Derrick Rose's Adjustments Key to Maximizing Chicago Bulls' New Roster

It has been three seasons since Derrick Rose won the MVP Award for the Chicago Bulls.

Over that span, he's played just 50 games, battling through a variety of injuries, while the landscape around him has changed dramatically. He's the only constant in a changing Bulls world.

Chicago has a new roster and has made some new tweaks to their system. A healthy Rose would help pull things together, but they may also need a new iteration of his considerable talents to maximize their success.

When Rose was last healthy for a full season with the Bulls, during that MVP campaign, he was their offensive engine—leading the team with an enormous 32.2 Usage Rate.

That season, he attempted over 400 more shots than any of his teammates and handed out well over 300 more assists than any other player. Everything Chicago did on offense revolved around his individual abilities.

Even in his limited time last season, Rose ranked sixth in the league in True Usage, a statistic that measures overall involvement by combining assists and assist chances with the elements of traditional Usage Rate. 

His absence has given the Bulls an enormous hole to fill, and near the end of last season, they appeared to stumble on the first sustainable solution.

Rather than relying on less-efficient versions of Rose, like Nate Robinson and C.J. Watson, to do their best imitations of him; they moved Joakim Noah to the elbow and put the ball in his hands.

Noah has always been a tremendous passer, but by running their offense through him and the high post more frequently, Chicago discovered a new and workable offensive engine. By the end of the season, Noah averaged 8.1 assists per 100 Bulls possessions, the fourth highest mark by a center in the three-point era.

Noah's involvement was often integrated into pick-and-rolls, with the ball delivered to him early. From there, the Bulls' ball-handlers would work around the space he inhabited, cutting to the basket or rolling around the elbows for dribble hand-offs. 

None of the Chicago ball-handlers last season were particularly adept at breaking down a defense off the dribble. Using Noah as this sort of in-between facilitator offered a workaround for getting the ball into the teeth of the defense. 

Alongside Noah, the Bulls have added Pau Gasol to their frontcourt this summer. Gasol is a more proficient shooter and post-scorer than Noah, but he also offers some of the same unique passing abilities. The Los Angeles Lakers often used him similarly in the high post last season.

Gasol is by far the most versatile offensive teammate Rose has had in Chicago, and his abilities open up all sorts of possibilities. Noam Schiller wrote a little about what Gasol can bring to the Bulls offense, for Hardwood Paroxysm:

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Gasol can change that. Although past his prime, Pau is still an effective offense player. But more than that, he is conducive to creativity and motion. He duplicates Noah as a phenomenal high post passer, is respectable (if declining) from both the post and mid-range, and can be trusted making basketball decisions. If previous Bulls squads lacked non-Rose creators, Pau gives them yet another player who can actively seek the more passive scorers in Jimmy Butler, Mike Dunleavy and Tony Snell.

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The Bulls' two other big additions this summer, Doug McDermott and Nikola Mirotic, are both deadly outside shooters.

Placing their shooting on the wings, with hopefully another year of development from Jimmy Butler and Tony Snell, means the Bulls have the spacing to make those high-post hand-offs, curls and anything else they dream up around Gasol even more effective. 

Obviously, the new opportunities Gasol brings and the high-post passing game Noah developed last season will require some changes from Rose.

When he was last on the floor and healthy, the Bulls offense began and ended with him. Now they have two other players ready to play a more prominent role.

The True Usage statistic is descriptive rather than evaluative and thus highly dependent on position.

Point guards and wings generally handle the ball more often, giving them more opportunities for offensive involvement than bigs. However, if we narrow the focus to just big men, we see that Pau Gasol ranked fifth in True Usage last season. Joakim Noah ranked 12th.

Rose seems to be aware of some of the impending changes that will be asked of him. He was clearly interested in playing with Gasol, talking with Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times about how Gasol's post game could help improve the team: 

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[Gasol is] someone that I knew I could play with. You think about Pau, him now being in the East, what he’ll be able to achieve with the way we play, the way we dump the ball in the post a lot. It could be great. 

"

Integrating the three players together—Noah, Rose and Gasol—means Rose needs to be prepared to handle the ball a little less often and in some different ways. Recent performances seem to suggest that may be a good thing for him as well.

Rose has struggled mightily in the FIBA Basketball World Cup over the past two weeks, particularly with regards to his shooting. He has played so inconsistently over the past three seasons that it's easy to attribute much of that to rust. However, when you put these problems together in combination with his shooting difficulties from the 10 games he played in last season, it makes for a concerning and potentially troubling pattern.

You can see from his shot chart just how dramatic his struggles were last season.

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The most obvious area for concern is around the rim, where Rose really underperformed in his brief 10-game stint. One of the biggest problems was his touch in the in-between space—not quite far enough for a jump shot and not quite close enough for a layup.

Rose's floater developed into a powerful weapon during his MVP season. It was not nearly as effective in his return.

Playing off the facilitation of Gasol and Noah in the high post could give Rose an avenue towards rebuilding his confidence at the rim.

It would allow him to operate in many of the same places on the floor and charge down many of the same driving lanes.

The bonus would be that receiving the ball in a hand-off or cutting situation relieves him of the pressure of creating those lanes by dribbling alone. The Bulls' improved shooting on the perimeter, and consequently better spacing, should make a dramatic difference for him as well.

While it may be to the Bulls' benefit to allow the offense and Rose to revolve around Noah and Gasol early in the season, they will eventually need Rose to regain some measure of his previous abilities.

By the NBA's SportVU Player Tracking Statistics, the Bulls ranked dead last in the league last season in drives (defined as any touch that starts at least 20 feet from the basket and is dribbled to within 10 feet of the basket).

In his 10 games last season, Rose averaged 7.1 drives per game, which would have ranked 24th in the league had Rose played enough games to qualify. Rose's driving ability is just as important to the Bulls' long-term success as his ability to play off of his new and improved teammates.

The frontcourt pairing of Gasol and Noah opens things up for their offense, specifically in creating holes for Rose to attack in new ways.

But Chicago will be at its best if Rose is able to return to form and pair these new offensive responsibilities with the whirling dervish, one-man attack that used to be his specialty. 

Having missed so much time, Rose is now almost an unknown quantity.

For the Bulls to really hit their ceiling this season, they'll need him to both regain some measure of what he was, while still pushing through to something new.

Statistical support for this story from NBA.com/stats