NBA: Five Early-Season Surprises From 2016-17
The Chicago Bulls Aren’t Terrible?
Based on conventional wisdom regarding the Modern NBA, the Chicago Bulls should be an abject disaster. Their starters at positions 1-3 are all ball dominant guards with well below league average three point percentages, and neither of their starting bigs (Taj Gibson and Robin Lopez) have ever remotely functioned as floor spacing bigs.
There’s very little shooting, spacing, and its very likely that Rajon Rondo will have his typical (not good) affect on overall team chemistry. Their bench is more offensively proficient, featuring a member of the very specific “European Bigs Named Nikola Who Are Skilled Offensively And Bad Defensively” group in Nikola Mirotic, Doug “Dougie McBuckets” McDermott, Michael “Most Unwanted Rookie Of The Year Ever Besides Anthony Bennet” Carter-Williams, Isaiah Canaan, and Cristiano Felicio.
That entire group besides Felicio, are all plus players offensively but negatives defensively. Seemingly, the only real way to achieve balance with this team is to haphazardly mix their starting and bench caliber players depending on the matchup. That shouldn’t theoretically be a recipe for success. And yet, they aren’t terrible!
As of this writing, the Bulls are 4-3 with an impressive win over Boston, a close loss to them, and some decisive wins over Orlando, Indiana, and Brooklyn. Somehow, this unbalanced, seeming floor spacing-less mess is 9th in the league in Offensive Rating, and 11th in Defensive Rating; despite them starting two defensive minuses in old Wade and Rondo and a bench almost entirely filled with problematic defenders.
Frankly, the statistical trends making up Chicago’s overall ratings do not seem sustainable. With career averages from beyond the arc well below league average, Jimmy Butler and Dwayne Wade are both somehow shooting 43.5 percent from three-point land. That kind of production and resultant floor spacing if sustained would drastically improve Chicago’s offense.
However, there is (at least to me) a stench of fools gold here. Having watched a couple of Chicago’s early games, it seems like every other team heard about who was on Chicago’s roster, and decided to follow the scouting report to a tee and just essentially ignore many of Chicago’s open looks from three.
After a 107-100 loss to Chicago, Boston Celtics’ point guard Isaiah Thomas basically pointed out that most perimeter NBA players can hit wide open three pointers, and that many of them did. It seems kind of silly that teams would flat out not contest open three point shots, but for many the Bulls, history dictated that doing so was probably a sound move.
Yet, at least early on, Chicago has made teams pay. It has been a very small sample size, but so far the returns for Chicago have been better than most have reasonably expected.