The Chicago Bulls Post-Rondo Playoff Point Guard Solution

No need to mince words – the Chicago Bulls are hurting without Rajon Rondo. As little as a month ago, this would have sounded insane upon utterance. Somehow, it became a truth and now the team, and Fred Hoiberg, are going to be pressed to make up for his absence.

It might be National Television Rondo. It might have been a sprinkle of #TNTBulls, even though the games weren’t on Thursdays in Chicago. There’s also the Former Celtic Rondo tie-in. Also, Contract Push Rondo. It could be any of these things and it could also be all of them.

Whatever was the trigger, Rajon has been playing legitimate basketball at least 75 percent of the time he’s been on the floor in recent games. This has been particularly true during Games 1 and 2 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs against the Boston Celtics.

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Rondo was key in the Bulls unlikely 2-0 series lead over the No. 1 seeded Celtics. Through two games in this series, he was second on the team in minutes, averaging 33.7 per game, trailing only the team’s iron man, Jimmy Butler. He had a stat line of 11.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, 10 assists and 3.5 steals per game. He also averaged just two turnovers per game. All of this combines to make for an incredibly compelling stat line for a starting point guard on a team that was controlling their series against a heavily favored Boston team.

With the value of Rondo established – great numbers across the board and a 2-0 lead over the best regular season team in the East – and the devastating, yeah I’m shocked by this too, loss of Rajon and his motivated level of play, it’s time to turn to the ugliness of Game 3.

Chicago looked a lot more like a No. 8 taking on a No. 1 on Friday night. There were many contributing factors. A lot of one-time events like Jimmy having zero free throws, zero assists and 0-for-4 shooting from 3-point range. That’s just not the kind of numbers that Butler is going to put up very often, he’s just too good. It wasn’t his night. A great example was around the five-minute mark of the second quarter when Paul Zipser hit him in transition, he pumpfaked into an open 3 look and opted to dribble toward the lane and into a turnover. He didn’t attempt the 3 and he failed to find an open Bobby Portis standing under the hoop.

The team also looked flat on 3-pointers as a whole, 6-for-21. The only rotation players to connect from deep were Nikola Mirotic and Zipser, both connection twice. Denzel Valentine and Cameron Payne each added a strike from beyond the arc in garbage time.

Perhaps the biggest problem, however, was replacing Rondo. They didn’t. Rondo is averaging a double-double, nearly a triple-double and we mentioned his 33.7 minutes per game in the first two games.

In Game 3, Jerian Grant and Michael Carter-Williams combined for 38.5 minutes and three assists – all three coming from Carter-Williams.

This was a bad game for Grant, and he’s had a lot of those this year. Some people love what he brings, others do not. I do not. Where we find common ground: Grant, for better or worse, would be better suited playing guard, but not the point. Sadly, early in the second half when he was playing off-ball and getting left alone at the 3-point line, his teammates weren’t recognizing or were opting to take it into the mid-range for their own opportunities. What Grant has lacked all season, and in the playoffs, is the ability to truly facilitate. He is a shoot-first player that can’t guard guys like Isaiah Thomas. And despite starting, he only played 15:11 and I still can’t get over the fact that he had no assists, four turnovers and took five shots

Carter-Williams played more minutes and did a couple of things a little better. The expectation shouldn’t be that whoever replaces Rondo should average double digit assists like he has, but Chicago can’t go from a facilitator in an offense that is working to no creation coming from the point position at all. He’s also closer to Rondo in the sense that he’s not going to offer the scoring punch Jerian probably has in his still-developing game. He also had some awful moments like a penetration to the rim in the first half where he laid it off the underside of the front of the rim. Then, early in the third quarter, he looked to take advantage of his length against Thomas, trying to back him down in the lane, only to embarrassingly leave the ball out in the open for a help defender to literally just take it away from him and start a quick transition play.

What I’m getting at is what we already know – prime time Rondo showed up, is gone, and the Bulls have absolutely no one to replace him in a point guard capacity.

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What next? It’s easy to point out problems, those are easy to find with just about anything. Harder is to find answers. And this is what Fred Hoiberg is going to wrestle with heading into Game 4. He hasn’t been brilliant, but he’s been better than what he’s shown during the regular season. He’s still anti-Popovichian with his rotations, sticking with full first and third quarters from Butler. Opting to leave his best player on the floor, regardless of game situation, for what he must deem as pivotal moments between the three-minute mark and the buzzer of the first quarter. Yet, his team made it to .500, the playoffs and a 2-1 lead over the No. 1 seed. Not too shabby for a guy who looked lost many times during the year and still hasn’t figured out after timeout situations.

