The Chicago Bulls Have Quietly Put Together The NBA’s Best Defence

Sitting outside the playoff picture, in the provisional eleventh seed in the Eastern Conference, far out of the running in the Central Division and with a sedate 28-33 record, you could be excused for thinking that the Chicago Bulls were not doing much right.

Certainly, there is discontent amongst the fanbase. Having been excited for a change of management after the end of the long-tenured John Paxson/Gar Forman era, newly appointed executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas and equally new general manager Marc Eversley came out of the gate with a flurry of trades for established names, something not often seen under the previous regime. The two took the plunge, pairing incumbent star Zach LaVine with Nikola Vucevic and DeMar DeRozan, added Lonzo Ball in another deal, and staked their own bid to become a competitor in the resurgent Eastern Conference.

All that has seen in return, though, is one sixth-seed appearance in 2021/22 and subsequent first-round knockout, a mediocre performance that somehow still seems out of reach this year. Notwithstanding Ball’s continuing – and worrying – absence, it was supposed to better than this.

To trade misfiring youth for immediate results, and then not get those immediate results, smarts. It doubly smarts when some of that misfiring youth – particularly Wendell Carter Jr, reinvigorated after being traded for Vucevic and now well on his way to becoming the third Gasol brother, and Lauri Markkanen, this year’s likely NBA Most Improved Player – have made the Bulls’ rush to the play-in game look foolish.

Frankly, your initial premise would have been correct; the Bulls aren’t doing much right. Yet what they have managed to achieve this season is, surprisingly, construct one of the NBA’s best defences.

This is a surprise because none of the LaVine/Vucevic/DeRozan trio around which the team is built is known for being an above-average NBA defender. Nor even are they really known for being average ones. Vucevic is neither a rim-protector nor a ground-coverer in the middle, DeRozan’s commitment to the cause has been spotty going even as far back as his Toronto Raptors days, and LaVine’s growth as a player has mostly come on the more glamorous end, with both his defensive impact and motor further hampered by his nagging knee injuries.

Nevertheless, on the season, the Bulls have put together the league’s sixth-best defensive rating. And that is the total body of work; boil it down further to just the start of the new calendar year, and Chicago leads the NBA in defence.

In large part, this is due to the presence of the rotation around the big three. Alex Caruso in particular is a defensive whirlwind, someone who somehow manages to get everywhere and who can pester both those bigger than him on the wing and those lower to the ground than him at the one spot.

Similarly, in the frontcourt, third year forward Patrick Williams’s slow offensive development should not be conflated with his defensive impact, which is significant. Williams has power and athleticism in his frame, and between him and Caruso, there is a defensive match-up for every type of opponent.

Elsewhere, while Andre Drummond’s lateral limitations and tendency to forgo second jumps are well documented, he nevertheless contributes to the defensive effort with the best rebounding rate in the league’s history. Ayo Dosunmu is an important defender in the backcourt who is soon be paid accordingly. And although he is now out for an extended period, Javonte Green has been a key reserve, using his athleticism to cover every area of the court and every matchup in a Bruce Brown-esque way.

This is, of course, not enough. How a team with offensive players such as LaVine, DeRozan and Vucevic can still struggle so badly for offence that they are five games below .500 even with an elite defence, is unforgivable. Whatever the new brain trust thought of the incumbent roster that the outgoers left them, what is undeniably true is that the current iteration of the Chicago Bulls, their iteration of the Chicago Bulls, got older yet no noticeably better. And the disappointment of the Ball situation only accounts for a small part of that.

At least there is something, though. At least there is an identity and a strength. If the Bulls can backdoor their way into a low playoff seed as the regular season enters its final quarter, they can perhaps take some solace in knowing that, if they play defence like they are capable of, they might be considered a “tough out”.

It is not enough to offset the angst of seeing what Markkanen has become, and of what might have been in a parallel universe. But it is at least a start. Or perhaps the end of the new beginning.