A tight game in the third quarter, this Western Conference Finals rematch is hotly contested. Luka, who was demoralizingly great against the Wolves in the playoffs last season, is currently working off the ball to get open. 

Tough situation here as a referee.

Luka and Jaden McDaniels are grabbing and pushing and grappling each other with both arms. Who is fouling who in this moment? No whistle on the play, play on.

Due to his devastating nature, Luka has the Wolves desperate to keep him away from the ball and force preferably anyone else to try and make a play. McDaniels is on the top-side of Luka, hoping to deter him from the ball.

Lively is the trigger man here…

…and his ability to make quality reads from the center position adds dimension to the Mavericks offense. In the rare instance Luka doesn’t have the ball, like in this instance, Lively can set Luka up with a handoff and subsequent screen, but Lively can also counter coverage like this by finding Luka on a basket cut. 

He can also do neither if neither are open, to stay as close to error-free as possible. Dallas overall was top 5 in taking care of the ball last season (12.5 turnovers a game), and their entire center rotation of Lively, Gafford and Powell all carried an AST/TO above 1 (1.2, 1.55 and a whopping 2.63 respectively – Powell landing top 5 in the league amongst centers). When Luka is on your team, no need to try to do too much. Hand the ball off, and roll hard. If it’s not a dunk, give the ball back to Luka and Kyrie. Rinse, repeat.

Lively’s ratio was more reflective of his actual decision-making aptitude, as his playoff AST/TO maintained at 1.29 while Gafford’s fell off to 0.79. Some at the time were clamoring for more Lively playoff minutes so the Mavericks could benefit from his passing chops. Here, Lively has the chance to ignite a play.

Another piece of credit on this setup should be given to the Dallas coaching staff and scheme; Lively operating from the top of the key brings Rudy, the Wolves primary rim protector, right up to the 3-point line and far, far away from the rim. 

At this point, Luka has had enough of McDaniels, and will not spend any more energy breaking through this coverage to get to the ball. Instead, Luka plants his right foot down…

…to head to the rim. McDaniels, as long and fast as he is, cannot fully cover both denying him a path to the ball and a path to the basket. But that is the concession of the coverage. 

Lively will need to recognize this slight lean towards the basket in a timely manner (right at this moment) so that the pass can begin to be delivered into space while that space exists. The paint is open at this very moment, but NBA time and space can close quickly.

Gobert’s arms are active here applying ball pressure on Lively…

…because the passing angle for a leading pass into the paint is a prominent and threatening possibility. If Gobert’s peripheral vision is able to capture the Luka lean, he can preemptively have his hands ready to shoot up and deflection a potential entry pass down the middle.

Naji Marshall screening for Kyrie occupies the attention of half of the Wolves’ off-ball defenders.

Donte DiVincenzo cannot be concerned with anyone else’s assignment; his hands are full guarding Kyrie. Naz Reid sits back on the Marshall screen, at the ready to pick up Kyrie if he breaks loose to the basket. 

Meanwhile, the most important defender on the play at this moment is Ant. 

The low-man here, Anthony Edwards appears keyed in on Luka and Lively’s intent. It will be his responsibility to help on Luka, break up the potential pass, or even better, pick it off. 

If the ball is successfully entered to Luka on this cut, Luka will be ahead of McDaniels and the Mavericks will have a momentary 2-on-1 numbers advantage…

…with McDaniels trailing, leaving Dinwiddie unguarded in the corner if Ant slides over. Perhaps if the defensive cohesion is good enough, McDaniels can hand Luka duty off to Ant, and McDaniels can peel off to pick up Dinwiddie. But that is a tough task to pull off fluidly, and it might take a defensive beat or two to get out there otherwise. 

The Mavericks should be slightly favored to score in this moment, granted the pass is executed to access the 2-on-1 advantage. It should be simple math, but in an athletically dynamic arena like NBA basketball, the decisions have to be made instantaneously while windows of opportunity are open, and it may require an intense series of quick decisions. Otherwise windows will close because defensive length and athleticism will close the space, and the offense will again have to spend effort to create. 

In a process of defensive elimination, Luka delivered a dazzling behind-the-back pass. Knowing that Ant had committed with his jump (good verticality by Ant) and feeling that McDaniels was still within arms length, Luka could infer the corner pocket was open. He either had peripheral vision of Dinwiddie in the corner while he was cutting, and/or Dallas will generally have those corners filled. Credit McDaniels with his effort to still make a considerable closeout and contest, but Luka had drawn him all the way to the restricted area, making the closeout just about as long as it could be. 

October 30th, San Antonio at Oklahoma City 

It’s hard not to highlight frames with Chris Paul at the helm. I’ll try not to include him in every edition, it’s just outstanding how he continuously makes the most of the studio space.

Wemby isn’t in the picture, but he’s on the floor. Just a couple seconds prior, he was setting a really high ball screen…65 feet from the basket. The Thunder’s full court pressure can be unrelenting with its personnel and defensive talent. They had just deployed a casual amount of it after a made basket, not allowing Paul to walk it up the floor at his own tempo and coordinate the Spurs’ attack to close the quarter heading into halftime. 

Chris Paul opted to use the screen and speed up into the half-court, getting ahead of his defender Cason Wallace, who has switched onto the absent Wembyana. Jalen Williams has picked up Paul.

A moment prior, Paul was met with some legal opposition from Williams. Jalen had stayed physically disciplined and within his body, not extending any hands out onto CP (who is liable to automatically draw that contact at a moment’s notice). And in anticipation, Jalen had moved to slide his feet in front of Paul’s direction of choice (right), and his physicality was entirely passive contact, absorbing and resisting the strength of the drive to chip off a lot of CP’s downhill momentum as Paul rammed into his chest. Slowed down by the bump and now with the hang dribble, Chris Paul is considering his current array of choices. 

Eight seconds into the possession, OKC’s stout point-of-attack defense has induced Chris Paul to change speeds twice already (the backcourt screen usage ramp up and the bump to slow down), one of which was more elective and the other being more of a hearty, physical welcome upon dribbling inside the 3-point line. 

OKC’s team defense is also looking tight at the moment as well, with all other defenders unassociated with the point-of-attack switch positioned fairly.

