Time for the Running of the Bulls

By: Charlie Danoff

There are a million excuses for this year’s abysmal Bulls performance. Writers, including myself, have speculated ad nauseam about the preseason contract extensions never signed, the Kobe rumors, Scott Skiles “losing” the team, missed opportunities in the past lotteries, the small backcourt, the lack of inside scoring, and on and on.

While some of those may even be valid reasons for the team’s failure, it is time to move on. The explanation no longer matters. Until GM John Paxson makes personnel changes, the team needs to figure out how to make the best of their current situation. Enough of the BS - the Bulls are clearly not as good as critics thought heading into the season, but they are also not as bad as they have shown.

As a first step to getting more out of what they have, I suggest a switch in offensive systems. I would like to see what this group could do playing an up-tempo offense.

Currently, the Bulls play a half-court offensive game. Whether it’s Hinrich or Duhon bringing the ball up the floor, they do so slowly. By the time they finally get to the offensive half of the court, the opposing team is set in their defense. The Bulls then pass it around, look for a shot, and usually settle for a long jumper. Given the limitations of their current roster, this system has resulted in the worst field goal percentage in the league (42.43%).

It is time for the Bulls to start playing a “run and gun,” fastbreak-oriented offense. The team’s offensive weaknesses in the half-court are not going to change until the personnel does. Until that happens, the Bulls should adopt a system that maximizes their current potential, as opposed to one that exacerbates their weaknesses.

Playing a more up-tempo game would make everyone on the team better. Let’s begin with the worst offensive player in the league (league history?) - Ben Wallace.

Ben is a terrible free throw shooter, has no jump shot, and can’t make a post move to save his life. Usually when the Bulls play offense, opposing teams only have to guard the other four players on the court. Asking Ben to beat the opposing center one-on-one with his back to the basket is an exercise in stupidity.

But the Bulls are still gonna play the man.

Despite his advancing age and declining production, I think most fans would agree that Wallace remains one of the more athletic starting centers in the NBA. Athleticism is different from on-court basketball ability. Wallace is clearly lacking in the latter, but the drop-off has not been so huge in the former.

What I am trying to say is that if you lined up all the starting centers of the NBA for a 100-yard dash, I think Wallace would finish in the top ten. He would unquestionably leave Chris Kaman, Yao Ming, and Zydrunas Ilgauskas (all better offensive players) in the dust.

Logically, then, the best way to maximize Wallace’s ability is by getting him to run the floor. In a fast-break style offense, the Bulls could get 3-5 easy baskets a game for the big man, as he would often beat the opposing center down the floor for an easy dunk.

Will this make Wallace an All-Star, or even an average offensive big man?

No.

But that is not the point. There is no magic potion that will turn a player into something he has never been in the past - especially considering that he seems not to care about his deficiencies. If he did, he would spend every off-season working as hard as humanly possible to improve upon them. There is no way, over the course of 12 NBA off-seasons, that he could not at least develop one friggin’ post move.

But I digress. Running Wallace down the floor ahead of his center counterpart would turn a completely worthless offensive piece into a slightly less worthless offensive piece. Sad as that may be, it would make a big difference for this Bulls team.

Moving on from Big Ben, the rest of the roster would also benefit from such a switch. All of the Bulls’ top scorers - Gordon, Deng, Hinrich, Nocioni and even Joe Smith - are jump-shooters. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just that shooting from 10 feet away from the basket and beyond, over an opposing defender, is the hardest way to score in basketball.

The way the Bulls have been doing things this season, almost every shot has been a difficult one. Having Hinrich methodically bring the ball up the floor and work it around, using screens or movement to get the best jump shot, has led the Bulls to their current sorry offensive state.

Like Wallace, though, one thing almost the entire roster can do, is run. There is no reason Deng or Nocioni can’t beat their men down the floor, especially if Nocioni is playing the 4. The same goes for Smith and the diminutive backcourt - if Gordon and Hinrich were not quicker than many NBA guards, they would never have made it to the league.

Get out and run, boys!

As soon as a Bulls defender gathers a defensive rebound, the other four players should already be near the half-court line. One or two passes later, the ball should be in the hands of a player crashing to the hoop. This should result in a layup or dunk.

Taking short shots like those would immediately improve the team’s field goal percentage. In addition, opposing defenses would be forced to foul running Bulls players more often, sending them to the line. Lack of free throws attempted is another huge weakness for this team offensively.

Picking up the pace would, theoretically, reduce the number of jump shots taken and replace them with lay-ups and free throws. Seems pretty easy, no?

I realize this is a relatively simplified way to look at what the Bulls’ offensive problems have been and how easily a new system could work. That said, it shouldn’t be impossible to implement. Plenty of teams in the NBA use a run-and-gun system for offensive success, and there is no reason - with their current personnel - that Chicago could not as well.

The weirdest part of all is that playing faster is something the Bulls have previously used for success. Maybe past teams did not play quite the breakneck fast-break style of offense I am recommending, but they did play faster than this year’s team.

The best way to measure the pace a team plays at is a convenient statistic appropriately called “pace factor.” Basketball-Reference.com defines it as follows:

“Pace factor is an estimate of the number of possessions per 48 minutes by a team.”

Simple enough? For teams with established offensive stars such as the Boston Celtics, San Antonio Spurs or Detroit Pistons, having a high pace factor is not necessary to score. All of those teams have more than enough offensive options to have success in traditional half-court sets.

For teams without established stars - like the Golden State Warriors, for instance - pace becomes more important. The Warriors are third overall in the NBA in pace at 96.9, while the Bulls are 13th at 90.7. Accordingly, the Warriors score a lot more than the Bulls do - 109 points per game as opposed to the Bulls’ 95.1.

Friday night showed that Baron Davis is clearly a better offensive weapon than anyone on the Bulls. That said, as a top scoring trio, are Davis, Jackson and Ellis really that much better than Hinrich, Gordon and Deng?

And even if they are better, are they 14 points per game better? No. The difference is, the Warriors play at one of the highest paces in the NBA, and as a result get more chances for their best players to score. It follows that if the Bulls created more scoring opportunities, then the overall number of points scored by the team would also increase.

Each of the past few years, when the Bulls made the playoffs, they had a pace factor among the top ten in the league, and increasing each season - 95.1 in ‘04-05, 95.7 in ‘05-06 and 96 in ‘06-07. They also played better defense, but that is something that is more of a lack of effort than a system failure. For whatever reason, this year’s Bulls team does not have the defensive pride that past teams have had.

While a switch of philosophies would not necessarily improve their defense, it would vastly improve their poor offense. Even if this current group of players will never be the Phoenix Suns, they are definitely capable of better offensive output than they have shown so far this year.

At the end of the day, in spite of everything that has gone wrong this season, the team still has hope. Currently, the Bulls remain only a game-and-a-half out of playoff position. There really is no reason they can’t work their way into the top six in the East, maybe even up to number five. If the Bulls are going to make a playoff run, however, it has to start with some on-court running.

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NOTE: It’s good to see at least one person reads my irregular columns. Sam Smith wrote a piece about how the Bulls should trade Wallace to the Lakers, only ten days after I suggested the Bulls do the same thing. Don’t worry about crediting me, Sam - you can borrow ideas from my columns any time you choose.

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Charlie is an aspiring writer and a caddy at Skokie Country Club. Odds are you will hear a lot about him in the years to come, so if you want to be the first kid on the block familiar with his work, click here.

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