Chicago Bulls Midseason Grades: Butler shines, Wade and Rondo shrug
NBA fans everywhere are gearing up for All Star Weekend, which means that we’re over halfway done with the 82-game regular season. With almost 50 games in the books for the Chicago Bulls, it’s time to grade each player’s performance. Some are having career years, while others are leaving something to be desired.
It’s report card time for the Bulls.
A little over halfway through a very tumultuous season, Chicago has seen better days. Mired in controversy, they’ve lost all the preseason hype, and the days when they were top 10 in both offense and defense are barely visible in the rearview mirror.
The Bulls are 20th in points, 1st in rebounds, and dead last in 3-point attempts, all per 100 possessions. Just by looking at these three stats, it seems like the Bulls are right where we thought they would be. Only an idealistic few had any delusions about this team’s ability to score, and most believed that the offense would be safely below average and the team would continue their infuriating relationship with the 3-pointer.
Many also predicted that free agent acquisition Rajon Rondo would eventually cause some drama off the court, and lo and behold, he has taken to Instagram to chastise his teammates for airing grievances through the media. Because that makes sense.
In a nutshell, we had a feeling coming into this year that the Bulls would struggle, but not enough to reap any benefits. So far, we’re right on the money. As of Sunday, Chicago is in eighth place in an Eastern Conference that’s rapidly losing any credibility it may have gained this season. There doesn’t seem to be any indication that the Bulls will make the necessary changes to break free of the mediocrity that’s gripped them for the last five years.
But we’re not here to whine about the Bulls’ lack of direction. No, that’s reserved for friends and family that are sick and tired of receiving my text messages (my girlfriend is more well-versed in how Cristiano Felicio needs a bigger role than she ever wanted to be).
We’re here to grade the first half of the season for every player on the Bulls roster, so let’s get right to it, starting with the man himself.
Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports
Jimmy Butler
Stats: 36.8 minutes, 24.5 points, 6.6 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 45.3 FG%, 35.0 3PT%, 87.0 FT%
(stats are per game and current as of Jan. 31)
Grade: A
Recent drama aside, Jimmy Butler has raised his game to a whole new level this season. Only four players in the NBA are getting to the free throw line more times per 100 possessions than Butler. He’s become an elite isolation scorer, evidenced by the multiple game winners this season, and he’s averaging career highs in points, rebounds, and assists, per 100 possessions.
Butler has actually cooled off after even stronger play to start the season. He’s still wreaking havoc on the defensive end while shouldering a larger load on offense once again. Whether it’s rising up over his man for a pull-up jumper, driving to the hoop and drawing the foul, or finding an open shooter on the wing, Jimmy is locked in offensively in a special way. Once the fourth quarter rolls around, Butler takes his game to another level still.
Butler has a strong case of being a top 10 player in the NBA right now, and when he sits, the Bulls are downright putrid. Chicago has a plus-2.2 net rating with Butler on the court, and a minus-8.6 net rating with him off, and that’s about all you need to know.
There have been some lingering questions about Butler’s ability to lead a team, however. He and Dwyane Wade caused a stir around the league last week after they spent their postgame interviews questioning the commitment of their fellow teammates after a loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Butler is well-known for his formidably intense work-ethic, and it seems he expects the same out of his teammates.
The problem is that sometimes hard work isn’t all it takes, and no matter how hard he tries, Doug McDermott is not locking guys down on the perimeter anytime soon.
Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports
Dwyane Wade
Stats: 30.4 minutes, 18.9 points, 4.3 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 42.8 FG%, 31.9 3PT%, 79.5 FT%
Grade: B-
Wade is getting some unfair shade. The 35-year-old guard had a pretty terrible December, shooting 21.1 percent from deep and flooding the Bulls offense with an excessive amount of contested step back jumpers. If December is taken away, however, Wade has had a surprisingly efficient season so far. From the beginning of the season to Nov. 30, Wade shot 37.7 percent from 3-point range, and since Jan. 1, he’s shooting 36.4 percent.
Given Wade’s lack of reputation as a sharpshooter, those are some shockingly pleasant numbers. They just get buried by the common perception of Wade as a non-shooter, his struggles in the month of December, and the prevalence of inefficient two-pointers in his game.
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Wade is the king of the league when it comes to taking possessions off on defense, and that’s what’s bringing his grade down. No one expects him to wear himself down chasing his man around. He’s 35 after all. That lessening of expectations, however, also comes with an expectation that you don’t take jabs at the effort level of your teammates in post-game interviews. Not a good look, Dwyane.
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Taj Gibson
Stats: 27.5 minutes, 11.6 points, 7.1 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 1.0 blocks, 51.2 FG%, 70.5 FT%
Grade: A
Taj Gibson was born to be a hard-nosed veteran.
