The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - NBA Power Rankings: Chicago Bulls kick off top 15

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Jason Timpf breaks down the Chicago Bulls ahead of the 2022-2023 NBA season as DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, and Lonzo Ball look to guide Chicago back to the playoffs. #herdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

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I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHard Radio app,

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Tomorrow is September 1st, and September 30th, the Golden State Warriors play the Washington Wizards in a preseason game in Japan. That is how close we are to Real Basketball. So with that in mind, I'm ready to stop looking backwards, I'm ready to stop reminiscing, and I'm ready to start looking forward. So we're going to be doing our season previews.

We're going to do the power ranking style covering the top 15 teams in the league, starting with number 15 today. I spent a lot of time on the series. I had a lot of fun doing it. I really think you guys are going to enjoy it. Before we get going, fall is right around the corner, and I know you want your small business humming on all cylinders. There is no way for you to do that unless you have the right people on your team.

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Did you know every week nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash temp. That's LinkedIn.com slash temp to post your job for free terms and conditions apply. And on that note, we can talk some basketball. So I wanted to give you guys a couple of just precursors to kind of let you know the format of this series so that you're in the loop the whole way through. So I split the teams into tiers. and I considered 17 teams, but I had to pick only 15 for the sake of the series.

So the two teams that got squeezed here are the Toronto Raptors and the Atlanta Hawks. So Raptors fans and Hawks fans, I apologize in advance. We won't be doing deep dives for them before the season, but I do promise that we will get into those teams plenty and into great detail during the season. Also, don't pay too much attention to the rankings this far down. It's all splitting hairs. and I view them in a tier of what I would call non-contenders. So I split them into four tiers, and the non-contenders are the teams that I don't think

have any chance to win the title regardless of what happens during the season. Obviously, I consider the Hawks and the Raptors in that group, as well as three other teams, including who we're talking about today. After that, the next tier up I have is Punchers Chance Contenders. These are teams that I don't think have enough talent necessarily to hang with the top teams in the league, but they've got a crazy, talented superstar that could get hot and carry them through a series or maybe two superstars or there's something with the team where if they get hot, they could potentially knock someone out if some things break right.

Above that, I have the if things go right contenders. These are teams that have tons of talent. When you look at the roster on paper, you're like, man, they're just as good as the top teams in the league, but there's tons of question marks to go with that, whether that's, health question marks, whether that's personality question marks, whether it's, you don't like, or I'm not a huge fan of the coach or the system or what their basketball identity is, those are teams that talent's not the issue, they just need things to break right for them within the locker room and on the court for them to win the title. And then obviously my top

tier is going to be top tier contenders. These are bona fide contenders. If anything goes their way during the season, they will absolutely be in play, probably playing in the conference finals, and these are the teams that I view most likely to win the title. So we'll kind of, as we're working our way through the videos, I'll kind of inform you which tier the teams land in. Today we're starting with number 15, the Chicago Bulls. Again, a non-contender in the non-contender tier, but we are going to dive deep into them on both ends of the floor. To give you an idea of how these videos are going to be structured, we'll briefly touch on last season and what they accomplished, how things finished. We will go through their key off-season changes, so who they let

go, who they signed, who they traded for, who they drafted, so on and so forth, changes to the roster. Then we're going to go into what they do in terms of their basketball team's identity on both ends of the floor. So what they like to do on offense, what they like to do on defense. After that, we will go into what I believe is the best case scenario for this team during that season. And then after that, we'll go into the worst case scenario for this season.

