The Chicago Bulls are at risk of getting caught in no-man’s land

Chicago’s most noteworthy trade acquisition has been a flop

By most measures, the Bulls’ acquisition of Nikola Vucevic in April 2021 should have been viewed as a desperate move by a newly installed VP looking to make a splash.

Trading a significant NBA prospect in Wendell Carter Jr., Al-Farouq Aminu, and two 1st-round draft picks for a veteran yet to see postseason basketball can hardly be considered a sound transaction for a franchise looking to build a sustainable winner.

Yet, despite Chicago’s lackluster 18-21 record at the time, the trade for Vucevic was seen as an unqualified win for the front office, providing the surging Zach LaVine with the type of running mate certain the propel the organization forward.

Though LaVine had always been considered an undeniably talented offensive player, his inefficient shooting, high turnover rate, and porous defense had caused many in the league to write him off as the type of empty-calorie scorer impossible to build a winning squad around. At 25 years old and in his seventh season in the NBA, it was becoming increasingly difficult to imagine LaVine changing his profile as a player.

As it turns out, LaVine hardly needed a complete makeover as much as a tightening of the screws around the areas of his game he already excelled at.

With his usage rate staying largely the same, LaVine found a way to turn more of his possessions into points,  spending a considerable amount of the COVID lockdown working to become an improved shooter. With a significantly better eFG%—increasing from 53% to 60% year-on-year—driven primarily by his effectiveness at the line and behind the arc, LaVine catapulted himself into the 91st percentile of all scorers in the 2020-2021 season, per Cleaning the Glass.

Paired with Vucevic as a pick-and-pop threat, the Bulls and much of the league envisioned the tandem as the offensive cornerstone of a budding contender in the East.

Since the trade, however, the Bulls have failed to crack the top of the conference standings and have yet to earn even a top-10 mark in offensive efficiency. While there is no shortage of culprits for the squad’s lack of success, Vucevic’s usage, and the talent the organization has surrounded their two stars with since the transaction, are perhaps the biggest.

While the Montenegrin center was always profiled as a big man who operated away from the rim, his shot profile since joining Chicago has gotten more extreme. Though the Bulls have continued to work him in the post, Chicago’s coaching staff have featured the center in the corners much more aggressively than he has been in the past, nearly halving the type of midrange shots Vucevic used to thrive off of.

On its face, the move is hardly surprising, given Vucevic’s shooting abilities and the advanced metrics that discount the value of midrange shots. Considering Chicago’s efforts to modernize their basketball operations, the Bulls’ efforts to accentuate Vooch’s more analytically-inclined skills make sense.

What has been surprising, however, is that the adjustments to Vucevic’s game have not taken place as part of a broader transition from the Bulls’ roster toward a more efficient shot selection. Instead, the move to station Vucevic beyond the arc with increasing frequency has primarily been made to allow the rest of the team the room to hoist an even greater amount of shots from the midrange.

Spearheaded by DeMar DeRozan, the most prolific midrange scorer still in the league,  Chicago not only obtains over 40% of their shots from the midrange, per Synergy Sports but shoots nearly a field goal more than the next closest team from beyond 15 feet.

To help facilitate the team’s preferred style of play, Vucevic’s move to the perimeter, particularly alongside LaVine and DeRozan, has primarily served as a pressure release for an offense whose first option has sputtered out.

Take a look at these two sequences from the Bulls’ match against the Oklahoma City Thunder on January 13th.

In the first, Colby White’s meandering attempt to attack off the dribble is quickly snuffed out by a Thunder team with four help defenders ready to smother the Chicago guard near the basket. As Alex Caruso and LaVine proceed to make matters worse with simultaneous cuts to the basket that accomplish little beyond gumming up the Bulls’ spacing, White’s only option is a crosscourt pass towards a stationary Vucevic in the weakside corner. While the pass just ever-so-slightly sails over the outstretched hands of Mike Muscala, the Chicago center is forced to hoist up a contested desperation trey that harmlessly clangs off the back iron.

Two minutes later, Vucevic is once again stationed along the left-side baseline, as an aggressive Zach LaVine is able to turn the corner before the OKC blitz is in place. Despite the momentary advantage LaVine creates, the Thunder are clearly prepared for the action, abandoning White, Derrick Jones Jr., and Ayo Dosunmu beyond the arc to wall of LaVine’s lane towards the rim. With two defenders on his back hip and three ready to spring in front of him, the Bulls’ guard fires a quick pass toward the big man in the corner, who once again is forced to fire a contested three that bounces off the far side of the rim.

While both plays ended with similar results, they also featured the most significant departure of Vucevic’s career from his time with the Magic to his current tenure with the Bulls: he is most often an accessory of the offense rather than a pillar of it.

In the 34 minutes of action that Vucevic sees the court on average, the 12-year-veteran hoists over 32% of his field-goal attempts from behind the perimeter–ranking in the 72nd percentile per CTG–even as all lineups with him end their possessions in the midrange 36% of the time.

Translation: Chicago is more comfortable utilizing Vucevic as bait to hunt for their preferred shots than relying on the big man as a primary option.

Digging into the numbers, the Bulls’ optioning of Vucevic towards a secondary—or even third-option—role would appear to make sense. Carrying a 48.9% field goal mark through Thursday places the team in elite status as they rank in the top five of the NBA in accuracy, made possible, in part, by the spacing Vucevic provides. Yet, despite their deadly shooting mark—again, primarily from the midrange, where they average .95 points per possession—Chicago ranks a measly 17th in total offensive efficiency, proving that some three-point shots are greater than a lot of two-point ones.

Another analytics debate aside, the larger story of the Bulls’ lackluster season has been defined by a number of these seemingly contradictory stat pairings.

Chicago shoots with incredible accuracy yet fails to score enough; they rank seventh in the league in passes made per game yet are starved for an elite playmaker; they are built to win big games yet are 9-17 in clutch situations.

Most importantly, they emptied cupboards for a player yet relegated him to a secondary role.

Stuck in neutral, the Bulls will need to find a way to sort through the paradox that is their current roster.