Since Chris Paul has not yet entered the paint and his momentum has been severely halted, the Thunder can stay home on their assignments. Jalen has it well-handled at this moment. The stagnancy of Harrison Barnes in the nearside corner and Keldon Johnson on the opposite side…

…does not do Chris Paul any favors here. 

However, the ever-cutting Sochan volunteers. 

Sochan is aware of his value-add as a cutting finisher (and certainly less so as a spacer for Paul’s drive), and here he catches onto the pace that Chris Paul was coming down the floor with. He is trying to at least give Paul the option of a potential wizardly pass somewhere through Jalen Williams and Caruso and Shai. 

Caruso is in a great gap position, further discouraging Paul’s path forward, on top of staying in the middle of an imaginary string between Paul and Sochan, impeding possible passes. 

Caruso had caught onto Sochan’s off-ball change of pace, and is keeping himself in the same depth to the rim as Sochan’s cut, which he knows is a prominent part of Sochan’s half-court game. 

The conceivable deliveries to Sochan are unclear at the moment, and passes to Barnes or Keldon leave the defense mostly indifferent, with Shai and Dort very capable of closing down the space on their respective closeouts here, especially since their off-ball defensive positioning has yet to be strained or even budged on the possession. Wemby is still making his way down the floor. 

In addition to being one of the best passers of all time, Chris Paul is in my opinion one of the most underrated scorers in league history. With the body control of an abrupt stop and gather, Chris Paul gained slight separation from the lightly back-pedaling Jalen Williams, which granted himself another moment to collect. And in the beat between those moments, he found himself at the right elbow, one of his favorite spots, with space to rise up quick. 

The post NBA Freeze Frame: Volume 2 appeared first on Swish Theory.

However, the truth of the matter goes much further and is far more damning: the Bulls never left their rebuild in the first place. In fact, it may be giving the Bulls too much credit to definitively say that they have actively been rebuilding since trading Jimmy Butler in June 2017.

While every path is a little different, there’s certain principles that guide every successful rebuild. Unsurprisingly, these principles also apply as the foundation to most successful basketball franchises. I’ve chosen four of those principles to focus on:

• Acquiring high value assets to maximize the chances of obtaining and/or retaining star-quality players
• Investing in talent evaluation and player development
• Creating the right environment for players to succeed
• Patience and consistency

Examining the Bulls’ decisions and whether they have followed these principles is highly instructive in explaining why, after nearly 7 years, they find themselves in perhaps an even worse position than when they started their rebuild. This synopsis and analysis is meant to serve as a guide for rebuilding, a cautionary tale to other NBA teams and, hopefully, a wake-up call to a storied franchise whose glory days are but a distant memory to even the oldest of its fans.

Acquire Assets

The most crucial principle for any successful team is to acquire and retain the best players. Very few teams have won a championship without a top-10 or even top-5 player in the league. There are three ways to obtain superstar players: draft them yourself, trade for one, or sign one in free agency.

The free agency path has almost completely disappeared in the last decade, as superstars rarely ever make it to free agency because the cost to the team is much too large to let them walk for nothing. The alternatives both require the accumulation of assets. To maximize a team’s chances to draft a superstar, they need to acquire as many draft picks as possible to improve their chances of finding one. To trade for a superstar, quality young players and a bevy of picks are required. Some common ways to improve a team’s asset base:

• Maintain cap space and trade exceptions in order to take on bloated contracts or problem players with draft picks attached
• Trade veteran talent to teams in need
• Trade back in the draft to acquire additional picks or players
• Lose a lot of basketball games to raise the value of the team’s own picks
• Sign players to deals that are easy to move or can be aggregated
• Develop the team’s own players to raise trade value
• Improve the team’s record to attract superstar talent

The “Process” Philadelphia 76ers and the Oklahoma City Thunder are prime examples of maximizing the acquisition of assets. As of today, the Thunder have 15 1st round picks and 22 2nd round picks available to them in the next 7 years. The vast majority of their talent acquisition has been through the draft, and they have given themselves multiple bites at the apple every single year since they started their rebuild.

In less than 3 seasons, the Thunder developed a young superstar talent in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, promising talent around him, clean books, and dozens more chances to acquire complementary help. Sam Presti has developed a systematic approach to sustainable asset acquisition and he’s stuck to it.

The Thunder have had misses in their draft record, but the importance of each pick is mitigated by the number they have acquired. They have diversified their asset base so that no single bad choice will sink them. They have never overpaid for a free agent during this time, were never tempted by an agitated star looking for a new team, and never prioritized instant financial gains over their vision for the future. As a result, the Thunder only had two sub-40 win seasons during the entirety of their rebuilding process.

The Chicago Bulls’ track record of asset acquisition over the 5-year period in which they had held the league’s worst overall record is stark in comparison. Their total asset acquisition during that period: one 1st round pick. They never took on any contracts for picks, never traded back in the draft, or never developed their own players enough to get assets back in a trade.

The Jimmy Butler trade did not net the Bulls a single 1st round pick – the Bulls moved their own 16th pick to move up to 7th and select Lauri Markkanen, in addition to acquiring Kris Dunn and an injured Zach LaVine. After drafting Markkanen, the Bulls kicked off their rebuild by selling their 2nd round pick to the Golden State Warriors for $3.5 million in order to build “equity” with the Reinsdorfs.

The Bulls acquired their first and only asset of the 5-year stretch when they traded Mirotic to the New Orleans Pelicans for a late 1st round pick.

The Bulls drafted the following players during the last 7 cycles:

• 2017: Lauri Markkanen (7) (swapped with own 16th pick in Butler trade)
• 2018: Wendell Carter (7) (own pick)
• 2018: Chandler Hutchison (22) (acquired in Mirotic trade)
• 2019: Coby White (7) (own pick)
• 2019: Daniel Gafford (38) (own pick)
• 2020: Patrick Williams (4) (own pick)
• 2020: Marko Simonovic (44) (own pick)
• 2021: Ayo Dosunmu (38) (own pick)
• 2022: Dalen Terry (18) (own pick)
• 2023: Julian Phillips (35) (acquired for two 2nd round picks)

The Bulls drafted 10 players over 7 years. Considering each team gets two draft picks a year, the Bulls were 4 short of their own allotted picks. These players have one All-Star appearance between them, and it didn’t occur until Markkanen got to the Utah Jazz in his 3rd stop. None of the remaining picks project to be All-Stars.