And then at the end, we'll go through what I believe is the biggest exercise. factor for each team. So as I said, we're going to be going to be going through all of those sections for each team, starting with the Chicago Bulls today. So the Chicago Bulls were 13th in offense last year, offensive rating, again, per 100 possessions, 23rd in defense. The ugliest stat for Bulls fans is they were two and 21 in 23 games versus the top four seeds in both conferences. So when they played the best teams, they got handled pretty consistently. They did have a lot of health issues during the season, though, involving their back court with Alex Crusoe and Lonzo Ball. That is important context there. They were gentlemen swept by Milwaukee,

went exactly as I expected. This is a Chicago Bulls team that does not like to operate from the perimeter. They'd like to operate close to the basket and the bucks. Their defensive structure is built around taking away the paint and giving up perimeter shots. This was the team that attempted the least threes versus the team that allows the most threes. So the Chicago Bulls were a really bad matchup for this specific Milwaukee Bucks team, and they just got killed. And then on the other end of the floor, they just got destroyed by Milwaukee size. This is a small Chicago Bulls team that they attempted to address this offseason. Milwaukee, it was just, again, a really bad matchup.

Aside from a hot shooting, Demard de Rosen game in Milwaukee in game two, they didn't really have a chance to compete in any of the games. So it was a rough matchup, but at the same time, two and 21 versus the top seats, 13th in offense, 23rd in defense. They just weren't good enough to really do any damage in that postseason. Key off season changes. They signed Andre Drummond to the mini mid-level exception. This was a predictable response to them getting destroyed on the interior by Milwaukee.

They drafted Dalentary, a guy I really like. Again, you guys know I'm born and raised in Tucson, still live in Tucson to this day, although I've lived in other places. Dail and Terry came through the University of Arizona, so obviously watched him a lot while he was here. lanky wing, really good physical tools, especially on the defensive end. He's six foot seven with a seven foot one wing span. He actually made the all defense team this past year for the Pac-12. He's also really, really good at making reeds with the basketball in his hands. He was one of

the best assisted turnover guys in college this year. That kind of means he will project to a good role player wing in the NBA, a guy who can defend multiple positions and can attack closeouts. Well, obviously, he's going to have to put on some muscle and become a better shooter. He's got a little of a hitch in his jump shot at this point. But I do think he'll be a really interesting player in the future on the wing in the NBA. And then they lost Tristan Thompson and Troy Brown Jr. Those were the two primary rotation guys from their playoff run that aren't around anymore. If you look at the depth chart, and I'll put it up on the screen here for you guys. These are just guys that I predict will be in the rotation. Obviously, their roster is deeper than this. But Lonzo Ball as a guard,

Alex Caruso as a guard, Kobe White as a guard, and Ayah Dissoumoo, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, as a guard. On the wing, they have Zach Levine, DeMarrozen, Pat Williams, Dalyan Terry, and Derek Jones Jr. And then the Biggs, Nicola Vucevic and Andre Drummond in the place of Tristan Thompson. So if you look at what they do on the offensive end of the floor, this is a team that wants Zach Levine and Demar de Rosen attacking with an advantage. This is an important detail of offensive. structure in the NBA, really on all levels that the best teams always do really, really well. And Billy Donovan has done a good job of building an offense that is designed to get their best players with an advantage. One of the biggest complaints I had with the Lakers last year, because again, for those of guys who don't know, I covered the Lakers for two seasons before I started working for the volume. Obviously, now we cover the entire league. But when I was covering the Lakers, they were a bad team in this regard. It was not Frank Vogel's strength. They did not put Russell Westbrook, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Dennis Schroeder, whoever it was during that era, they did not put them in positions where they had an advantage.

They were too frequently stagnant in attacking a set defense. Again, guys, if I'm guarding you and I'm up on you and I'm in your handle pocket and I'm disrupting you and you try to attack me, it's going to be a lot harder for you to score on me than if I'm closing out at you. or if I'm chasing you over the top of a screen so that when you first get the basketball, I'm out of position and you have an advantage. And basically, the Bulls weaponize Vucevic through ball screens, dribble handoffs, and off ball screens to get Demardorosen and Zach Levine coming off of curls primarily so that they can work into the lane and get to the shots that they like off the dribble, but with an advantage against their defender.

