The consequences of the Magic Ball? Lessons from the Bulls’ Three Years Playoff?

39 wins and 43 losses, this is the regular season record played by the Chicago Bulls this season. The regular season record ranks ninth in the Eastern Conference and successfully retains the playoff qualification. As a playoff opponent, the Bulls also ended with victory in the three regular season matches against the Heat. On this basis, from most perspectives, before the Bulls and Heat's play-offs, the Bulls, which had a more advantage in the record and victory or defeat, were still more optimistic at the time.

But the final playoff trend between the Bulls and the Heat was still a bit unexpected. The Bulls did not get a lead in the whole game, and even fell behind their opponents by as much as 25 points. In the end, they unfortunately lost at home and were eliminated in the playoffs for the third consecutive season.

To a certain extent, this playoff defeat is not just a loss for the Bulls, but it is more like a microcosm of the Bulls' struggles and confusion throughout the regular season.

Defense crash + offensive power outage

For the Bulls, defense has always been their biggest problem this season, with 114.8 points per 100 rounds in the regular season, ranking 19th in the league. Based on the team and the content of the game, the biggest problem on the Bulls' defensive end is mainly the lack of excellent perimeter sharp-cut locks in the lineup and high-quality frame protectors in the inside, which makes the team's first-line defense very easy to be broken by the opponent, and the second-line defenders failed to make up for the assisted defense. The Bulls lost points in the regular season penalty area and the number of shots per game against their opponents in the penalty area, both of which are at the bottom of the league.

Now, looking back at the playoffs between the Bulls and the Heat, the defense they showed has not changed much. Even in most matches, the Bulls can have the advantage in body shape, but almost no one can effectively limit the opponent in single defense. Taylor Herro and Wiggins scored 58 points together. Kobe White and Boozelis still did not show much resistance when facing opponents such as Dwyane Mitchell and Highsmith, who were not very good at playing the ball, and the team was almost completely suppressed by the Heat from the inside out.

team point guard Josh Giddy suffered a wrist injury in the final stage of the regular season, causing him to miss the last few games of the regular season and also had some impact on his play-off performance. As a defender who is not good at shooting, his offensive threat has greatly reduced his offensive threat.

Although he still scored 25 points, 10 rebounds and 4 assists, if he can stay healthy, he has a chance to perform better. Faced with many opportunities after bypassing the screen, Giddy obviously could not get rid of the defense, and in the end, many opportunities could only be left to her teammates to perform singles.

This change not only restricts the Bulls' offense, but also affects the on-court liquidity of basketball. When the originally set point of holding the ball was unable to respond to the attack, the Bulls had many attacks and stagnated the top of the arc, and eventually they were in an embarrassing situation where the defender fought alone. Especially when facing the Heat's regional joint defense, their offensive problems are obviously more serious.

And too many dribble controls also caused the team's mistakes on the back line to surge. The Bulls' starting guards White and Gidey scored 42 points in the play-offs in the game, but gave 10 of the team's 18 mistakes. The Heat scored 26 points just by making mistakes, which is also the key watershed in the victory and loss of the game on the spot.

blindly following the magic ball and taking the consequences of yourself

The Bulls' exit in the playoffs is not accidental. The more they look back, the more they look like a concentrated reflection of the Bulls' struggles throughout the season. From the beginning of this season, the Bulls' offense has completely transformed into magic balls and tried to play a league trend around the defenders.

From the data, after giving up DeRozan and LaVine, the Bulls have greatly compressed the number of mid-range shots this season, ranking fourth from the bottom in the league in mid-range shots. A large number of shots have begun to move beyond the three-point line, with the proportion of three-point shots as high as 45.7%, ranking fifth in the league. This season, there have been even ten games that have scored at least 20 three-pointers in a single game, and they are also ranked fifth in the league. After the change in the offensive mode, the Bulls are obviously speeding up offense and defense as much as possible. The game pace has increased significantly from the third-last in the league in the last season to the second in the league this season, and the offense and defense conversion ratio has reached the first in the league, and the average offense and defense conversion score per game is ranked second in the league.

However, such an unexpected magic ballization strategy did not bring successful results to the Bulls. Compared with other three-point teams, the Bulls' large number of three-point goals are more based on the number of shots, averaging 42 three-point shots, ranking third in the league, and the team's three-point shooting percentage is 36.7%, ranking only 13th in the league.

From a less optimistic perspective, excessive inefficient shots from the outside are wasted many offensive opportunities in the Bulls.

In combination with the league's three-point shooting output has gradually increased in the past three years, but in some aspects, offense near the basket is still the main factor affecting the team's offensive efficiency. For the Bulls, this seems to be the problem. This season, the Bulls players have only 63% hitting percentage in the legal collision zone, ranking fourth from the bottom in the league.

Even if the Bulls can play beautiful conversion fast break counters, they lack the scoring finishing ability they should have in the area where they are easiest to score. What's more, the Bulls' learning of Magic Ball theory seems to be only imitating. They are overly focused on the choice of shooting hot zones, but ignore the prerequisites, which is to create high-quality mobile phone opportunities.

