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This is an ESPN Insider Article.Have the Bulls improved enough to beat the Heat? (PER Diem: Feb. 29, 2012)
This year's Bulls look just like last year's Bulls, right? Good enough to beat everybody except Miami with their grit and energy, but too dependent on a single star to break through. Right?
Um, not so fast. A lot more has changed here than meets the eye, and it's been among the season's most underrated stories.
Last season, Chicago rode Derrick Rose and a stifling defense to the league's best record before Miami's defense swallowed up Rose in the conference finals and exposed the Bulls' other limitations in a five-game series win.
This season, the stifling defense is still there, if not in quite as extreme flavors -- the Bulls are merely second in defensive efficiency rather than first.
But offensively? Suddenly, they're a juggernaut. Even with Rose missing nearly a third of the schedule, the Bulls are third in offensive efficiency, speaking well of how broad-based their attack has become. Six other Bulls besides Rose carry PERs above the league average, and as I noted in my piece on "BAD" rating, the Bulls haven't had a single minute played by a player with a PER below 12.
In particular, a couple of trends stand out with Chicago. First is the substitution of offense for defense. Last season the Bulls relied heavily on two players -- Keith Bogans and Kurt Thomas -- who gave them very little offensively. This time around Thomas' minutes have largely gone to Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah, now that each is healthy, while Bogans' time has gone to Richard Hamilton, when he's been available, and Ronnie Brewer.
In addition, the bench players have been notably more productive. C.J. Watson and Taj Gibson in particular are getting more done offensively than a year ago, especially after one adjusts for the league-wide post-lockout decline in offense; they are both converting more and shooting more than a year ago.
The Much Maligned Boozer has been more effective too, shooting 53.8 percent and slashing his turnover rate to become the legit second scoring threat the Bulls hoped he'd be a year ago. Additionally, Noah and The Much Maligned Boozer have missed just one game between them this season, after combining for 57 absences last season.
Rose has improved his numbers a bit too, no mean feat when coming off a breakout MVP season. In fact, every Chicago regular has a better PER than a year ago except for Brewer, Hamilton and Kyle Korver, and those three aren't off by much.
As a result of all this, Chicago is challenging for the league lead in point differential at plus-9.31 points per game, almost dead even with Miami's plus-9.35, even after playing a league-high 20 road games.
All of which suggests that the Bulls' title aspirations are far more legitimate than they were a year ago. They've still barely heard a peep from Hamilton this season, a player who could further invigorate the offense, they haven't had particularly good luck with injuries or close games, and they're less predictable (well, a bit less) late in games.
With all that said, two characteristics stand out that would have me concerned if I were a Chicago fan. And by "concerned" I mean relative to the hope that this team can eventually beat Miami in early June, of course.
The first is a simple one to understand, and it was a factor a year ago as well: All these bench players who have helped Chicago build up such a big advantage will mostly be bystanders in the playoffs. Chicago's second unit once again has very solid plus-minus numbers, especially when Gibson is on the court, but in the playoffs, when the bench minutes shrivel, so will this advantage. Even if the Bulls want to play their subs just as much, the opponents won't be, and the source of their advantage is in their subs being better than the other teams' subs -- not in their subs being better than the starters.
The second, more complex one, is this: They're looking a little too Hawks-Blazersy for my liking. Having watched those two teams heavily over the past few seasons, I know how this offensive model works out in the playoffs.
Effectively, the Bulls are taking the quantity over quality approach. It's not that they're brickmasons: The Bulls are eighth in the league in true shooting percentage at 53.1, although that still pales beside that of their stronger rivals for the crown in Miami (57.2) and Oklahoma City (57.0)
But Chicago takes more shots than those teams, by far. The Bulls turn the ball over on only 14.8 percent of their trips, again good for eighth in the league. More importantly, Chicago hammers opponents on the glass. The Bulls are far and away the league leader in offensive rebound rate at 31.5 percent, which has two effects. First, obviously, is that it gives them more possessions, but also, second shots have a much higher conversion rate, so it's helping to keep that TS% respectable too.
As a result, Chicago is nearly the top team in the league in shot attempts per possessions. Counting free throws as 0.44 of a field goal attempt, Chicago averages 99.52 shots per 100 trips, just behind Sacramento and Philadelphia at the top of the league.
All of which is great until May rolls around, as anyone who watched Portland under Nate McMillan or Atlanta under Mike Woodson can tell you. Each has changed its stripes a bit this past season, but up until two years ago they were the two most extreme practitioners of the quantity-driven offense.
What we learned from that experience is that it's a much harder system to execute in a playoff series. While Chicago's offense isn't as simple as those of the other two teams, it shares a lot of similarities in terms of being built around isolations for a high-scoring guard. That can get almost comically predictable in a multi-game series against the same opponent, as any of those teams can tell you.
And the second shot game? That vaporizes against high-caliber frontcourts. You're not going to hammer Miami or Orlando on the glass, especially if they can single-cover your scoring guard like the Heat did last spring.
I'm not saying Chicago can't do it, because the Bulls have advantages those Atlanta and Portland teams couldn't dream of in terms of defense, depth and overall talent. But if there's a reason to be cynical about Chicago's chances of upending Miami, this is it. The glass-half-full approach is that the Bulls' offensive improvement this season has been a vastly underrated story and a legitimate reason to like their chances better this time around. The glass-half-empty view, however, is that it's still not clear if it will translate to the playoffs.
Either way, should make for interesting discussion.
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