How bad have the Chicago Bulls been in the 4th quarter?

The Chicago Bulls have blown leads down the stretch of basketball games all season. How do their 4th quarters compare to the rest of the league?

The Chicago Bulls have been less than advertised, to put it kindly. I’ve said I wouldn’t really reflect on the record until about 30 games through the season, and here we are at 11-19, 11th in the East, so here I am reflecting.

It’s not what we were expecting, but the good news is that we’re only 2 games from 8th place in the East, and another playoff berth. The Bulls have been especially bad in the second half of basketball games, ranking 27th in the league according to NBA.com in plus minus in the second half of basketball games, being outscored by 8.1 points. Only the Memphis Grizzlies, Charlotte Hornets, and Brooklyn Nets are worse.

In 6 of their 19 losses (32% of their losses) they have held leads heading into the fourth quarter  and have blown it, from as much as 13 points against the Lakers on November 5th to the most recent 8-point blown lead on December 16th against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Across those 6 losses, they are giving up an average lead of 6.8 points, or three whole possessions at the very least, in just 12 minutes of basketball.

Across all played games, the Bulls rank 26th in plus minus and 23rd in points scored in the 4th quarter. They aren’t turning the ball over a lot, at just 19th in the league in the 4th quarter, but the cold hard fact is that they rank dead last in field goal percentage in the last quarter of basketball games at a putrid 40.2 percent. They actually rank 4th in the league in 3-point percentage in 4th quarters, so that is keeping them in these games.

In losses, they’re shooting just 36.8 percent from the field in the final 12 minutes. The Toronto Raptors are the only team worse, but they have only lost 8 games, less than half the number of games the Bulls have dropped.

So who is to blame for this poor performance?

Many want to blame the coaching staff, and while I don’t agree that Jim Boylen deserves all the criticism thrown his way, they probably have a point. Minutes distribution in the 4th quarter for the Bulls is entirely out of whack, with Wendell Carter Jr. leading the pack with 8.2 minutes in the 4th quarter of games this year, followed by Zach LaVine with 7.6. While you can’t fault him for those choices, Lauri Markkanen is sitting at just 6.6 minutes, below Ryan Arcidiacono. Lauri just simply needs to get more minutes.

In terms of shot distribution, the story is even worse. LaVine sits at the top, and rightfully so, though I’ve written before how I think he isn’t the individual scorer we want taking the clutch shots down the stretch. He certainly had a clutch game in our last win, but the stats show a bit of a different story across a larger number of games.

Behind Zach sits Coby White, Max Strus (in 1 game), Denzel Valentine, Chandler Hutchison, and Shaquille Harrison. Lauri sits behind all those dudes, and that just doesn’t jive with the way they marketed the Finnish big man as the future star of the franchise.

My personal theory is that this is a young, inexperienced team. One of the strengths of an experienced NBA basketball organization, and its players, is the ability to keep some energy and scoring bursts in reserve to close out games strong. The Bulls simply do not have the experience they need to play four full quarters of basketball in a consistent manner.

They also lack the depth to be able to play anyone but their starters big minutes. Outside of Denzel and Coby having some nice shooting in spots, and Thaddeus Young‘s solid play, they don’t really have someone on the bench like a Lou Williams or Dennis Schröder to play when our starters aren’t performing. We need to play Zach and Lauri nine-plus minutes in the fourth quarters and give them all the shots or we won’t have an opportunity to win these close basketball games.

We have to live and die by those two “stars,” for better or for worse when the game is on the line and the shots really count. It’s how every star in the history of the NBA has made their name and it’s how these two young guys will make theirs.