5 Disappointing Things about the 2016-17 Chicago Bulls
The Fred Hoiberg Situation
This is almost a continuation of the previous slide, but it has so many different aspects to cover that I’m sure to miss a bunch.
Hoiberg either has no control of this team or is very bad at calling plays at pivotal points in games. There’s the moment captured from midway through the season where Jimmy reacted to Hoiberg’s instructions the same way a 15-year-old boy reacts to his mom when she tells him to clean his room.
His after timeout playcalling is somewhere beyond mediocre, but maybe short of being outright bad. Occasionally, it’s straight up awful. It doesn’t even have to be ATO situations. Basically, any sort of inbounding play lacks creativity and never feels like the right play for the right situation. It’s been a learning experience and I’m not sure who’s learning. Is it Fred, figuring out that what he’s doing isn’t working and trying to make some adjustments or is it us, the viewer, fan, bloggers or writers that are learning that Hoiberg just doesn’t have the acumen to coach those situations at a competent level.
He also doesn’t have a great command of the roster. The Jimmy shake off was terrible PR for Fred and the team, but there was also the Dwayne Wade and Butler calling out the team to the media and then getting aired out by Rondo via Instagram. There was a clear divide between their best player, their most accomplished player and the rest of the squad.
Further, starting Wade is a detriment to this team. I briefly conversed with Mark Karantzoulis of BullsHQ via Twitter about lineups. He pointed out that Chicago might be best off with Zipser starting over Wade, but as we discussed, he doesn’t have the stature to sit Wade. That’s bad. What compounded it, as I shared with Mark, was that he failed to assert that control by moving Wade to a bench role in his return from an elbow injury. His inability to seize that opportunity, or his failure to recognize that chance, likely ends up playing out as a factor in the Bulls eventual struggles in the playoffs.
And look at me go. I haven’t even brought up his bizarre substitution, benching and starting patterns. How many times this season did players go from starting to DNPs or vice versa? How many times was it prime time or garbage time? There was no consistency and when players fell out of favor, they fell all the way out of favor. It happened to MCW, Grant, Rondo, Portis, Mirotic for curse, maybe Zipser and Felicio, possibly Valentine. So, most of the roster outside of Wade, Butler, Lopez and the traded Gibson.