How Bulls Plan to Adapt Their Pick-And-Roll Defensive Coverages This Season

Abandoning the blitz is what’s best for the Bulls originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago

Buried in the annals of an 11-and-a-half-minute press availability Saturday that touched on everything from pet chameleons to Coby White’s development, Daniel Gafford spilled one of the lines of media week.

“Pick-and-roll situations, we focus on being in the drop now,” Gafford said when asked about his potential defensive impact this season.

For all the talk of a sterling new offense catered to players’ strengths and featuring more ball and player movement, shifting to drop-based coverage in the pick-and-roll would mark as seismic a shift as Billy Donovan could implement in his first season as the Bulls’ head coach.

Why? 

Abandoning the blitz

Let’s start with what the Bulls will be abandoning by playing more drop. 

Under Jim Boylen last year, the Bulls blitzed opposing ball-handlers while defending the pick-and-roll at an unfathomable rate. Like, three times more than the second-place team unfathomable.

Doing so had its benefits. Leaning on the blitz (or “hard hedge”) -- which involves both defenders in a given screen-and-roll action leaping out at the opponents’ ball-handler, arms waving -- spurred the Bulls to leading the league in opponent turnovers per game (18.3) by a gap equal to the difference between second- and ninth-place teams in the category. And capitalizing on said turnovers was often a boon for an unimaginative half court offense -- the Bulls generated more of their points off turnovers during the 2019-20 season (19.8 percent) than any team since the 2011-12 Memphis Grizzlies (20.8 percent) -- at the height of their grit-and-grindedness -- and Miami Heat (20 percent).

It was also a system well-suited to some players’ strengths. Kris Dunn, especially, thrived in the chaos. He finished the campaign second in the association in steals per game (2.0) and a handful of votes short of All-Defense honors. Wendell Carter Jr. -- who we’ll get to shortly -- was a worthy back-line for such a style because of his mobility and rotational headiness. During a Charmin-soft December 2019 slate, the Bulls’ defensive rating rose to as high as third in the NBA.

When the blitz works, it can throw off an opposing ball-handler’s rhythm and lead to disjointed, indecisive offensive possessions for opponents. And, as mentioned, force turnovers. Here’s an illustration of the blitz working as intended:

But relying so heavily on the blitz presented a number of precarious propositions. It pulled the Bulls’ bigs up and away from the basket with regularity, which undeniably affected the team’s rebounding over time (if you don’t believe me, ask Thad Young). It persistently hurled Bulls defenders into frenetic rotations and left them on the wrong end of 4-on-3 power plays, which led to an overall-statistically-fine-enough defense hemorrhaging the two most coveted shots in basketball: corner 3s and rim attempts.

*Source: Cleaning the Glass, which factors out garbage-time possessions

Yes, the Bulls were the best in the league at disallowing mid-range jumpers last season… At the expense of allowing opponents to get nearly 42 percent of their field goal attempts at the rim, and almost 10 percent on corner 3-pointers. Ghastly.

Perhaps worse: Its effectiveness abandoned them late in games. Blitzing is a fatiguing style to perpetually play -- the Bulls averaged 8.65 defensive miles traveled last season, a healthy 0.1 miles more than the second-place New Orleans Pelicans. And, worse still, savvy point guards (and decision-makers of other ilks) routinely carved the oft-scrambling Bulls in game-deciding possessions. Take this example from D’Angelo Russell and Draymond Green from the waning seconds of one of the Bulls’ most unseemly losses last year. On myriad occasions, screeners slipping was the system’s kryptonite:

There’s a reason the Bulls boasted the league’s fifth-worst winning percentage in “clutch” games, defined by NBA.com as contests within a five-point margin with under five minutes to play, last season. There’s a reason they finished 2-23 against teams with .500 or above records. There’s a reason their season-long defensive rating worsened by 2.2 points allowed per 100 possessions from first halves to second halves, and 4.1 points per 100 from first to fourth quarters. There’s a reason that, when injuries struck Dunn and Carter, their defense crashed and burned almost instantly

Now, this isn’t a black-and-white issue. Boylen implemented -- and mostly stood by -- the blitz regardless of personnel because it helped prop up a unit both decimated by injury and desperately wanting for instant offense, especially against inferior competition. And a number of variables contributed to the Bulls’ underperformance in both close games and against the heavyweights of the league.