In the last 2 years of their 7-year stretch, the Bulls sent out three 1st round picks while acquiring one from the Portland TrailBlazers that will likely never convey. Two of those 1st round picks have already been conveyed in the lottery to the Orlando Magic, and the San Antonio Spurs have the Bulls’ top-10 protected pick for the 2025 draft. The Bulls also have traded several 2nd round picks, lost another one in a tampering fine, and do not own any 2nd round picks until 2028.

The Bulls’ continual failure to value asset acquisition has been the single largest contributing factor to their unsuccessful rebuild. During the years they intentionally built bad teams, they never picked higher than 7th. And because the Bulls did not acquire more darts to throw, each pick had outsized importance to the team’s success. Bulls fans have agonized over Lauri, Wendell, Coby, and Patrick’s every developmental setback and shortcoming because too much was laid to rest on their shoulders. The lack of quantity of draft assets made every draft pick’s job that much harder. Lauri and Wendell have both been on record about how their Bulls tenure was one of mental hardship, failure, and frustration, and given the current state of the team, it’s undoubtedly been Patrick’s experience as well. The fanbase has called for all four of these lottery picks to be traded at different points during their rookie contracts. And while none of these players should be free from fair criticism, the organization bears significant responsibility for it through failure to maximize their assets.

Invest in Evaluation and Development

It’s not enough for an NBA team to just acquire assets; the team needs to make each pick count. Investing in talent evaluation is a crucial way to improve a team, because the NBA is a zero-sum game: if one team doesn’t find the diamonds in the rough, the competition will. NBA teams are constantly on the lookout for the next big thing and employ scouts to scour the world at large as well as every high school gym to get the edge on their competition. By and large, they do a decent job: over the last 30 years, the higher the pick, the better the chance of becoming All-Star players.

Higher selections also have an element of self-fulfilling prophecy: teams are likely to invest more time, energy, and money into the 1st pick of the draft versus the 60th, and that investment tends to improve the odds that the player will reach their potential.

That investment in the development of players goes hand in hand with selecting the right players in the first place. If evaluators are doing their jobs right, the team is bringing in players that have NBA-level talent that can be honed through technique and repetition into consistent production. Once that player arrives, the honing begins. Player development staff should know how a player can contribute now, what he needs to improve upon, and should have developed a plan for doing so that is in concert with the coach’s on-court strategies and executives’ vision for the team. In addition, the existence of a viable G-League team is extremely useful for providing on-court opportunities and targeted development for young players. To properly develop multiple players over years of a rebuild, a team of development staff is required.

The Chicago Bulls founded their G-League affiliate team in 2016, becoming the 20th NBA team to do so. On the staffing front, however, until the 2020-21 season, the Bulls employed only one (1) person responsible for player development. Until this season, the Bulls did not employ a shooting coach (the Bulls ranked 29th and 30th in 3-point rate the last two seasons, per Cleaning The Glass). Most team observers were not even aware that an analytics department existed within the Bulls until 2020, which demonstrates its lack of importance to the franchise. The Bulls even skipped out on a scouting event in 2018 attended by every other team because they didn’t want to pay the entry fee. It is inexcusable that one of the richest franchises in the world decided to penny pinch instead of fully investing in their players’ success and development during a rebuild.

Creating The Right Environment

Also crucial to the success of player development is creating an environment that is conducive to each player’s growth. This includes important aspects such as:

• Hiring the right coaching staff
• Creating opportunities for in-game reps
• Signing veteran mentors
• Assembling a complementary roster of players
• Developing strategies and lineups that build on a player’s strengths and maximize their production
• Allowing for playing through mistakes
• Fostering the right habits
• Ensuring good nutrition and exercise
• Building camaraderie

For all but the most talented and driven NBA athletes, fit and opportunity dictate much of a player’s career trajectory. Understanding a player’s talents and properly utilizing them is essential to helping him find minutes on the court and making those minutes productive. Some teams have a strong track record of unearthing talent and then maximizing that player’s production on the court. One that immediately comes to mind is the Miami Heat, who has consistently found and developed great players relative to their draft position. Their strong organizational cohesion, great coaching, infectious culture, and high expectations of performance have consistently produced higher than average results.

Taking a look at the Chicago Bulls’ environment during the last 7 years, however, instability has been the most prominent feature. Starting with coaching, the Bulls fired Tom Thibodeau in 2014-15 and hired Hoiberg as the new coach, citing his ability to communicate with players and bring the offense into line with modern NBA standards. This proved to be a difficult transition that ultimately led to Jimmy Butler’s exit. Hoiberg only got one season to oversee the rebuild before being replaced for “lack of spirit” by Jim Boylen, who was, admittedly, full of spirit.

Unfortunately, Boylen proved to be very unpopular in the locker room, including an almost-mutiny within one week of assuming head coaching duties. During his tenure, Boylen discouraged players from taking mid-range shots, made wholesale substitutions for perceived failures, forced his team to use a punch clock, threw his players under the bus in the media, and consistently failed to take accountability for his coaching.

It’s hard to overstate how devastating Boylen’s tenure was on player development. Here are just a few examples:

• Wendell Carter, a young versatile big who could shoot, pass, defend, screen, and rebound all fairly well as a rookie, was used exclusively as a screener and rim finisher during Boylen’s tenure, being told not to take 3s and not included as a hub passer. Carter’s confidence as a player consistently got worse over time, and his mental struggles were widely documented by the media until being traded in 2021.
• Lauri Markkanen, a sweet-shooting 7-foot forward, saw his usage and role fluctuate wildly from his time under Hoiberg to under Boylen, being used mostly as a spot-up shooter by the latter. Lauri saw his efficiency dip both years he was under Boylen, only resurging after Billy Donovan was hired in 2020-21. Markkanen too was traded at the end of that season.
• Coby White only had one year under Boylen, but he was specifically told not to take any mid-range shots, despite that being an important part of his game.
• Even veteran Thaddeus Young was relegated to a corner 3-point shooting role; Young felt strongly that the way Boylen used him did not lend itself to his strengths, and even caused Young to consider retirement because basketball had lost its joy for him. He had a huge resurgence in production after Billy Donovan replaced Boylen.