Nick Vucevich in particular, his skill set makes that work because he's perceived as a shooter. Perception is everything in the NBA. He actually wasn't a great perimeter shooter last year. He only shot 31% from 3, just under 32% on catch and shoot 3. So in the results, it wasn't showing up, but he was attempting almost 5 3s per game. So he's a high volume guy, and the league perceived him and guarded him like he was a shooter. Again, I've talked to you about this on the show, but that, matters way more than actual shot result. For years there, Rajan Rondo was hitting close to 40%

from the three point line, but nobody was guarding him out there. So all it was really manifesting as is 40% on these wide open threes that would disrupt the flow of an offense. Kyle Kuzma, on the other end, always shot in the low 30s until his last year with the Lakers. But he was aggressive. He looked confident. His perception around the league, was that of a shooter. And so teams would guard him as though he was a shooter. Nikola Vucevich is guarded as a shooter, and that makes it really difficult to guard those screening actions.

So let's just look at offball screens, for instance, because we've spent a ton of time talking about on-ball actions on the show. But let's say that I've got Zach Levine in the left corner, and Vucevich is going to go down and set a screen for him. Alex Caruso's got the ball at the top of the key, and he's going to hit Zach Levine coming off of that screen. So typically what a screen defender will do is they will either hedge so they will come out from the screen to force Zach Levine to come further out rather than curling around or they'll drop to stop the curl so that when Zach Levine curls around he's curling right into a defender. That's what you want to do in that situation.

But Nikola Vucevich will frequently slip those screening actions to the three point line and the Bulls will hit him in those spots because he's a high. volume three point shooter. As a result, it makes it harder for that screen defender to hedge or to drop as the guy's curling around because he's leaving Nick Vucevic wide open for a jump shot. So as a result, Levine and DeRosen are frequently coming off of these pin downs and dribble handoffs and things like that with a lot of space to operate. If you watch the Bulls on offense, that's their primary attack. Whether it's Lonzo when he's healthier, Alex Caruso ran point for most of the end of the season, he'd bring the ball up the floor and basically hit DeRosen or Levine coming off of a screening action. That would be how things would start. And then as the defense would

collapse and get into rotation, they would attack closeouts around that to get what they want. A strength of this roster, this roster has, well, I'll go after we ripped through these. I'll kind of briefly summarize what their strengths and weaknesses are. But one of the strengths of this roster is with Lanzo Ball, with Alex Crusoe, with Coliseau, with Kobe White, with Pat Williams, with DeMarraosen, with Zach Levine, they have a lot of guys who are really skilled from the perimeter. You know, Alex Crusoe is a fantastic cutter, and he's a very good passer for the position at this point, and he's got a good size.

Lonzo Ball is an excellent passer in open space situations. Kobe White's skill, Pat Williams is showing a lot of polish. I've been really interested watching him this summer. That puts them in a position where they have a lot of players who can extend the advantage. You can imagine, Zach Levine comes off of that curl. The big doesn't help because he's staying home with Vucevich. Levine gets into the lane. The team helps.

Levine will kick to the corner. Now all of a sudden, you've got three, four, five guys on the floor that are great at extending the advantage, attacking that close out, further compromising the defense to get an extremely high-quality shot. You know, Alonzo, one of the reasons why I think it's so important for him to get back is When you look at this team, they should be a better fast-break team. They should be a team that plays with more pace. They were 14th in pace this year and 13th in fast-break points scored per 100 possessions.

When you look at their roster construction, they're not a big team, right? Like Vucevic last year was their only competent big. They played Tristan Thompson, but he wasn't great. Drummond changes that a little bit. But what they are is a fast and athletic team. You know, Lonzo is a good athlete. Alex Cruz was a great athlete for the position. and Zach Levine's one of the best athletes we have in the league.

DeMar de Rosen, excellent athlete. This is a team that should get out and transition more. Lonzo Ball coming back will help that a lot because he's not a traditional point guard in the sense that he's not the kind of guy that's going to break you down against the set defense to get to the looks that you want, but he's great in space. So he's one of the best guards in the league at pushing the break.