Gibson has been a rock to which the Bulls have clung all season. They’ve relied on his defensive intensity and his old-school post moves to grind out wins just like Chicago has been relying on him since he was drafted. No one has been on the roster longer than Taj, and he’s owning that role.
He’s also having a career year by his own standards. He’s beating his career average in points per 100 possessions, true shooting percentage, and usage rate. Plus, Gibson continues to be a wily post player, fooling his defender with all kinds of pivots and fakes.
On defense, he’s one of Chicago’s most important pieces, whether he’s protecting the rim from fellow post players or picking up DeMarcus Cousins at the top of the key. Taj cleans up all kinds of mistakes for the Bulls on every possession. He’s crucial.
I’ve advocated in the past that Chicago would be smart to capitalize on this season from Gibson and trade him to a contender like the Raptors, especially because he’s likely to leave in free agency this summer. We’ll all hate to see him go, but a first-rounder or a young player with potential would help an awful lot with the grieving process.
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Robin Lopez
Stats: 28.1 minutes, 9.4 points, 6.9 rebounds, 1.7 blocks, 48.9 FG%, 67.7 FT%
Grade: B
Robin Lopez has been huge for the Bulls on the boards all season, especially offensively. He’s the main reason why Chicago is leading the NBA in rebounds, and he continues to be a force under the rim on both ends of the floor.
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On offense, Lopez is exceedingly crafty. His hook shots are a thing of beauty, a relic from an NBA of old. On defense, he’s an effective rim protector and battles well against opposing ground-bound big men.
His struggles defending in space have been well documented, so I won’t go into great detail. I will say that it’s not entirely fair to condemn Lopez for having trouble doing something that hardly any traditional centers can do, and if Lopez didn’t play as much with defenders like Rondo and Wade, we wouldn’t be hearing as much about his defensive weaknesses.
Add in the fact that he’s on a very friendly contract (if you don’t think so, look at Joakim Noah’s), and Lopez is a very good asset for Chicago. Lopez is often touted to be very moveable, and we’ll see if that turns out to be true when the trade deadline rolls around.
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Doug McDermott
Stats: 25.1 minutes, 10.0 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 43.8 FG%, 36.9 3PT%, 90.6 FT%
Grade: B-
I’m still a McDermott optimist. What can I say?
Doug McDermott has spent this season continuing to be good at what he’s good at and bad at what he’s bad at, which may not seem like grounds for a B-, but a confidence has emerged on the offensive end that I can’t quite describe. Nonetheless, it’s encouraging.
He dropped 31 against Memphis, a game in which he scored 14 straight points for the Bulls in the second quarter. McDermott’s post-up game peeked its head around the corner for a brief spell in the fourth quarter against the Hornets earlier this month. And he’s sunk at least one 3-pointer in eight of his last nine games. That’s saying something for this Bulls team.
McDermott will still get eviscerated on a backdoor cut and left wondering what happened one to two times per game, and that fact lowers his grade, but I’ll take that deal at this point in the season. He’s the best 3-point shooter on the team (never mind that Bobby Portis has a higher 3-point percentage), and he’s crucial in making the offense run
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Nikola Mirotic
Stats: 22.8 minutes, 9.1 points, 5.3 rebounds, 0.8 assists, 38.5 FG%, 30.1 3PT%, 76.3 FT%
Grade: F
Mr. Inconsistency himself will find no love in this midseason report card.
Mirotic came over to the Bulls from Europe with an enviable reputation. He had multiple MVPs, he had a sweet shooting stroke, and he was already an established player that was going to start contributing right away for the Bulls.
If only that were true.
Mirotic had an unbelievable January during his first season that earned him rookie of the month honors and a third place finish for the Rookie of the Year. To date, it’s still the most consistent stretch that we’ve seen from him.
These are the stats (per 100 possessions where applicable) in which Mirotic is averaging a career low: points, offensive rating, field goal percentage, 3-point percentage, free throw attempts, free throw percentage, true shooting percentage, win shares, and box plus minus.
I don’t want to hear about how he needs the ball in his hands or how he’s so much better off the dribble. Just because Mirotic is better in a playmaking role doesn’t mean that it makes the Bulls better. His role has been made clear, and Niko has played almost 200 NBA games. He needs to figure out a way to play reliably, or he’s not going to like the way restricted free agency goes.
Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports
Cristiano Felicio
Stats: 15.1 minutes, 4.5 points, 5.0 rebounds, 0.6 assists, 0.2 blocks, 55.7 FG%, 65.6 FT%
Grade: A-
In our first edition of “second round picks who are currently outperforming the first-rounders who were supposed to play ahead of them,” Cristiano Felicio is rapidly losing his hidden gem status. After overtaking Bobby Portis for the backup center job, Felicio is earning every minute and adding dollars to his offseason paycheck with every game.