But the steadfast commitment to blitzing as the foundation of their defensive scheme at least contributed to all of the above. It’s irrefutable.

Because, all in all, the blitz is a weapon best selectively deployed against teams with a singular offensive focal point (e.g. the 2019-20 Atlanta Hawks with Trae Young, whom the Bulls feasted against) and when you have the bodies to do so -- not as the backbone of a defensive philosophy. The Toronto Raptors, as an example, mixed blitzing into their pick-and-roll coverages relatively frequently last season and were one of the more fearsome defensive units in the league. But they used it in moderation, and have exceptionally malleable personnel.

The cherry on top: According to ESPN’s Kevin Pelton, citing Second Spectrum, the Bulls blitzed more last season (1,353 times) than Donovan’s Oklahoma City Thunder teams did in his entire five-year tenure (1,333). Drastically cutting down their blitzing makes all the sense in the world, and was expected even before Gafford’s comments Saturday. They were refreshing all the same.

Benefits of drop

Let’s define drop coverage first. And I’ll allow a real basketball coach to do it for me, since, you know, sportswriter here.

More conservative? You could say that. More prone to allowing pull-up mid-range jumpers -- the least coveted shot in basketball? Certainly.

But it’s a simple, adaptable and less-variant foundation on which to build a defensive style. Listening to comments from Donovan and Artūras Karnišovas, it’s clear they see this Bulls roster as sporting a number of versatile, interchangeable players -- especially Patrick Williams, who represents one of the few fresh faces on this year’s roster. Chandler Hutchison alluded to switching in pick-and-roll coverage as part of “what we want to do” on Thursday. Sprinkling in some blitzing here and there wouldn’t be surprising either. This doesn’t feel like a team married to one way of playing on either end, and Donovan is famously adaptable.

Operating out of a base drop, though -- or at least, operating out of drop more frequently -- would allow the Bulls to less often be in recovery mode, and their bigs to stay more regularly tethered to the restricted area. That stands to benefit all three of the centers currently slotted for their regular rotation: Luke Kornet and Gafford are both good shot-blockers, but often appeared out of their element chasing ball-handlers around the perimeter last season. It also stands to benefit the team on the glass, after the Bulls finished 23rd in defensive rebounding rate in 2019-20.

And even Carter, who’s mobile enough to better survive within a blitz-dependent scheme, should be poised for a more outsized defensive impact in a refurbished system. Routinely yanked out from the middle of the Bulls’ defense, he last season lost half-a-block per game off his rookie year average, and his block rate, per Cleaning the Glass, dipped from 2.8 percent (85th percentile) to 1.5 percent (a pedestrian 46th percentile mark) -- though he did still nearly average a double-double.

“With a couple of more adjustments [Billy Donovan]’s going to make to our defense, he expects me to be the defensive anchor that I’ve been for this team for the past two years,” Carter said. 

Look for his shot-blocking numbers to return to form with the adjustment Gafford hinted at Saturday. Look for he and Gafford, no longer tasked as heavily with chasing around opposing guards, to decrease their personal foul numbers playing in a more traditional role for big people.

That’s (drop coverage) helping me out a lot, because I can work to where I can be in verticality more instead of getting easy fouls from guards attacking me and certain things like that,” Gafford elaborated.

And look for the Bulls’ defense -- though less home-run-happy -- to perhaps sustain more stably throughout the rigors of a grueling schedule and (knock on wood) any injuries or extended absences that might occur.

So long to blitzing ball-handlers on over ⅓ of opponents’ pick-and-roll possessions. We hardly knew ye.

Download
Download MyTeams Today!

 

Copyright RSN
Contact Us