Bulls quietly getting better defensive play out of Troy Brown Jr.

It’s harder than usual to find the bright spots of late for the Chicago Bulls. Second-year head coach Billy Donovan and the Bulls just lost their fourth straight game, and five out of the last six, on the afternoon/evening of Jan. 17 in another convincing double-digit defeat. This time it came at the hands of rising star point guard Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies on the road at the FedEx Forum.

A potential bright spot that did show in this loss to the Grizzlies, though, was the solid play of shooting guard/small forward Troy Brown Jr. coming off the bench. Brown played a more important role off the bench for Donovan and the Bulls of late given the rash of absences due to injury and/or the league’s health and safety protocol.

In this loss to the Grizzlies, Brown gave the Bulls 14 points on a solid 4-of-8 shooting from the field, 2-of-5 from beyond the arc, and a perfect 4-of-4 from the free-throw line. And he added five rebounds, no assists, no steals, and one block, to his stat line against the Grizzlies.

The offensive production was solid for Brown in this meeting with the Grizzlies. But it’s his continued defensive production and rebounding that is standing out as this season moves along.

Chicago Bulls getting better defensive production out of Troy Brown Jr. of late

This type of production from Brown is not something that is really getting noticed, though. That is largely because Brown hasn’t really lived up to the hype since coming to Chicago from the Washington Wizards that landed big man Daniel Gafford in the nation’s capital.

Yet, Brown is putting up some decent defensive numbers this season. Brown has registered a career-best 0.6 defensive box plus/minus this season and his best steal percentage since the 2019-20 campaign, at 2.2.

It’s also worth noting that Brown is putting up the best defensive rating of his career this season, at 109 after the loss to the Grizzlies.

Brown simply turned a corner in terms of his defensive production since early December. And it has largely played a role in him getting more minutes off the bench when the injuries/COVID-19-related absences started to pile up for the Bulls.

That is evident in the fact that four of the five and nine of the 10 best game scores of the season for Brown thus far came since the start of December. And nine of the 10 games with his best defensive ratings of the season (with any more than five minutes of playing time) came since the start of December.

The solution to getting better production out of Brown, especially on the defensive end of the floor, looks to be just giving him more minutes off the bench playing at the three or the four. He’s doing pretty well in this role, playing nearly half of his minutes at power forward.

The Bulls really need him to show out playing more minutes at the four now with forward Derrick Jones Jr. out with a knee injury. It was already the case that the Bulls needed more out of Brown after second-year forward Patrick Williams went down for the season with a wrist injury. He will be even more important to the rotation now that DJJ is out too at least for the next couple of weeks.