The difference in quality between Boylen and Donovan was stark; Donovan put Coby, Lauri, and Wendell in positions that fit their basketball skills and complemented the team structure, challenged them privately but supported them publicly, and provided detailed analysis on his coaching philosophies. Rookie Patrick Williams was allowed to start and learn on the fly, playing through mistakes and taking on tough defensive assignments all year.

The only fly in the ointment was that the new duo of Karnisovas and Eversley came in with promises to bring a championship to Chicago and, after a few short months of actual development for the Bulls’ young core of players, unilaterally and prematurely decided that the rebuild was over.

As a result of that decision, Carter and Markkanen were traded, veteran contributors brought in, and White and Williams were relegated to support roles. Both immediately had expectations placed upon them to take big leaps in development, despite the heavily reduced roles available to them. Despite better coaching and teammates, both saw their ability to play through mistakes and to their strengths immediately diminished and their featured development sidelined in exchange for more immediate wins.

Williams’ tenure has been especially tenuous. The big wing who likes to protect the rim, play on-ball, and get to his mid-range pull-up found that there were too many on-ball mouths to feed between LaVine, DeRozan, and Vucevic, and that his preferred area of the floor was already crowded. His new role: shoot open 3s and defend the perimeter. To his credit, he improved in both areas significantly in his 3rd year after missing most of his 2nd with injury, doubling his 3-pt volume while knocking down 41%, and becoming an extremely effective isolation defender. 

The 4th pick has had a very atypical situation for a player picked so highly in the draft, however. Rather than being featured in the offense and allowed to play through his mistakes, Williams is expected to be a role player and to simply take advantage of the opportunities he can. And because the franchise’s decisions have effectively capped the team’s ultimate aptitude otherwise, Williams reaching his full potential immediately has become all the more imperative.

With the franchise unwilling to sacrifice current wins to focus on Williams’ and White’s development, the young players find themselves in a situation where their improvement is impatiently expected and actively stifled. Each criticism, even when fair game, has been heightened and made all the more dire because of the situation the Bulls have placed themselves in, and the ones paying the price are consistently the players.

Patience and Consistency

Developing a clear vision for the franchise, implementing those objectives, and being fully committed to them are hallmarks of successful rebuilds. Executives sweat over which players to draft, which star players might become available on the market, when to cash in their chips, and when to fold. Strong basketball executives understand that their guiding principles, along with good timing and a bit of luck, are crucial to executing their visions effectively.

Sam Presti and Darryl Morey immediately come to mind as executives that have put their stamp on organizations as shrewd negotiators and clear communicators. Although it’s fun to poke fun, Morey’s comfortability with being uncomfortable gives him a tactical advantage in negotiations, and Presti’s consistency and commitment to his goals have put the Thunder in great position moving forward. Of course, executives across the league enjoy different levels of time, finances, market, and ownership involvement, but those who have a proven track record of building competitive squads share the foregoing hallmarks.

The Chicago Bulls operate a little bit differently. John Paxson started as a Bulls’ front office executive in 2003, finally relinquishing his duties in 2020 (only to stay on as a senior advisor). Gar Forman started as a scout in 1998 and held the general manager title from 2009 to his firing in 2020. That’s a long time in executive years compared to most franchises, and “GarPax” enjoyed seeming full support from ownership throughout their full tenure. Their jobs were so safe, in fact, that Paxson had to proactively ask for a change to the front office to be made. Yes, that’s right: Paxson ultimately fired himself.

As only the third person to hold the title since 1985, Executive VP of Basketball Operations Arturas Karnisovas had long latitude from ownership to run basketball operations as he saw fit. Both ownership and Karnisovas have said as much throughout his tenure. Given the consistently cold seats both GarPax and “AKME” sat in, they had more opportunity than most to fully execute their visions for the franchise. However, both of their tenures have been marked by inconsistency and impatience.

After moving on from Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah in the off-season prior to the 2016-17, GarPax vowed to get “younger and more athletic” in order to put complementary pieces next to Butler and provide 2nd-year coach Fred Hoiberg with a roster more suited to his coaching preference. Neither happened. Instead of putting shooting and defense around Butler, the Bulls’ brass were distracted by the chance to put butts in seats and instead signed Rajon Rondo and Dwyane Wade. This deviation from their own stated goals armed Hoiberg’s squad with maybe the worst spacing in the entire league that year. That season’s failure ultimately led to the Butler trade and decision to rebuild in the first place.

As previously stated, once the Bulls decided to rebuild, they failed to fully commit to it. They didn’t acquire draft picks, sold another off, did not hire development staff, hired arguably the worst coach of the decade, etc. The Bulls were indeed bad over a 5-year period, but their suffering went mostly in vain as a result because all of the principles that go in to successful rebuilding were notably absent.

To their credit, when AKME replaced GarPax, they started implementing many of those principles. However, Karnisovas vowed not to skip any steps in the process of building a championship team. Instead, the Bulls started skipping steps almost immediately. After just 4 months of actually focusing on player development for the first time in 5 years, the Bulls decided they’d had enough.

Over the next few months, they shipped out young players Wendell Carter, Lauri Markkanen, Daniel Gafford, Chandler Hutchison, 3 lightly protected 1st round picks, and multiple 2nds to bring in a win-now squad that peaked as a 46-win, 1st round playoff exit. AKME promised in consecutive off-seasons to bring in shooting and rim protection and change the shot profile of the team. Neither happened.

The results of the Bulls’ lack of patience and their inconsistency between what they said they would do and what they did has gone exactly how you’d expect. They topped out as a sad 1st-round exit in their best season, watched Carter and Markkanen ultimately find success elsewhere, failed to develop their young players, and gave up valuable picks to the Orlando Magic and San Antonio Spurs.