According to statistics, the Bulls rank in the downstream level of the league in many data that reflect tactical execution and space creation capabilities, such as assisted shooting efficiency, empty cut screen scores, etc., all rank within the top five in the league.. The direct information revealed by

is obvious. Although the Bulls have added three-point shooting, the half-court offensive system lacks transmission cooperation, making it difficult to stably create easy scoring opportunities. Many times, they are often difficult to make a difficult single or hastily shot in the final countdown, resulting in the Bulls seemingly changing their offensive mode throughout the season, but the team's offensive efficiency is only tenth from the bottom of the league.

In the end, the poor defense made it even worse, completely offsetting the few highlights on the offensive end. In the game where more than 20 three-pointers were hit in a single game, the Bulls only won 6 in 10 games. In contrast, the other 29 teams in the league have a record of 128 wins and 43 losses in the same situation, with a winning rate of 74.9%.

To sum up, if you blindly pursue magic ballization in data, but lack solid tactical execution and a stable defensive system, you will eventually be a bit of a slash. While the Bulls have become a fast-paced team in the regular season, they can put huge offensive pressure on teams of any level. They beat strong opponents in a row in the final stage of the season, but they will also score the lowest score of a single game this season in the play-off against the Heat. This gap is undoubtedly an irony for their offensive stability and the value of the new system this season.

Confused future? Or the right path?

In response to the bleak result of being eliminated in the playoffs for the third consecutive season, the team's senior executives directly stated at the interview meeting of the end of the season that their team has always believed that the Bulls are on the right path. Although they are optimistic enough, after being eliminated in the playoffs, such remarks are still difficult to convince the outside world.

References Previously, the Bulls have made some not optimistic transactions before the trading deadline for two consecutive years. As for this season, not only did they not recover the draft picks with limited value in the LaVine trading case, nor could they grasp the value high point and send Vucevic away, but they renewed their contracts in advance to Ball, which has a slightly overlapping functional position with Gidedy. This choice is really a bit difficult to understand.

Although senior management personnel made it clear that the management's choice was to keep the team's play-off strength, from an overall perspective, the Bulls are still like a headless fly without a clear reconstruction plan.

But thankfully, the Bulls finally got the chance to control their first-round pick, the first time since 2021, and the team's salary structure will be healthy enough for the next few years. In this list of young players and abandoned players who trade salary packages, the Bulls have considerable room for adjustment. More than two-thirds of the players on the roster will expire next summer, and the lineup restructuring is basically a high probability.

What is in front of the Bulls is that the first problem comes from the role positioning and contract renewal of the core of the backcourt. The data Gidey played was indeed impressive enough, and she once became the second person to average 10 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists per game in a single season in team history after Michael Jordan. At the same time, Kobe White, who ranked second among the fastest-progress players last season, continued to evolve this season, averaging 20.4 points, 3.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game.

Considering that his contract is about to expire in the 2025-26 season, after July, he will be eligible to sign a four-year renewal contract with the team worth nearly 90 million.

However, the chemistry between Giddy + White and the backcourt partners remains to be considered, especially on the defensive end, both of them are team shortcomings. How to balance these two defenders with special styles and obvious advantages and disadvantages is to choose to break them apart and leave one of them who is more in line with the future blueprint? Or should you just leave the two and then make up for the defensive shortcomings through strengthening in other positions? These are the issues that management needs to determine the most during the offseason.

and then the inside position. Although Vucevic is caught in trading rumors, he has always been the team's most stable output point. Since the 2021-22 season, he is the fourth player in the league to average at least 18 points, 10 rebounds and 3 assists per game after Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Sa.

can still see his game stability, his advantages in football quotient, and his willingness to share the ball and his professional attitude have also been praised by head coach Donovan many times. But the problem is that his age timeline and his special attributes of focusing on offense and over defense are obviously not in line with the Bulls' future needs.

In addition, the young forward Patrick Williams, who was highly anticipated by the team, did not perform well after the five-year, 90 million contract officially started this season. Especially in the 12-minute playoff game, he scored directly at zero, which also led to his criticism. Especially since he entered the league in 2020, his growth has always been limited. How to face this slightly premium contract in the future is another problem that management needs to face.

Big Break and set aside?

has been in the playoffs for three consecutive seasons. It is obvious that at least it has proved that the Bulls' current team building direction and reconstruction strategy have obvious problems. It is difficult to go further on the playoff stage by blindly pursuing the magic ballization of data, but ignoring the team's physical fitness, defensive strength and lineup running-in defects.

And for the Bulls, which seems to be stagnant, deciding the direction to move forward is a crucial thing this offseason. Next, they will continue to make minor repairs and operate around the team that has been verified to fail? Or should we learn from our mistakes and make a thorough reform? This needs to be clear.

Otherwise, Wind City fans will probably have to continue to endure a 2025-26 season where the goal is unclear and may even end up being nothing.