Advertisement

Jimmy Butler says the Bulls 'ain't been playing no defense,' which is half right

Jimmy Butler is unhappy. (Getty Images)
Jimmy Butler is unhappy. (Getty Images)

Flush with a new contract, added responsibility, and the benefit of having earned NBA season-ending hardware in 2014-15, Chicago Bulls guard Jimmy Butler seems like a burgeoning leader.

[Follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]

He kind of has to be. Chicago has disappointed to start its season, with the latest hit to the bow coming in the form of an embarrassing 130-105 loss to the Charlotte Hornets on Tuesday night. Butler, who made his hay as a defensive stopper in the years before he developed into an All-Star, was less than pleased with his team’s defensive effort in the defeat.

From Nick Friedell at ESPN Chicago:

"We ain't been playing no defense," a frustrated Butler said after the game. "Other teams have just been missing shots to tell you the truth, to be honest. [Shoot] we score enough points, that's not the problem. But when you don't stop nobody, they put up 130 or whatever they did, we got to nip that in the bud now because that's not winning basketball. It will never be winning basketball here and it never has been winning basketball here. We've always prided ourself on playing hard and not being pretty. Tonight, we were pretty, we were soft. Got our asses whipped."

From K.C. Johnson at the Chicago Tribune:

"We've always prided ourselves on playing hard and not being pretty," said Jimmy Butler, who scored a game-high 26 points. "Tonight we were pretty. We were soft. Got our asses whipped."

Butler isn’t wrong.

Charlotte entered the contest having failed to top 95 games in its three 2015-16 games, all losses. The closest this squad came to 130 points in 2014-15 was when it poured in 122 against Atlanta early in that season, and coach Steve Clifford’s team needed two overtimes to get there. The team was allowed endless penetration against Chicago on Tuesday, crashing the offensive glass while blitzing past a series of too-late Chicago defenders.

[Yahoo Fantasy Basketball: Sign up for a league today]

The results spoke for themselves. Charlotte is not a good offensive team, and yet they were able to make a series of both Chicago big men and guards look hapless due to the squad’s endless energy. Chicago looked listless at best.

Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg would agree with that description. From the Tribune:

"(Tuesday) was as bad as I thought it was," Hoiberg said after Wednesday's postmortem, er, practice at the Advocate Center. "It was ugly from start to finish. We weren't helping each other. We weren't trusting each other at both ends. We weren't getting the ball moving on offense and in turn, defensively we weren't talking to each other and in the right positions.

"Some things are unexplainable in life and (Tuesday) I guess was one of them."

That’s the part that Jimmy Butler isn’t wrong about. The story moving forward, however, is a little more involved.

The quick and easy narrative entering this season had the Bulls abandoning the defensive principles that served them so well under the Tom Thibodeau regime for a smile-happy, pace and space system under rookie coach Fred Hoiberg. What the quick take, TV-types failed to remember was that Chicago had already fallen in the defensive rankings under Thibodeau, all the way down to 11th in the NBA in 2014-15.

That’s passable for some, but an anathema to both Thibodeau and his former bosses. It was part of the reason that just about all agreed on the idea that it was best for the former Coach of the Year to move on in the offseason, despite his many gifts.

Tuesday night showcased some truly terrible defense, to be sure, and stars like Derrick Rose, Pau Gasol, and Joakim Noah (despite his increased activity, prior to Tuesday at least) have had their issues on that end all season. The offense, however, is what is truly bogging Chicago down as they stare down a matchup with the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday.

The Bulls are just 18th in offensive efficiency so far this year, with Hoiberg’s system yet to click and Rose working through a disastrous start to the season. The former MVP is shooting just under 34 percent from the floor, and he’s taken just 11 free throws all season. Taj Gibson, a defensive minded reserve big man has taken just as many.

Worst, Rose hamstrings Chicago’s offense with his Thibodeau-styled habit of walking the ball up, initiating a possession with ten or more second already having ticked off the shot clock.

On Tuesday, things appeared to have come to a head:

The Bulls are just 17th in pace at the moment, and even that number is up from where it stood over the weekend. Hoiberg doesn’t exactly want his team to go full out with a Paul Westhead-styled attack, but he would like to see things pick up a bit. To say the least.

Luckily for us, Hoiberg said more on Wednesday:

"A lot of times, we're not running with him and getting down," Hoiberg said. "It has to be a commitment by all five guys to get out and run. When we do it, we're pretty effective. But there's too much inconsistency in that area right now."

Rose, who was limited during the exhibition season and training camp after undergoing facial surgery, says an uptick in his conditioning should do the trick:

"I'm not worried about my offense. It's all about conditioning, running, getting my body in shape, getting used to moving around. All the other stuff like offensive looks and all that, that's going to come."

For those that expected a second honeymoon-styled rebirth under Hoiberg, this is all a bit worrying. Chicago barely beat a Kyrie Irving-less Cavs team on opening night, it destroyed the hapless Nets (even that game was a little too close for comfort down the stretch), it slept through a loss to Detroit prior to rebounding in time for a solid win over Orlando.

The team’s effort against Charlotte was just distressing, and while the “it’s early”-caveat still applies, it’s hard to get excited about a supposed championship contender that features a whopping five players in its ten-man rotation with single-digit Player Efficiency Ratings.

Butler, at 20.8 points per game alongside five rebounds and 2.6 steals, is most certainly not one of those players. He’s turned it over just twice in 178 minutes this year, and his defense is as strong as ever. Defense on shooting guards, however, is not exactly at a premium in this league right now, and Butler is getting no help from Rose, and against Charlotte the team’s defensive-minded frontcourt duo of Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson was constantly out of place on that end.

Still, while giving up 130 points to the Charlotte Hornets was embarrassing enough, it’s important to remember that Chicago has loads of work to do on both ends of the ball. The “Thibs is gone, Bulls got soft”-take might work for some, but it would only be addressing half of this team’s many issues.

- - - - - - -

Kelly Dwyer

is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!