The Bulls benefit hugely from the athleticism and rim-running that he brings, and the Wade-Felicio alley-oop is always a thing of beauty. On defense, Felicio makes the right decision more often than he doesn’t, and he should get even better as he gets more experience as a real member of the rotation.
Felicio is the best roll man on the team, and he has real gravity when he moves toward the basket, which means that defenses can’t trap the pick and roll, which means that Jimmy is getting whatever shot he wants. If Chicago can get him for the right price (and I’m doubtful they can), Felicio will be a nice piece for years to come.
Yes, there are also plenty of instances where Felicio misses a rotation on defense or looks a bit lost, and as far as he has come over two seasons, he has a long way yet to go.
But look at this:
“Watch Your Head!” @IamFelicio pic.twitter.com/xGnYCkqFf9
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) January 28, 2017
We will discuss this no further.
Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
Bobby Portis
Stats: 12.2 minutes, 4.2 points, 3.5 rebounds, 0.5 assists, 0.1 blocks, 47 FG%, 38.5 3PT%, 55 FT%
Grade: D+
It can’t be denied that Bobby Portis, the second-year player out of the University of Arkansas, has a lot of heart. Heart doesn’t always cut it though.
Portis has had a very rough start to the season so far. He quickly lost his gig playing backup to Robin Lopez after Fred Hoiberg rightly chose to play Cristiano Felicio in his place. Since then, he’s racked up 14 DNP-CDs, and when he has gotten on the court (provided he’s not getting empty stats against other teams’ third units), he’s shown little progress in the issues he’s had from the start.
Portis still looks to score as soon as the ball comes into his hands, and as frustrating as that can often be, he does show flashes of being a talented scorer. He’s shooting 45.5 percent on corner 3s, per basketball reference, and his true shooting percentage of 52.1 percent is just below league average, which isn’t bad for a big man.
His defense continues to be abysmal, however. It was quickly made clear that Portis was unplayable at center due to his complete lack of rim protection. Portis currently has a block percentage (an estimate of the two-point field goal attempts blocked by a player while that player is on the floor) of 0.8 percent. Any NBA player that’s 6′ 11″ needs to do better than that. Celtics point guard Terry Rozier has a better block percentage and Portis has 10 inches on him. Portis deserves a D.
He gets the plus though because that picture will make me laugh until the day I die.
Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports
Paul Zipser
Stats: 13.9 minutes, 4.1 points, 2.1 rebounds, 0.3 assists, 34.7 FG%, 32.4 3PT%, 80.0 FT%
Grade: B+
No one expected Paul Zipser to be playing serious minutes down the stretch of close games for the Bulls this season, but that’s the strange, bizarro universe in which we find ourselves. After riding the bench in 29 of the Bulls first 39 games of the season, the second-round pick from Germany started three games in a row for Chicago, filling in for a sick Jimmy Butler.
Since his brief starting stint, Zipser has averaged 23 minutes per game for the Bulls, often serving as the first man off the bench. He’s scored 9.5 points per game over the last six games, sunk at least one 3-pointer in five of them, and shown encouraging signs of an ability to guard shooting guards through power forwards.
Zipser is contributing to this team in a tangible way, providing crucial spacing and defense in his rookie year. If he keeps it up, he could be a regular member of the Bulls’ closing lineup. Why is it that all the “NBA ready” players that GarPax draft in the first round can’t do that?
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Michael Carter-Williams
Stats: 21.8 minutes, 7.4 points, 4.6 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 35.0 FG%, 21.9 3PT%, 80.0 FT%
Grade: F
The move to get Michael Carter-Williams for Tony Snell was seen as a smart one by GarPax, especially since Snell had fallen completely out of the rotation anyway. Carter-Williams was lauded when he came back from missing 27 games due to injury for his defensive effort relative to another Bulls point guard who will remain nameless as of now.
One thing that was especially praised was the pressure that Carter-Williams put on the opposing ball handler, so let’s examine that statistically. Carter-Williams was praised for getting in the grill of the other team’s point guard and affecting the flow of the opposing offense, and NBA.com actually tracks how many deflections every player records, so while it’s not perfect measure of on-ball defensive hustle, it will work for our purposes.
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Carter-Williams is averaging 2.0 deflections per game according to NBA.com, good for 85th most in the NBA. It’s not some sterling number, but Carter-Williams is clearly no slouch on defense. There’s only one problem with this. That other Bulls point guard? He’s averaging 3.0 per game.
Add in that Carter-Williams is currently shooting 21.9 percent from 3-point range, and things don’t get better. There are only four players in the NBA with as many 3-point attempts per game as Carter-Williams that are shooting a worse percentage. There are only nine players with as many games under their belt that have a worse true shooting percentage.
All this is to say that it’s unclear what Carter-Williams does better than any other point guard on the roster. He does clearly try harder on defense than Rondo, but how much of an impact does that really make?
