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Not much has gone right for the Bulls so far this season, from Zach LaVine missing games after signing a $215 million contract, to Lonzo Ball’s puzzling knee injury, to the reported disconnect between Zach LaVine and the organization, but there has to be a light at the end of the dark winter tunnel. There has to be, right?
As a naturally optimistic sports fan, I planned to write an article outlining reasons for other Bulls fans to be optimistic. One reason why I was optimistic was the change that Head Coach Billy Donovan made to the starting lineup.
On December 2, the Bulls played the Golden State Warriors, and Billy Donovan decided to make a change to the starting lineup. He replaced Ayo Dosunmu and Patrick Williams with Alex Caruso and Javonte Green. Shortly after, Green got injured, so Patrick Williams was inserted back in the lineup, and over the next few weeks, the new starting lineup of Caruso, LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, Williams, and Nikola Vucevic was very successful. From December 2nd to December 15, that lineup had a net rating of +18.2 in 65 minutes (data from nba.com/stats). A terrible performance against the New York Knicks significantly decreased their net rating, but their net rating is still +6.4 in 118 minutes since December 2nd, which is including the Knicks game.
The original starting lineup of Dosunmu, LaVine, DeRozan, Williams, and Vucevic has a net rating of -4.6 in 235 minutes so far this season. The Bulls lost a lot of games early in the season due to slow starts, so going with a better starting lineup should be very beneficial.
Billy Donovan has been criticized by Bulls fans for not making enough adjustments, although this critique is thrown around too often for coaches, but he deserves credit for identifying a weakness and fixing it. Lineups with Dosunmu and Williams have a net rating of -10.7 in 486 minutes this season, so he removed one of them from the starting lineup.
My optimism declined when I saw the other changes that Donovan made to the rotation. When the Bulls were starting Dosunmu and Williams and got off to rough starts, their bench lineup brought them back into the game. Below is a list of the best five-man lineups that the Bulls have used this year that have played at least 15 minutes together.
These are all lineups that the Bulls used frequently off the bench, and although 15-35 minutes is a rather small sample size, the success is undeniable. However, they have hardly been used since Donovan made the lineup changes on December 2. Since then, the first three lineups have not played one minute together and the fourth lineup has only played three minutes together. The last lineup has been used more frequently since the change, so the Bulls still have some quality bench lineups, but the best lineups have not been used over the last few weeks.
A similar trend exists when looking at the Bulls’ three-man lineups. Below is a list of the five most common three-man lineups with at least one bench player that the Bulls have used since December 2 when they changed their rotation. I only looked at lineups with at least one bench player because we’ve already seen the success of the new starting lineup, so I was more interested in examining how the other adjustments have worked out. As you can see, it hasn’t been great.
It is pretty easy to notice changes to their rotation when watching the Bulls play. One noticeable change was playing Vucevic with the LaVine bench unit instead of the DeRozan bench unit, but the Bulls are better when Vucevic plays with DeRozan (-2.8 net rating in 902 minutes) than when Vucevic plays with LaVine (-4.6 net rating in 692 minutes).
Also, the first four lineups are all some combination of Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu, Zach LaVine, Patrick Williams, and Nikola Vucevic. Predictably, this lineup has been awful this year to the tune of a -22.8 net rating in 29 minutes. The caveat of small sample size exists, but this has been the Bulls’ third most used lineup since December 2nd with all 29 minutes of playing time coming after Donovan changed the rotation.
What makes this adjustment look even worse is that White, DeRozan, and Vucevic have been extremely successful playing together both this year (+8.9 net rating in 184 minutes) and last year (+2.9 net rating in 600 minutes).
Below is another table of Bulls lineups, this time showing their best three-man lineups with at least 100 minutes played. I included a column to show how many minutes they played before December 2nd. Keep in mind that the Bulls played 21 games before 12/2 and 10 games since.
Other than the Dragic, DeRozan, Drummond combination, the best three-man combinations that the Bulls have used this year have been used far less frequently since December 2nd. You also do not need to look at the data to realize this is the case. Early in the season, the lineups that included Goran Dragic, Zach LaVine, and Alex Caruso dramatically increased the team’s energy and brought them back from early deficits. However, these lineups have hardly been used in the last few weeks.
If the Bulls could get off to better starts as a result of the change to the starting lineup, combined with the already successful bench units, the Bulls could play a more complete game, eliminating the need to come back from double-digit deficits. However, using subpar bench lineups, which anyone who spends five minutes on nba.com or basketball-reference can see do not work, negate the improvement from the starters.
Bulls fans wanted Billy Donovan to make more adjustments, but be careful what you wish for.
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