He doesn't, every time that he sees an outlet pass up the floor, a wing running on the left side or on the right side or a big running the floor, he lets it fly, knowing that he can get it back to run offense if the defense does get back and shut down the break. But getting him back in there to help them push the brake more will help them actually take advantage of the strengths of their roster in terms of speed and athleticism. Alex Crusoe, excellent cutting without the basketball. That was another really interesting thing that showed up to me on film, and I remember

that a lot with the Lakers. He had amazing chemistry with LeBron James as a couple of. cutter. Again, when it comes to spacing, spacing isn't just about shooting. Spacing isn't just about being a threat from the perimeter. Spacing is about being a threat so that your defender has to stay attentive to you. Obviously, even if you are a great shooter, a good defender that has a good amount of athleticism to close out, can position himself far enough off of you that he feels comfortable recovering in case of a pass. But if you stay in motion, moving without the basketball, whether that's relocating as a shooter or in the case of Alex Caruso cutting to the basket, it forces the

defender to be more attentive to you and makes it harder for him to be available as a help defender. The biggest weakness of this particular team on the offensive end of the floor is they were the only team in the league last year that attempted fewer than 33s per game. That specifically was the weakness that cost them against Milwaukee, but really it's just a, it's a, it's an inefficiency in the analytics of basketball. You guys know how I feel about analytics. I don't like catch-all metrics. I don't like trying to simplify multiple complicated basketball concepts into one number. Not only do I think that's blasphemous, I think it's impossible, right? But I do believe in analytics in isolated situations. So for instance, if I can tell a player like, hey, when you post up on

the left block, you typically get this amount of points per possession versus when you post up on the right block, that's helpful analytics. Shot value is helpful analytics. It's a simple matter of math. A three-point shot is worth one and a half times as many points as a two-point shot. They should naturally, as a result of that, be a consistent part of your diet offensively. For them to be last in the NBA in three-point attempts, that shows that they're not taking advantage of the math advantage that they should be able to have.

And they've got enough guys on the team that can shoot that they should be taking more than they take. What are they take instead? A ton of mid-range pull-up jump shots. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10, pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Clipper Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger

than I ever imagined. And now, I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast.

It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, This is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.

Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away, such as the biology of Ton Tons and Wan. on the ice planet hot or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith rule of two.

Listen to stuff to blow your mind on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. They attempted 22.6 mid-range shots per game, which led the NBA last year. So they attempted more even than the Brooklyn Nets, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, without being nearly as good as those two players at that particular type of shot. DeRosen takes 10 mid-range shots per year. per game. Zach Levine and Nikola Vosvich combined to take an additional seven per game.

So just between their stars, they're taking 17 mid-range jump shots per game. So they take almost as many mid-range jump shots as they do threes per game. That's just not good offensive process. With that particular type of shot profile, it's going to be difficult to succeed unless you're Kevin Freak and Durant and Kyrie Irving, two of the best offensive players that have ever played in the NBA. So that's just kind of a brief look at what they do on the offensive end of the fore. They're not good enough defensively to cover for those types of offensive limitations.

They need to push the ball and transition more. They need to hunt more three-point shots. On the defensive end of the four, they are a hard help and recover team. They do this because they have physical mismatches at almost every position. Their wings that they like to play, Zach Levina and DeMard Rosen are either thin or small. Patrick Williams is an interesting player. We'll get into him a little bit more later. but Nikola Vucevic is completely overmatched on the interior.

The only place where they match up well with teams defensively is on the perimeter with Lanzo ball and Alex Caruso. So as a result, they have to offer a ton of help, which is fine. They do a good job in rotation because they've got good athletes. They rotate well. The problem is when you live in rotation, when you're constantly in rotation, the defense will eventually break you down. And they do. That's why they were 23rd in defense this year. They double team the opposing star almost every single time.

They defend the pick and roll with three players. What that means is the vast majority of pick and roll coverages are designed to try to defend two on two so that you don't have to offer help. The problem is, is Nick Vucevic is not a great pick and roll defender. So as a result, he's just not capable of covering enough ground on the interior to cover a roll man and a guard coming over the top of a screen. so they almost always have to bring that third defender out of the weak side corner to help to tag on the roller so that Vucevic can be up against the ball handler coming over the top of the screen. That just puts them in rotation even more frequently. That just is a lack of strong front court defensive personnel.

