The analysis of NBA defense frequently skews toward qualitative intangibles due to the austere selection of defensive basketball counting statistics: blocks and steals. The concept of ‘motor’ is a qualitative proxy for the immeasurable impact a basketball player creates through sheer energy and effort.
Aside from guard Alex Caruso and guard JaVonte Green, the Bulls in the 2020s have displayed minimal defensive motor, to the extent of the quality consistently fueling high-level team defense. As the Bulls enter the infancy of a rebuild during the 2026-27 NBA season, a better motor needs to be acquired or developed within the Bulls' defense.
Throughout Chicago Bulls franchise history, players with high defensive motor have always been prominent fixtures on a Bulls roster, such as forward Dennis Rodman, forward Andres Nocioni, guard Alex Caruso, center Joakim Noah, or the Bulls' last superstar, Jimmy Butler.
Even Bulls primary scoring options adopted high standards for defensive intensity, such as the 1970s guard tandem of Jerry Sloan and Norm Van Lier, or the 1990s dynasty alphas of guard Michael Jordan and forward Scottie Pippen, who set the tone for the Bulls' defensive standards on a nightly basis.
False start - Isaac Okoro
In his final season, the 2025-26 NBA season, running the Bulls front office, former Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas’ last notable offseason roster maneuver of his Bulls tenure was a trade that sent guard Lonzo Ball to the Cleveland Cavaliers, straight up, in exchange for guard Isaac Okoro.
The Bulls messaged the trade as an opportunity to bring a team leader who would fit into the organizational buzzword of the season: “physicality”.
Early in his Bulls tenure, Okoro himself touted his perception as a player who brought physicality to NBA games.
However, what ensued defensively during the Bulls' 2025-26 season was the antithesis of physicality, and Okoro was frequently miscast as a versatile defender when, in reality, he’s best suited as a perimeter defender flanked by size and aggressive help defense to contain the ball if (or when) Okoro can’t keep the ball in front of him.
Ultimately, the 2025-26 Bulls defense flailed into an unremarkable 22nd ranking in defensive rating according to Basketball Reference.
Motor benchmark - Dillon Brooks
For nine seasons, an underrated poster child for NBA motor on the defensive end has been Phoenix Suns forward Dillon Brooks. A fine line is frequently tight-roped by Brooks on a narrow spectrum between unrelenting defensive intensity and game ejections. Yet, that should be the cost of rostering a player of Brooks’ defensive caliber.
His individual impact on the defensive side of the court is obvious, and his energy is contagious to his entire team. The Memphis Grizzlies finished in the top-10 of NBA defensive rating in four of Brooks’ six seasons with the Grizzlies, according to Basketball Reference.
Upon his trade from Memphis to the Houston Rockets, Brooks became a defensive catalyst for Rockets head coach Ime Udoka’s rapid transformation of the Rockets into the ninth-ranked NBA defense for the 2023-24 NBA season after a bottom-barrel 29th-ranked defensive performance by the Rockets during the 2022-23 NBA season.
After another trade shipping Brooks from Houston to the Phoenix Suns, Brooks yet again became another first-year head coach’s (Jordan Ott) fuel for a defensive transformation that cemented the 2025-26 Phoenix Suns as the 10th-ranked NBA defense in terms of defensive rating, after finishing the preceding 2024-25 season as the 28th-ranked NBA defense.
Dillon Brooks is an aggressive NBA player by most accounts and perhaps not the nice guy, team-player personality type the Bulls traditionally like to stock on their rosters. But Brooks is exactly the type of player Bryson Graham should be prioritizing in all his subsequent roster moves between now and the 2027 NBA Trade Deadline.
It can be Brooks, or it can be any number of high-motor defenders in the NBA, Graham simply needs to start collecting them on his roster. Friendship and caring should be an afterthought to the primary focus of rebuilding the Bulls with intense energy that gets stops.
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