Chicago Bulls taking off in Fred Hoiberg’s system
The Chicago Bulls started their circus trip with a resounding victory over Portland. So far, they are taking off in second-year head coach’s Fred Hoiberg’s system.
This is one strange Chicago sports season. The Cubs ended their 108-year title drought. Aside from that, things are upside down. The White Sox and Bears were supposed to contend, but ended up having circus-like atmospheres. The Chicago Bulls, meanwhile, were expected to have a down year, yet they are contenders.
So far this season, the Bulls are 7-4, ranking fifth in the Eastern Conference. This is a team that many predicted would miss the playoffs. Well, so far they are proving the doubters wrong.
Of course, it is still early, and a lot can happen.
The Chicago Bulls are one of the most surprising teams in the NBA. A team built with older veterans Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo and not-so-good outside shooters are not supposed to have one of the best offenses in the league.
The Bulls have the sixth-best Offensive Rating (111.6 points per 100 possessions) in the NBA. After watching the Tom-Thibodeau-led offensive grinders, who usually ranked in the bottom of the list offensively, watching this group is refreshing.
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These Bulls do not have the defensive chops that Thibodeau squeezed from his teams, but with a Defensive Rating of 104.1, they still rank ninth.
This is the team we expected to see when Fred Hoiberg replaced Thibodeau. We saw the offensively challenged teams and wondered what might have been. Now we see a Bulls team that puts the ball into the basket.
The Bulls continue to pound teams on the boards like they did with Thibodeau. They lead the NBA in rebounds with 49.5 per game.
This team also does a pretty good job of protecting the ball. They rank twelfth in Turnover Ratio, and their Assist-To-Turnover Ratio ranks tenth.
We see how different things are now. The Bulls started their Ringling Brothers Circus trip on Tuesday. Usually, those trips are long and difficult.
More difficult is having to start that trip against the Portland Trail Blazers. The Blazers beat the Bulls in seven straight years in the Moda Center. That streak ended last season, however.
On Tuesday, the Bulls started their own streak in Portland. They won their second game in a row there. Not just any win, mind you, but a 25-point blowout.
This is a different-looking team than Hoiberg had last season. The reports of in-fighting are non-existent now, and they battle on the court better. Taj Gibson, the Bulls’ longest-tenured player, notices the difference.
“A long time coming I tell you that,” Gibson said of the blowout. “I’ve been around, even when we was competing, even when we had some teams when we were competing for championships, they still gave us a good whopping. Finally, the way we set the game off [with] the right kind of tone, I was even in shock with the way we just came out and hit them in the mouth and just kept going. When we want to play we’re a hell of a team. You never know what you’re going to get, we had some good days in practice, but this is a good one. A long time coming. We’ve been getting our tails whipped in here a long time.”
After Wade had his worst 3-point shooting percentage last season (15.9 percent), he turned it around big time. He has his BEST 3-point shooting percentage this season at 35.3 percent.
Jimmy Butler is growing into his leadership role, and is taking his game to another level. He has career highs in scoring (24.5 per game), rebounds (6.1 per game), free throw percentage (90.1 percent), field goal percentage (48.8 percent) and 3-point percentage (44.7 percent).
No, this is not something that we will see from this group for an extended time period. Wade and Rondo have fewer seasons in front of them than they do behind them. We also don’t know how well the bench will play throughout the season.
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We can enjoy this run, though. It is fun watching Hoiberg’s system put to good use, and more fun is in store when he gets more of the right players to fit that system.