If they had better front court defenders, they wouldn't have to do that as often. Milwaukee in particular used this to frequently generate size mismatches. that was why they were punishing them so much on the interior. On defense, the one thing that I really appreciate about Billy Donovan's scheme is he knows that they don't have a strong interior defense. So, what analytically, the two most valuable shots in basketball are layups in threes. So if you're not going to succeed guarding the basket, where would be the next best place for you to devote your energy and attention?

The three point line. The Chicago Bulls only allowed 32.3, three-point attempts per 100 possessions, which was best in the league last year. So that's where they make up for their weak interior defense. They allowed 50.3 points in the paint per 100 possessions, which was 24th in the league this year. So they do defend the three-point line well at least, which is something that's a good foundational piece. They'll need to learn to defend the interior better if they're ever going to be a team that can contend. But at least that's a decent foundation. The interesting part about this Chicago Bulls defense is it's not really fair necessarily to evaluate them based on last year's results without Lanzo ball.

Because the whole construct of that team was designed to make up for Nick Vucevic's problems as an interior defender by defending at the point of attack better. So if you lack interior size, if you don't have a great rim protector, you can still have an elite defense by being a great perimeter contained team. The best example of this is the Los Angeles Clippers, a team that has never had a dominant interior presence during this Kauai Leonard era. I like Avica Zubach. He's just not that guy. He's a good defensive big, but he's not a shutdown defensive big, and he doesn't play enough minutes for it to matter.

They just contain on the perimeter. Paul George, Kauai Leonard, Marcus Morris, you know, Reggie Jackson, Nick Batum, these guys sit down in a stance and they contain their man and make it difficult for them to get to the basket so the lack of a rim protector doesn't actually matter. That was what this Bulls team was supposed to be. Lonzo Ball is one of the best defensive guards in the league. Alex Caruso is one of the best defensive guards in the league. With the two of them on the floor, they can limit dribble penetration,

defend pick and roll really well and make things easier on Vucevic. And when the two of them were on the floor, they did that. They had a 102.2.2 defensive rating with those two on the floor only in 459 minutes, but that's a significant sample size where they were an excellent defensive team. 102.2.2 would be among the better defensive lineups in the league. That's the value of point of attack defense. But watch how it drops. Take just Lonzo out of the picture.

Their defensive rating goes from 102.2 to 115.1. Take Alex Crusoe and Lonzo ball out of the picture and it rises to 117.1. So they can't defend without both of the. those two guys on the floor. That's concerning because Lonzo Ball has had a lot of health issues over the years, and who knows if that's something that's going to be chronic or something that he can get over. The other big thing that holds them back on the defensive end of the floor is all three of their stars are not defensive-minded players. Derosen and Levine are very good athletes, but they're not, they're not staunch defensive players. Now, I wanted to get into this just for a minute because

there are a lot of good athletes in the league that don't translate to great defensive players. The best example of this was Andrew Wiggins early in his career. And now I think he's one of the better perimeter defenders in the entire game. And it's because he's learned the delicate balance of being physical on the defensive end without fouling. If you're a good athlete, you can be a good defensive player, but you won't be unless you're willing to get physical. And so many offensive-minded players, they shy away from contact on the defensive end of the floor, for good reason they have big offensive responsibilities they don't want to waste energy getting into a physical melee 60 possessions a game on the defensive end of the floor i get that but that's the difference

between the greats and the goods the great stars in the NBA they are willing to devote resources in that direction they're willing to be physically imposing defensive players and as a result they help their teams on that end even though they have less energy for the offensive end it helps the team in the aggregate. You know, Zach Levine's very thin, but he can be a little bit more physical than he's been. Demar de Rosen is a good, strong athlete. He should be a much, much better defensive player than he is. The best example to kind of give you guys an idea is like, you drive to the basket at me.

