky. Canaan played just nine minutes and shot 0-for-1 and ended the night with a plus/minus of -8.

Mirotic seems to be just fine jacking shots from Steph Curry range, but still doesn’t feel like a great option in normal halfcourt sets. As for McDermott, he’s much more of a liability on defense than even Mirotic on most nights, but finally connected on a few shots that they needed him to knock down.

It will be a development that will need to be monitored over the course of the season. Player options and new contracts are going to be the order of the day for these two and while they both have skill and high upside, nothing about their current level of play inspires long-term confidence that they are worth considerable payroll increases.

Pumpfake update: Mirotic still does these way too often. Against Miami, he pumpfaked for no reason and then attempted to dribble directly into the close out man, Justise Winslow. I don’t get and I never want to understand.

Jimmy Butler Finishes It

Wade had to be the player of the game for the Bulls, draining the final free throws after a jaw-dropping and awe-inspiring performance in his old stomping grounds, right? Wrong. Enter Butler.

The Bulls may have Three Alphas, but there is definitely an Alpha One and that man is Butler. Despite a very quiet start from the field, doing most of his scoring from the free throw line over the first 40 or so minutes, he came alive when they needed it most.

He hit a couple of baskets in a row to guarantee Chicago a lead that they would never relinquish down the stretch. Running some variations of pick-and-roll action or post-ups for Butler, they could get him more involved down the stretch and he hit a fader to put the Bulls up 92-89 with 53.9 seconds left.

As Miami wouldn’t go away and the rest of the Bulls didn’t seem to want to win all, it stayed close. So with 19.2 seconds left, Butler drained a pair of free throws that extended the Chicago lead to 94-89. It was all over from there.

We can speculate about Butler’s performance and how he continues to improve, but the answer might be the most bizarre reasoning. Butler dropped in performance when he attempted to transition from lockdown defender to all-around star and offensive focal point. That caused him to sacrifice in his specialty of hard-nosed, gritty defense.

So how has he improved? That’s a whole post to itself, but the simple answer might be Wade and Rajon Rondo. While all three players have skills and drawbacks, it might be the right pieces for the Butler equation and maybe Hoiberg is getting it right after all. As a scorer, Wade provides Jimmy with a release valve. When they share the floor, it’s impossible to help off Wade to contain Butler and vice versa. So you have two scoring options set up to help each other by keeping the help defense at bay. That brings in the elite passing and IQ of Rondo, who offers almost no scoring on an average night. His ability to distribute and run an offense where he is looking to facilitate others is attuned well to the playing preferences of Wade and Butler.

For now.

This will be a development to watch of the course a season. A full season is usually more than the required amount of time necessary for Rondo to create havoc between himself and someone else, either in the locker room or a coach on the bench. The Bulls bizarre season keeps moving along.