Both GarPax and AKME failed to fully commit to their stated goals. For GarPax, they failed to take the necessary steps to acquire assets, invest in player development, and put their players in position to succeed. In AKME’s case, they went all-in too early without having even the hint of a franchise player on their roster, sacrificing promising young players and draft picks in order to raise their floor, but installing a hard ceiling on the team’s future outlook.

The Road to Nowhere

The Bulls show no signs that they have learned from their mistakes. With three specialist, ill-fitting stars on the roster, they’ve depended too heavily on finding the perfect 2-way role players in order to have any chance of success. With Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso in tow, they found lightning in a bottle for a few months, a fact AKME desperately cite as justification for continuing with this charade.

However, the Bulls are building backwards. Teams are supposed to find 2-way stars as their franchise pieces and then build around them with complementary role players. The Bulls have done the opposite, and it continues to blow up in their face.

Even now, the Bulls continue to double down on their flawed process. Longstanding rumors of the Bulls looking to trade Zach LaVine finally came to a head this week, with LaVine’s camp also reportedly now open to a trade. But the Bulls reportedly have no plans to take their medicine by beginning a proper rebuild. Not even close. The Bulls instead want to extend DeMar DeRozan, stick with Vucevic through his new 3-year deal, and from what I’m hearing, they intend to use any return in a LaVine trade to bolster their current roster and “remain competitive,” if they even trade LaVine at all.

Karnisovas stated in his initial press conference: “This is my dream. Our ultimate goal is clearly to bring an NBA championship to the city of Chicago. … A firm foundation is absolutely vital. I will build that here in Chicago. No skipping steps. There is a systematic approach to success.” If that is truly the goal, then it is impossible to reconcile that goal with AKME’s current actions and future plans.

The Bulls do not even have a top-30 player on their roster, let alone a superstar. They do not have the assets to acquire one. And they have no developing players who project to get there. AKME boldly repeated the same mistake, with the same reasoning, that GarPax made when they assembled the “3 Alphas,” only this time with “3 Betas” (h/t Zach Lowe) and a lot less draft capital.

The Chicago Bulls are further from a championship now than when they started the rebuild in June 2017, and every day they delay the inevitable only makes the path back to relevance that much more difficult. If building a championship team in Chicago has any hope of becoming a reality, the Bulls need to embrace the principles that provide the foundation for sustainable, winning franchises. Until they do, there’s no reason to expect different results.

The post The Road to Nowhere appeared first on Swish Theory.

This funny tactic forces the player setting the screen to either try and quickly set a second screen or to abandon the screen entirely and reset the action. The former often results in a moving screen violation because Caruso is already in movement as the second screen is set, attached to the hip of the ball handler; the latter shaves valuable seconds off of the shot clock. If the screen is legally set, Caruso’s hop allows him to get better position on the play and quickly negate any advantage created by the screen. 

Caruso’s hop is one of many examples that illustrate how defenders use something called cognitive athleticism to become playmakers, bending opposing teams to their will on the defensive end of the floor. Much like their offensive counterparts, defensive playmakers are adept at controlling the action around them to maximize each possession and prevent the other team from running their sets effectively. Yet despite defensive playmaking’s indispensable importance to winning basketball, the impact of its major component – cognitive athleticism – has largely gone under the radar. 

I want to explore why that is and illustrate how we can get better at recognizing cognitive athleticism’s impact on defense and defensive playmaking specifically. To do that, it’s essential to first discuss: the inherent difficulties in quantifying defense; what the goals of good defense are and how those are, at times, misaligned with the statistics that attempt to measure them; and how untracked or unique defensive traits that have an outsized impact on defense are often difficult to pin down or reproduce in data. 

Finally, I’ll examine what cognitive athleticism is, how it manifests, how it allows players to raise both the floor and ceiling of a good defense, and how we can get better at identifying it. I’m going to illustrate this largely through the lens of two players that demonstrate, in my estimation, elite levels of this athleticism – Alex Caruso and Nikola Jokic. 

The Problem with Quantifying Defense

The basketball world has gotten increasingly obsessed over the years with collecting and organizing data in ways that can accurately estimate the impact of individual players or lineups of players on winning games. You know, the “VORPs and schnorps” Zach Lowe loves to talk about. These various metrics are not perfect, nor are they intended to be, but significant strides have been made with offensive metrics in particular, such that they tend to provide a fairly accurate picture of who is doing good things on the offensive end and how they are doing it. Lagging far behind, however, are defensive metrics. Zach Kram at The Ringer had a great article last year about the inherent issues in attempting to create accurate defensive statistics, which is highly recommended reading. The gist, though, is that defense remains extremely difficult to quantify in any consistent and meaningful way, and the best path to learn a player’s impact on defense is still the long one: watch an exorbitant amount of film and develop a deep understanding of what is happening on the floor on each possession. For the foregoing reasons, highly impactful defensive players have always gotten a lot less shine than their offensive counterparts, if they are even properly identified at all. 

The art of defensive playmaking has remained especially underappreciated. When we discuss elite playmakers, for example, the context is always on offense. Players like Nikola Jokic, LeBron James, or Luka Doncic have the remarkable ability to survey the basketball court and efficiently process the movements of their teammates and opponents in real time. They master every angle, every eyeball shift, every foot movement to create just the right amount of space for an open shot or deliver a pinpoint pass at just the right moment. You’ve heard announcers and analysts alike rave about how these players always seem a step ahead of the defense and how they create unique advantages with that precognition. That same prescience – the ability to know what will happen before it happens – is the key skill with which players can become impactful defensive playmakers. As illustrated by the initial example involving Alex Caruso, defensive playmakers use cognitive athleticism to create game-altering defensive events that can completely transform a team’s defensive aptitude. To understand its importance, it is essential to understand what good defense is and what it looks like.

The Goal of Defense

At the risk of insulting your intelligence for a second, I want to lay out defense at the granular level in order to demonstrate that cognitive athleticism is at the heart of every good defense. As we know, basketball is a simple game: put the ball in the other basket and prevent the other team from putting the ball in your basket. Conceptually, then, winning a basketball game comes down to maximizing each possession and creating more possessions for your team while limiting possessions and making them inefficient for the other team. 