I can either slide with you and then when you really start to get aggressive, just give ground and get into rotation, or I can choose to hold my ground, meaning maybe I stick my hand out there and hand-check you a little bit. Sometimes that'll get called a foul, a lot of times it won't. When you hit my shoulder, maybe instead of giving ground with my shoulder, I hold my ground with my shoulder. Sometimes I'll get a foul call, most of the time I won't. Being more willing to hold your ground on the perimeter will be so much, again,

like they're the 23rd ranked defense. Lonzo is coming back, but this team will never be as good as they need to be on the defensive end of the floor until DeMard de Rosen and Zach Levine take defensive perimeter contain more seriously on the defensive end of the floor. And then Nick Vucevic, it's not really a technique thing. He's just bad. He's just completely overmatched physically at the position. He's not as big as the biggest bigs and he's not as athletic as athletic bigs.

So on a night-in-night-out basis, he's just completely overmatched physically. Andre Drummond, look, I covered him with the Lakers. I've covered him throughout the league over the last few years. He has his moments defensively. but for the most part, he's not a guy you can count on in that regard. The only, you know, the interesting guy to watch for Chicago's development is going to be Pat Williams. He's their only really physically imposing athletic defensive forward.

Now, Janice obliterated him in that first round playoff series, but he also was toying with Jason Tatea and Jalen Brown in those matchups in the conference semis. So I don't look too much into that. But he's the guy to watch looking forward if he can put on a, a little bit more muscle and become the defensive player that he's capable of. That will go a long way towards helping them. But the bottom line is on the defensive end of the floor with Nick Vucevich in your lineup, you cannot allow dribble penetration.

If you do, they will score in the paint consistently. You have to be a team that embraces dribble contain. Getting Lonzo back will help that, but Zach Levine and DeMarta Rosen have to embrace that to a certain extent. So quickly in summation, if I had to rip off their strengths and weakness, Their strengths are they have a lot of guys who can dribble pass and shoot, so they could be a great drive and kick team. They have an excellent defensive back court. They're a good defensive rebounding team by percentage, and that should get even better with Lanzo Ball and Andrei Drummond when they come back. Their weaknesses, their stars don't play any defense.

They hunt inefficient shots. They shoot way too many mid-range jump shots for being a team that's not great at shooting mid-range jump shots. and their best lineup. So when they play Alex Caruso at the point guard, Vucevic at the center, and DeMardo Rosen, all three of those guys are iffy shooters for one reason or another. Caruso's percentages can be inconsistent, he's streaky. Vucevich is a willing shooter.

He's guarded like a shooter, but he shot a really low percentage last year, only 31% from three. And then DeMard de Rosen just doesn't like to take them. So somebody in that group, whether it's Alex Crusoe and Vucevich, I think that's the most realistic outcome. If Caruso and Vucevic can just shoot better from three, that'll go a long way towards helping them. All right, best case scenario. So, if Demartor Rosen and Zach Levine make slight alterations to their shot profile, hunt more off the dribble threes rather than off the dribble threes rather than off the dribble mid-range,

and embrace driving and kicking rather than driving and pulling up in the mid-range so that they can start their driving kick attack with all of their skilled perimeter players at that. they have. That should go a long way towards helping them on the offensive end of the floor. They need Lonzo Ball and Pat Williams to stay healthy. Pat Williams had an injury last year. Lonzo Ball has consistently been hurt. I hope that's not a consistent thing with him. Alex Caruso and Nicola Vucevich have better shooting seasons. Alex Caruso was 33% from three last year. Vucevich was 31%. They need to push a lot more in transition. That will actually play towards the strengths of their roster composition. They need to become a team that, race is containing the dribble drive so that they're less reliant on help with Nick Vucevich

on the backline. They need Pat Williams to take a leap, particularly on the offensive end of the floor. I was watching a lot of footage of him this summer. He's got a lot of fluidity. He could be a scoring wing if he continues to work at it. Him taking a leap would go a long way towards moving them from a non-contender to a if things go right type of contender. The other thing with Pat Williams, that'll be interesting, is by virtue of the roster, with DeMar de Rosen and Zach Levine on the roster, he'll catch a lot of favorable matchups. He's going to get your third best perimeter defender on most nights. So if he could figure out some more stuff on the offensive end of the floor,