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Jerian Grant
Stats: 15.0 minutes, 5.2 points, 1.4 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 38.5 FG%, 31.3 3PT%, 93.3 FT%
Grade: C+
The second year player from Notre Dame has shown some encouraging signs despite being yet another point guard on the Bulls that can’t shoot. He’s thrived when slotted into the starting lineup, especially when Chicago blew out the Portland Trail Blazers back in November.
Grant is a gifted penetrator. If he sees an opportunity, he’s halfway to the rim before the defense has time to react. What he struggles with is getting the ball in the hoop once he gets to the rim, or making the right pass out to a shooter (what are those?) if that’s the right move.
He does his job on defense, but he won’t blow you away. Fans are optimistic about his potential, but it’s unclear if that’s because of Grant or because of the two guys who also play point guard for the Bulls. Regardless, Fred Hoiberg seems to have taken heed of this optimism, as Grant has started the last four games for Chicago.
A 3-point shot would vault Grant to another tier, but that isn’t happening anytime soon. Grant wasn’t even making a third of his 3s in college. We won’t deny the possibility completely, but only because I can’t handle the idea of the point guard situation getting any worse.
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Isaiah Canaan
Stats: 18.5 minutes (in 28 games played), 5.6 points, 1.6 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 37.5–26.5–88.9
Grade: D-
Isaiah Canaan signed with the Bulls to get one thing and one thing only: buckets.
Unfortunately, he hasn’t gotten much of a chance to do that lately given the fact that he isn’t very good at anything else. He’s played in only three of the last 18 games, and two of those were garbage time spots in blowout losses.
Canaan is a gifted 3-point shooter (never mind his dreadful percentage), but he regularly plays himself off the floor due to his inability to stay with his man on the other end. Opposing teams attack him relentlessly on defense to the point where he hurts the Bulls more than his spacing helps.
I wouldn’t mind seeing him get another chance every now and then though. Sometimes buckets are enough.
Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports
Denzel Valentine
Stats: 11.9 minutes (27 games), 3.3 points, 1.6 rebounds, 0.6 assists, 32.0–31.3–87.5
Grade: Incomplete
It’s been a difficult season for the Bulls rookie, beset on all sides with injuries, short leashes, and shade from John Wall. He’s solidly out of the rotation, with Paul Zipser and Jerian Grant ahead of him, but he’s shown exciting 3-point range and some nifty passing ability when healthy.
Valentine has shined brightly in his brief stints playing for the Windy City Bulls, sinking 3-pointers at a Curry-ian rate. Who knows if he can do the same thing in the big leagues, but these grades could use a little wishful thinking.
We just haven’t seen enough of Valentine to make an informed decision at this point, which is why he isn’t receiving a grade. It could be that the rookie still has a bright future ahead of him. It could also be that Chicago has missed on yet another first round pick. It’s simply too early to tell.
Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports
Rajon Rondo
Stats: 27.3 minutes, 6.7 points, 5.5 rebounds, 6.6 assists, 37.0 FG%, 31.8 3PT%, 56.7 FT%
Grade: D+
At last we’ve come to the final Bull, the final Alpha, and the greatest Connect Four player to ever grace these 50 states of ours. Rajon Rondo signed with the Bulls this offseason amidst great fanfare, and GarPax were adamant that every man, woman, and child know how he led the NBA in assists last season.
Many were skeptical that this latest stop on Rondo’s tour of locker room terrorizing would be any different than Sacramento was last year or Dallas was before that. That skepticism was proven correct last week when Rondo took to Instagram to set NBA twitter on fire. Rondo gave his take on Jimmy Butler and Dwyane Wade complaining to the media about the effort level of their teammates after a brutal loss to the Atlanta Hawks. That’s right. He chastised them for going to the media…through a social media post.
That’s off the court stuff though. On the court, Rondo has encountered a completely different bevy of struggles. You can see his eyes glaze over on defense from your living room couch, and he throws terrible passes that commentators try to pass off as “too sophisticated for these young guys” at least four or five times a game. (They’re bad passes. They’re not on some higher plane of basketball IQ. They’re just bad.)
He’s seemed to up his effort level a bit since his five-game stretch of riding the bench for 48 minutes, and that’s why I’m refraining from a straight F. I’m also slowly becoming curious about the potential of the bench unit of Rondo-McDermott-Zipser-Mirotic-Felicio that I’m now calling “Rajon and the Rondos” (tweet me with your feedback).
Regardless, Rondo has been more or less exactly what we expected, and what we expected was bad. He kills the spacing, he doesn’t play defense, and he didn’t attempt a free throw for over a month. For more, check out Zach Harper’s latest story for FanRag NBA about Rondo’s impact on the Bulls’ offense
Congratulations for making it to the end of this behemoth. Here’s to a better second half of the season, but don’t get your hopes up.
