Chicago Bulls: Difficulty finishing games rears head again

For the past six years, Chicago Bulls’ summer league games have been fairly meaningless to watch. However, with many of the team’s young players slated to have important roles in the team’s starting and bench rotations this season, the Chicago Bulls’ performance in the summer league has newfound importance.

Unfortunately, in their first summer league game, the Chicago Bulls’ difficulty finishing off close games reared its head once again. Despite leading at halftime and going into the fourth quarter only down three, the Bulls got outscored 25 to 11 in the final quarter leading to a 17 point loss to the New Orleans Pelicans.

I found that the offense relied way too much on perimeter shots without much emphasis on driving to the basket for easy layups. This was in part because of the Bulls’ players’ tendency to not cut to the basket and just stand pat at the three-point line waiting for the ball. Ultimately, this put the onus of shot creation and facilitating the offense entirely on whoever brought the ball up the court.

This will hopefully get better as the summer league progresses, but it shows that this was an issue the Bulls faced at every level of their squad last season – not just the starting lineup. The defense down the stretch was also particularly concerning.

The Chicago Bulls were unable to do what they needed to do to win the game.

The Pelicans did get hot from the outside but the Bulls also displayed no interior presence. With the offense already going cold, the team needed to keep themselves in the game by playing hard on the defensive side but failed to do so as New Orleans was able to have their way in the fourth quarter of this game.

Now, there were three other quarters of this game that had plenty of positives to take away. The Bulls excelled in transition, especially off turnovers. Their defense only forced eight turnovers but the Bulls turned it into 22 points. For comparison, the Pelicans only scored 5 points off of 15 forced turnovers.

Additionally, for the first three quarters, the offense had a good flow. Watching the game, it was evident that every player who entered the game was given a chance to make an impact. Specifically, I was very impressed with Patrick Williams, Marko Simonovic, and Devon Dotson. Almost everyone who entered the game did score but once again, everything faded in the fourth quarter when it came time to close the game out.

Now, I do realize that it is only summer league and perhaps, it is useless to read too much into the Bulls’ opening game. However, this isn’t any other season for the Chicago Bulls. For the first time in a long time, there are expectations.

As a result, seeing the team (albeit the summer league team) struggle because they haven’t corrected the issues that the main team dealt with all of last season is a reason to pause for concern and something we’ll have to watch for the rest of the summer league.

Ultimately, the Chicago Bulls have a lot of promising young talent, many of whom flashed during the opening summer league game but it is clear that there is a lot of work to do prior to the start of the regular season.

At least three or four of these players will be integral parts of the Bulls’ rotation next season and as a result, it is imperative that these players develop – both physically and mentally to help restore Chicago’s status among the elite in the Eastern Conference and the NBA.