to be a really, really interesting matchup there. Andre Drummond gives them more ability to hang with the massive front lines around the league, particularly a Janus team or an Embed team or if they ever ran into another big, huge front line that can expose their lack of size. But even with all of that, even if all of that breaks right, in my opinion, their absolute ceiling is a team that if they stayed healthy would hang around that five or six seed and upset one of the better East teams in the first round. But let's say for instance they get the five seed and the Sixers, you know, James Hardin doesn't take the leap that I expect him to. And they fall back to the four seed. I could see the Bulls having a really good season

where they upset somebody like that. But then they would just lose to the Celtics or the bucks or whoever the one seed was. So like at the end of the day, their absolute ceiling is a team that wins one playoff series. Their worst case scenario is that their shot profile stays the same. They continue to hunt mid-range shots and they have an average offense

and a defense that's nowhere near good enough to cover for him. Guys get hurt again. Alex Crusoe, Alonzo, Alonzo, Bulls. Pat Williams, injury issues creep up again. Maybe Andre Drummond fixes their interior size issues, but disrupts their offensive flow. We talked earlier about how much their offense depends on Vucevich's shooting threat as a screener to open things up for Levine and DeRosen. That goes away with Andre Drummond. He's a little bit more of a lob threat, but he has bad hands.

He doesn't catch the ball well. He's one of the worst rim finishing bigs that we have in the league. So I think that he could cause some problems on the offensive end of the floor. and then all of a sudden you have another team that wins 45 games and loses in the first round, ugly, and has no realistic pathway towards improving the roster. That's the worst case scenario for this team. If you had to ask me which is more likely, I lean closer to the worst case scenario, and that's a big part of why they're down at 15.

The biggest X factor for this team, the biggest swing factor, the thing that will lead to the largest differential between one outcome to the next is Lonzo when he's healthy, he's an immensely valuable role player. He's an excellent three-point shooter in every single way. Off the catch, coming off of screens, you know, in spot-up situations on the move in transition. He's just a great three-point shooter, which is really impressive if you think about what he looked like as a shooter coming into the league. He's also one of the better point of attack defenders in the league. He's disruptive.

He's in one of those aggressive forward-facing defenders that tries to disrupt your handle. and make you feel uncomfortable. He also plays passing lanes really well and forces a lot of turnovers. On the offensive end of the floor, beyond shooting, he's a good playmaker in space. So he's great at starting fast breaks with outlet passes. When he's attacking closeouts, he makes reeds really, really well. He's just not a guy who can create against a set defense. But all of that amounts to a really good role player who's struggled to stay healthy over the years.

he even takes longer to recover an abnormally long time to recover from injuries that he should come back from faster it's like oh he sprained his ankle with the lakers he should be back in a month no no no he's gone two months you know here's this knee injury we expect him back in six months oh here come you know or two two months or whatever it is and then the report comes out like oh well you know things are healing slower than expected we're going to reevaluate him in two months like that kind of thing comes out a lot which scares me in terms of whether or not this could be a degenerative health issue. It is what it is. I don't know what the deal is. Some people just struggle more with this than others. I don't know the physiology behind it, but Lonzo might just be one of those guys. And so as a result, there's a huge variation between what he might bring to the Bulls this year and what might happen if things go wrong.

And that makes him a huge X factor because like we talked about earlier, a 102 defensive rating with him on the floor with Lonzo. and just taking him out of the picture bumps that defensive rating up to up to 1.15. So having him on the floor to help them be a better fast break team, to have them be a better defensive team would go a long way towards helping the Bulls reach their actual ceiling. All right, that's all I have for the Bulls. We'll be back tomorrow with number 14. As always, I sincerely appreciate your guys' support and I'll see you tomorrow.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygle and friends. me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all,

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Yep, that's me, Cliford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Cliford Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Cliford show on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network, on TikTok. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.