What the Chicago Bulls should do with the Nikola Vucevic situation
Breaking down Nikola Vucevic’s most recent performance
The Chicago Bulls were dead in the water from the jump against Boston, with all hopes for a top-3 win dashed by the end of the first quarter. In response to the criticism of Nikola Vucevic on both offense and defense, I went back and watched all of his minutes on the floor and came away with key takeaways on both offense and defense.
Regarding the Bulls’ defense, one thing became crystal clear after watching the game film.
The Chicago Bulls’ issues on defense start on the perimeter and carry over into rebounding before falling to the feet of Nikola Vucevic.
Three key plays stood out to me which illustrate this point, one occurring during each of Vucevic’s three stints on the floor through the game’s first three quarters.
- First Quarter: Al Horford, at the three point line, beats Zach LaVine (yes, Zach!). Vucevic steps up to defend, Theis cuts behind him and gets an easy pass for a quick layup
- Second Quarter: Jayson Tatum beats Derrick Jones Jr off the dribble and slices past DeMar, Vooch still gives him a tough contest, but Tatum makes a hard shot.
- Third Quarter: Jayson Tatum gets Patrick Williams to bite hard on a pump fake, he drives in comfortably and scores
On multiple other possessions, when he wasn’t getting defensive rebounds (7 total on the game in 3 quarters), he caused misses with tough contests, but no other Bull went to get the rebound. In fact, I don’t recall a single possession where he didn’t successfully box out Daniel Theis. I did see at least two plays where three Bulls were around the basket and failed to collect a board while Vooch contested a shot and forced a miss.
Now, if you contend that Vucevic is a defensive liability because he can’t hang on the perimeter when the Bulls switch, I’ll point to the play where Vooch was 1 on 1 with Tatum at the three-point line and forced him into a shot which he missed. Are there other plays you could point to of Vooch getting cooked on the perimeter? Definitely, but we can’t just pick and choose plays that are convenient for a narrative, it’s imperative that we get the whole picture.
If the Bulls want to truly take the next step, and improve as a team, it starts with their perimeter defense becoming more disciplined. This means Zach, DeMar, Patrick, Ayo, Coby, and everyone else learn to play sound defense in front of their man. It not only makes Vucevic’s life easier but allows him to focus more on getting rebounds because right now the Bulls seem content letting Vucevic clean up their mess when they get beat while still solely relying on him to get boards.
On offense, he had an off game like everyone else. Some plays stand out like the muffed passes and uncharacteristic low FG percentage from the post, but he did make a couple of good passes and good things happened more often than not when Zach and DeMar gave him the ball.
The bigger issue with the Bulls has been why Zach and DeMar feel content taking on double teams over giving Vooch the ball back off the screen. He’s left alone off the screens at least half the time yet I see DeMar shooting over two defenders or Zach driving into traffic with ample time left on the clock. There’s little movement because most of the Bulls know a shot is going up quickly so there’s no incentive to get in position. Learning to maximize the opportunity created by the double teams is key and I find it odd they haven’t figured out how to do that yet.