At its core, the goal of any team or player on defense is to end the opponent’s possession without surrendering any points. There’s various defensive events that can occur or be generated to help accomplish this objective, and the following major ones are currently tracked: turnovers, steals, offensive fouls, deflections, contests, blocks, and rebounds. Each of these events have varying defensive value:

• Turnovers: turnovers encompass multiple defensive events, such as steals or drawing offensive fouls, but also things like stepping out of bounds or bad passes or recovery of a loose ball. Turnovers are very valuable because they end the opponents’ possession without sacrificing points and often lead to transition opportunities or the accrual of fouls. 
• Steals: these are consistently the most valuable defensive events because they immediately end the opponents’ possession, sacrifice no points, have a demoralizing component, and often create a transition opportunity on offense. Over the last decade plus, offenses have scored 1.04 points per possession in transition versus 0.87 points per possession in the half-court. Additionally, with the new take-foul rule in place that grants a free throw plus possession for a foul in transition, steals will likely become even more advantageous on average.
• Offensive fouls: drawing a charge or illegal screen are the most common offensive fouls. Individually, they are generally not quite as valuable as steals because they don’t create transition opportunities, but their value can exceed steals as the opposing team gets into foul trouble and generates free throws (1.3 points per possession on average).
• Deflections: deflections disrupt opposing offenses, eat up valuable time, and often lead to steals and offensive fouls. 
• Contests: getting hands raised in front of a shooter can be valuable to alter shots or discourage players from taking them in the first place, and can also result in blocks.
• Blocks: blocks force a missed shot and can be especially valuable when the rebound is secured immediately afterwards. Blocks are also demoralizing and can be an effective way to coerce teams into taking less efficient shots.
• Rebounds: these end the opponent’s possession without sacrificing points and often lead to transition opportunities. 

While these tracked defensive events are often markers of a good defense, the statistics themselves do not always have meaningful probative value, as previously illustrated in Zach Kram’s article. Instead, understanding how these tracked events are generated is often more important than the event itself, and that is where cognitive athleticism manifests.

For example, you might have two players who generate a high number of steals and therefore rate favorably on various defensive metrics. Assume Player A generates steals because he consistently anticipates passes and intercepts them due to good positioning and anticipation, while Player B generates a lot of steals because he gambles on the perimeter and is often successful in getting possession of the ball due to his long arms. While both players generate steals, Player B sacrifices good positioning to do so and may create multiple disadvantaged possessions for his team between acquiring each steal. Defensive metrics struggle to capture this important distinction; all we see is that a steal was generated. 

Additionally, there are many defensive events that are not tracked at all or cannot reasonably be tracked, making the effects of cognitive athleticism even less visible to the untrained eye. A player who is consistently in the right position to create opportunities for defensive events, for example, may never generate a single steal, deflection, block, or turnover and yet can still be a quality defender. That’s because the impact of a player on defense is far more complicated to determine than simply looking at a box score. You have to understand the details of each and every possession – the offensive scheme, the personnel executing it and their effectiveness in doing so, the defensive scheme, the defender’s role in that scheme, and how effective all five players are at executing – which all must be taken into account. It’s a monumental task that requires both sophisticated basketball knowledge and a lot of repetition, and no one person has the bandwidth to do this across the entire league. Thankfully, there are physical and mental traits that can help us prognosticate a player’s aptitude and tendencies on defense across a variety of situations. Just as the trained eye can sense that certain offensive players are or will be gifted playmakers, we can identify gifted defensive playmakers by learning what to look for. 

Defensive Athleticism

Every player leverages three types of athleticism when they play basketball: hard, soft, and cognitive – as illustrated and discussed by Thinking Basketball’s Ben Taylor.

Hard and soft athleticism, often described as physical tools, are essential to be effective on both sides of the floor. In the defensive context, players who have long limbs, can jump high, can change direction and speed quickly while maintaining balance, are mobile and also immovable, and/or can be highly active for long periods of time are typically more likely to have a consistently positive impact on defense.  

That’s because defensive activity most commonly occurs in reaction to the opponent. And while defensive schemes are often pre-planned as a result of good scouting and coaching, players are put in positions to react to the others currently on the floor in order to maximize the team’s defensive impact against that unit. For example, players involved defensively in a pick and roll action react to the screen: the on-ball defender attempts to navigate the screen and regain defensive position on the ball-handler, while the screener’s defender either blitzes the ball-handler, or drops back as the screener rolls, or does whatever else may be called for by the defensive scheme and the offensive action being executed. Hard and soft athleticism are especially helpful in reactive defense, as they can minimize recovery time and allow for quicker rotations to diminish any advantages created by the offense. 

Cognitive athleticism, on the other hand, allows defenders to flip the script. Instead of just reacting on defense, defenders use cognitive athleticism to become proactive, anticipating the future to create defensive events. Cognitive athleticism is commonly referred to as “feel” or, more clumsily, as “basketball IQ,” though it has little to do with intelligence. Rather, according to Ben Taylor and SIS Hoops’ Evan Zaucha, cognitive athleticism is made up of four parts: pattern recognition, spatial awareness, anticipation, and cognitive load. Each of these combine and overlap to help a defender generate a “feel” for defense that allows them to accurately forecast what the offense is going to do and when. These same four parts apply for offensive playmakers as well. 

Pattern recognition is the ability to identify plays or actions and the tendencies of the personnel running them. While there are certainly players who naturally excel in this area, all players can develop their pattern recognition through repetition of actions and diligent film study. Prescient defenders will often know a play call before it is executed, an opposing player’s favorite spots to shoot, or what hand or side they favor on a drive. Players that excel in pattern recognition consistently study different players and actions so they can access that information in real time during a game. Here’s a simple example the internet had way too much fun with: 

And here’s Alex Caruso describing Jayson Tatum’s tendencies to JJ Redick: 

Spatial awareness is often described as court vision. It’s knowing where everyone is on the floor at all times and where they are going to be in the near future. This knowledge can help an offensive player know how fast to throw a pass or when to accept or reject a screen. Defensively, it allows a player to identify optimal positioning or recognize and call out an impending breakdown in a rotating defense. Caruso exemplifies this concept with his impeccable timing and positioning on this sequence:

Anticipation is the ability to expect or predict something that has yet to happen. This cognitive ability allows an offensive player to throw a pass to an empty spot on the floor that will soon be occupied by his teammate. Defensively, players use anticipation to know where they need to be positioned to intercept a pass that hasn’t yet been made to an off-ball cutter, or to avoid getting screened, or to swipe a hand at an opposing ball-handler: 

Finally, cognitive load is akin to mental stamina. It’s a player’s ability to maintain their processing speed throughout an entire game or series without significant dropoff. Just as physical conditioning is required to play sustained NBA minutes, great defensive playmakers require consistent exercise of their cognitive athleticism to maintain their prognostic bandwidth:

The havoc that Caruso creates every possession he’s in the game is a testament to this conditioning. Every second that he spends blowing up a screen, or negating a created advantage, or deflecting a pass, or getting between the ball-handler and their intended target, translates into less time to score and a less efficient offense for the opposing team. Basketball players play best when they are in rhythm; Caruso makes sure his targets never get comfortable by anticipating their every move. Caruso also impacts winning by erasing his teammates’ mistakes and allowing them to play more aggressively within a given scheme because of the additional margin for error that he provides with his elite blend of hard, soft, and cognitive athleticism. His 1st Team All-Defense award was well-deserved this last season.  

Cognitive athleticism can also help defenders who don’t possess more traditional physical athletic traits and are often overlooked or undervalued as a result. Nikola Jokic is a great example of a player whose defensive impact is difficult to pinpoint with available metrics and who does not pop off the screen on that end of the floor. Jokic is lanky, but he’s not especially bouncy or quick. He does, however, use his incredible cognitive athleticism to his advantage, using spatial awareness and anticipation to plod right into the correct positions at the right time, and using his pattern recognition to vocally quarterback the defense for his teammates. His coach, Michael Malone, describes how Jokic’s cognitive athleticism impacts his team’s defense:

Malone is right: a lot of this stuff isn’t readily apparent using the eye test unless you know what you’re looking for, nor does it appear on any stat sheet, so box-score-based defensive analytics cannot reliably predict it. Consider these two sequences where Alex Caruso guards Devin Booker; Caruso becomes an agent of chaos on defense for nearly 30 seconds, anticipating Booker’s every twitch and tendency to cause him to take two low-quality shots, but there’s no recorded defensive stat to reflect that reality:

That doesn’t mean the impact is not felt. Having an elite defensive playmaker on an NBA team roster can keep almost any team afloat defensively. Having two can completely transform it. The best recent example of this is the 2021-22 Chicago Bulls who, despite deploying the defensively milquetoast Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, and Nikola Vucevic, had a league-best defensive rating when Alex Caruso and Lonzo Ball, both of whom are elite defensive playmakers, shared the floor with them or when both of them were on the floor with any other lineup. With them off the floor, the Bulls had the worst defensive rating in the league. Not only did they flip the script on defense, their defensive playmaking and pinpoint passing juiced Chicago’s transition offense to league-best efficiency in points per possession on transition opportunities. 

Identifying Cognitive Athleticism 

But far too often, however, the impact of cognitively athletic defenders is not adequately recognized by large parts of the basketball community. A center with hard and soft athleticism that racks up blocks, for example, may be commonly viewed as defensively impactful because he pops off the screen. But if he’s chasing blocks while being out of position, or if opponents get into the paint at a higher rate because he’s not rotating correctly, the impact metrics can sometimes be overstated or deceiving. A center who is constantly in the right spot or rotating with precision may not get the opportunity to block as many shots because opposing players are deterred from ever getting to the paint in the first place, which is far more conducive to winning but harder to pin down on paper. Having an awareness of these factors can help us understand why both people and defensive metrics are so split on the defensive impact of players like Nikola Jokic, or why the little things Alex Caruso does often go unnoticed or underappreciated for so long. 

Next time you watch a player on defense this season, try and focus on identifying traits of cognitive athleticism. Or when you scan for the aforementioned defensive events, identify how the player generated the statistic. For example, when a defensive player gets screened, look for their footwork and positioning before, during, and after a screen is set. When a player gets a rebound, watch that player’s timing, positioning, anticipation, and box-outs that lead to the rebound. Were they just lucky, or did they create the defensive event through their proactivity? As always, metrics and statistics can be incredibly useful in evaluation, but they should primarily be used as tools to generate good questions rather than provide definitive answers. If a player generally thought to be a poor defender rates highly in one or across multiple defensive metrics, that should pique your interest, and vice versa. Don’t just take numbers at face value, investigate them. 

As we learn to recognize how cognitive athleticism manifests on defense, we’ll be able to better identify good defenders at all levels of the sport. Perhaps someday soon we’ll have metrics that can accurately measure how well a defender anticipates a pass or avoids a screen, but until then, as Tom Thibodeau loves to say, the magic is in the work. 

The post The Mind of a Defensive Menace: Cognitive Athleticism’s Impact on Defense appeared first on Swish Theory.

As for the Chicago Bulls, last season they surprised the NBA world with their success, eventually making the playoffs as the sixth seed after being seen by many as a fringe playoff team pre-season. DeMar DeRozan played his way into a 2^nd team All-NBA selection. Nikola Vucevic didn’t live up to expectations while dealing with inconsistencies, but he managed to finish the season with a respectable stat line of 17-11-3-1-1 (53% true shooting). Zach Lavine had an injury-riddled season, quietly averaged 24-4-4, and ranked seventh in the league in true shooting (60%).

The Bulls’ problems last year offensively pertained to how reliant they were on isolation masterclasses from Zach Lavine and DeMar DeRozan in the halfcourt. There were too many times when there wasn’t enough player movement. When a team feels comfortable enough to leave and go help on drives because there is no respected floor spacer, it leads to a lot of mucked-up space for your offense to attack.

This preseason the Bulls displayed some different wrinkles within their offense to help find easier baskets. Let’s take a look to see what that means for their hopes this upcoming season.

Three Stars Combined

I’m not a big fan of the saying “you shouldn’t take anything out of the preseason,” because I do believe there are valuable points to be gathered. Teams usually like to experiment with notable lineups and sets to get a good look at how a defense may react. The Bulls being able to use Zach, DeMar and Vucevic in a certain action led to an advantage.