The solution might be to go away from a “traditional” point guard, though I would never argue that Grant or MCW fit that role.

Pat Sheetz, one of our great writers here at Pippen Ain’t Easy, touched on this in his takeaways from Chicago’s Friday night loss. The biggest indictment of the this might be Friday’s third quarter. Boston went on runs of 8-0, 11-3 and 5-0 in that quarter and while MCW and Jerian didn’t play the entire game, one of the two was on the court, though they never shared it, for the entire quarter. The Bulls were outscored 32-22 in that period and accumulated zero assists. As a team, zero assists.

Zero assists don’t fall squarely on the shoulders of the player designated “point guard,” but there should never be a full 12-minute stretch where a team struggles to the point where they don’t have anyone set up a teammate even once.

The best lineup for Chicago, without Rondo, might be Butler-Wade-Zipser-Mirotic-Robin Lopez. This lineup would require Butler to play more a point role as the ball-dominant player. Wade has been a great in this game playing at the two, but that doesn’t mean he should be the primary ballhandler.

Butler had a career year this season, putting up highs in points, rebounds and assists. Earlier this year when he was struggling to score, he was racking up some very impressive assist numbers. In particular, Butler was this kind of player against the Toronto Raptors back in February. He shot just 2-for-10 from the field, but picked up 19 free throw attempts and 12 assists. With the ball working through Butler, he was able to get to the line aggressively, consistently. If the shot isn’t falling, Butler was still impacting the game. He did this repeatedly all season. He also distributed. And the Bulls won that game against the Raptors.

On Friday night, Butler didn’t get to the line once and didn’t get assists. I feel confident saying 3-0 could have happened if the ball was going through Butler and he was working to the rim and drawing contact. On Friday, he shot 14 jumpshots. The approach was all wrong from Chicago without Rondo.

Zipser probably can’t fully hang with a player like Jae Crowder, but moving him into the rotation to deal with Crowder, sliding Butler to Thomas, is an upgrade over leaving Grant out on an island with Boston’s star guard.

In the second half on Friday, the ball worked through Carter-Williams and Wade a lot. Even when MCW brought the ball down, it was finding its way to the hands of Wade often. He then required a screen from Lopez or found a hand off and the ball returned to him where he settled for bricked floaters or contested mid-range shots. It was every possession, but it was enough to push the Bulls into a hole they never escaped.

The other reason it would be good to move Butler to the point guard position for Game 4 is the aforementioned pick-and-roll with the center. Wade needed a big body to help him separate, his athleticism and quickness isn’t what it used to be so he doesn’t create the same kind of separation on his own that a younger version of himself could. A Zipser screen isn’t cutting it and watching MCW screen a painful for all of us.

And this is not nothing. Lopez has been huge for Chicago on both ends of the floor – at the rim. He’s not useful at the perimeter. Brad Stevens might have finally figured this out as he played Al Horford away from the rim much more often and opted for 1-5 pick-and-rolls where Horford either didn’t roll or delayed his roll and then cut after Lopez had to choose to help or get flat-footed around the free throw line, forcing him to attempt a recover.

On the offensive end, this same roll action using Lopez with Wade happened a few times and the subsequent missed shot attempts left Lopez 10-15 feet away from the rim where he’s dominated the Celtics on the glass, crushing the offensive rebounds.

The difference between Wade and Butler coming off Lopez screens is significant and that fact should be common sense. Butler is a much stronger, more athletic player at this point in their careers. Butler also commands more attention driving to the rim than Wade. It’s hardly a 1-5 screen with Butler and Lopez, but they would be playing that, much like Giannis playing the point for the Milwaukee Bucks.

It wasn’t so simple that there was just one contributing factor to the Bulls loss on Friday night. The Celtics are the better team and should be expected to win this series, so outplaying Chicago on a Friday night is not an outlier. That doesn’t mean that the Bulls can’t fight like hell, make this series a nightmare and maybe even steal it from Boston. If that’s going to happen, they need to find an answer to their point guard woes and they need to find it fast.

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The Chicago Bulls Playoff Point Guard Solution

By Daniel Coughlin | Apr 22, 2017

No need to mince words – the Chicago Bulls are hurting without Rajon Rondo. As little as a month ago, this would have sounded insane upon utterance. Somehow, it became a truth and now the team, and Fred Hoiberg, are going to be pressed to make up for his absence.

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