Look at this SLOB(sideline out of bounds) here.

This is a sideline out of bounds play that ends up with Zach Lavine getting a look from three in the corner. The result of the play looks good, but it’s all about the process. Looking at plays and watching the process is the fun part of watching film for me. In this particular play DeMar gets a pindown from Javonte Green to get an easier catch. Now, Vucevic comes over to set a ball screen. After the pindown take a look at the Bulls alignment on the floor. Goran Dragic after the inbounds pass is now in the corner and Javonte is now on the strong side wing after the his screen. This creates an opportunity for the Bulls to get an advantage if DeMar can put Garrett Temple on his hip. Which leads to a three on two advantage for the Bulls because Temple would be considered out of the play.

The Pelicans are playing ICE against the ball screen, which is to force the ball handler away from middle penetration and cutting off other scoring options.

Take a look at how high Hernangomez is at the point of attack. That is in response to the ball handler being DeMar DeRozan who shot 46% on 672 attempts from long mid range shots (outside of 14 feet and inside the three point arc) according to cleaningtheglass.com. When your big man at the point of attack is playing high or at the level of the screen it forces your back side defense in this case it would be Dyson Daniels to have to slide over in help more. Like I mentioned above, the alignment of the Bulls leads to leaving a rookie in Dyson all alone on the back side to decipher who he should guard between the rolling Vucevic or the drifting Zach Lavine. DeRozan does a great job of reading the play and skips over to Zach in the corner which leads to a make from three.

This half court set is also another wrinkle that the Bulls have been running. They start with Vucevic and Lavine setting staggered screens for DeMar to come off in order to get a clean catch. Right after that action happens you get a ram screen (an offensive action in which a player receives an off-ball screen then sets a ballscreen) for Lavine from Vucevic. Now, before we get to the next couple of actions it’s key to know that the Raptors were switching a lot, so the Bulls were looking for a good matchup to attack. So, after the ram screen, Lavine then sets a ballscreen for DeMar and gets out of it which resembles a flare. Right after that, Vucevic sets a ballscreen for DeMar and the Raptors switch it. Which then gets Scottie Barnes on DeMar. This is in no way shade at the young Barnes, but if there was a part of his game that he would want to improve on it would be on-ball defense. DeMar immediately attacks and gets to his spot rises up and knocks it down.

Vucevic Post Touches

Coming into this season a lot of talk was around how to get Nikola Vucevic get back on track. While some have claimed he is on the steep decline, I am of the impression that last season was a tough one for him in a different role. It was refreshing to hear the Bulls talk about getting Vucevic post touches, though some fans respond, “Whoa, the game has changed. Why are the Bulls doing this?” To which I answer: when you enter the ball in the post it doesn’t necessarily mean the player has to shoot it. It’s ultimately a different look for the defense. You hear in football about how offenses want the defense to defend every blade of grass. Translate that into basketball terms and I think you have what the Bulls want to do.

In addition, with the Bulls not having a ton of shooting on this roster, you have to find different ways to threaten a defense. So, lets take a look at a couple plays from this preseason.

This opportunity for Vucevic is a great example of what it can do for your team, and especially when you have players who can shoot the ball off the catch or attack closeouts. Goran Dragic enters the ball in to the post and goes to set a split screen for Lavine. In this particular case Lavine sets up for a catch and shoot opportunity because his primary defender, Monte Morris, digs down and Vucevic kicks it back out. The Bulls are able to get into the teeth of the defense all thanks to a touch in the post.

Take a look at the video below and think about what it could do for a defense to have Zach Lavine running off those split screens for a three.

There are different counters for split action depending on how the defense plays the initial screen. If the defender is chasing over the screen you shoot the three or attack off the bounce if the screen doesn’t hit. The defender can also top block the offensive player, meaning the defender is not allowing you to go over the screen. In that case, the read should be to backdoor the action. For switching the action you can have the screener slip to defeat the defense. This variety of options is why I am fond of the split action, and even more so when you have a great shooter and finisher like Zach Lavine.

I absolutely love this set from the Bulls. Zach comes up to set a ballscreen for Ayo Dosunmu and the Nuggets switch it. Lavine then goes to the opposite block and gets an exit screen (a baseline screen set near the dunker spot for the cutter to cut to the corner) from Vucevic, also known as a corner pin. Once Lavine gets the ball, he doesn’t have the open shot because of Jamal Murray doing a great job of fighting over the screen, so it flows into a side ballscreen action. This leads to a dump off to the mid-post for Vucevic who backs down DeAndre Jordan for two pound dribbles and receives a dig from Murray. Nikola responds by immediately passing it back out to Lavine for a catch and shoot three. He knocks it down.

Player Movement + Ball Movement

One thing that was apparent in preseason was the emphasis of player movement and ball movement. Ball movement is essential to success on offense, but player movement can enhance the result of it. The video below will show the Bulls running a side ballscreen and the Nuggets are going to Ice it. When you ice a ballscreen it is hard for the defensive big to get back to a floor spacing big like Vucevic. In this case Vucevic pops and moves the ball quickly to a cutting Javonte Green as his defender, Michael Porter Jr., has to help DeAndre Jordan, leaving the cut open for Javonte in turn. This was a great example of offense made by early ball movement combined with active player movement.

Yes, it was the preseason, but movement in general is huge for this squad. The Bulls have two stud isolation players in Zach Lavine and DeMar DeRozan, but you shouldn’t have to rely on those qualities. Chicago having guys that can get their own bucket is valuable no doubt about it, but if you can make the game easier for your whole team to be a threat it only makes you that much harder to guard in the half court. Every blade of grass.

In Conclusion

Overall, this Chicago Bulls team will be able to score as long as health permits. The three stars fit together well, and they present different problems for the defense. With these new wrinkles being added to challenge defenses, it should only create more opportunity for this team to succeed even more on the offensive side. Now, that doesn’t mean that this team will instantly be a top five offense, but they have the ability to show different looks with keeping a defense concerned about all spots on the floor as their goal. Look for these Bulls to have a more fluid and connected offense with the whole team, not just the stars.

The post “Cover Every Blade”: A Preview of the Chicago Bulls Offense in 2022-23 appeared first on Swish Theory.