Tom Thibodeau Can Break Minutes Mold with Chicago Bulls' Newfound Depth
The rebuilt Chicago Bulls bench is going to challenge head coach Tom Thibodeau to examine the principles that have defined him and his team over the past few years.
And he should be positively ecstatic about that.
Heavy Minutes, New Choices
Thibs has been a taskmaster for as long as he's run the Bulls—by nature and necessity.
He stretches his best players, requiring them to endure heavy minutes of particularly high-intensity basketball. Defense played well is exhausting, and nobody pushes his talent to excel on that end more than Thibodeau. His minutes are hard minutes.
And in recent years, Thibs' best players have logged a lot of them.
Jimmy Butler tied for the league lead in 2013-14 with an average of 38.7 minutes per game. Joakim Noah racked up 35.2, more than any center in the NBA. Last season wasn't the exception either. It was the norm.
Two seasons ago, Noah logged 36.8 minutes per contest. Former Bull Luol Deng tallied 38.7.
And when the playoffs roll around, Thibs has always doubled down. Last postseason, Butler played a brutal 43.5 minutes per game, while Noah logged 42.
Thibodeau's usage preferences stand in stark contrast to the approaches trending throughout the rest of the league. The San Antonio Spurs didn't have a single player crack the 30-minutes-per-game barrier a year ago, and the Miami Heat rested Dwyane Wade as frequently as possible in hopes of preserving him for the playoffs.
The idea that Thibodeau doesn't care about trends, that he demands more from his players, fits the image we have of him. He's hard-nosed. He doesn't make excuses. He sometimes coaches like tomorrow doesn't exist.
Maybe that's somewhat true, but maybe he's always leaned toward such a drastic approach because he hasn't had a deep enough bench to even consider a more measured one.
He has one now, and things could change dramatically in Chicago because of it.
Depth on Display
In a walkover 104-80 season-opening win against the New York Knicks, just one Bulls player—Mike Dunleavy—played more than 30 minutes. And that was only because Butler was out with a thumb injury. Ten different Bulls logged at least 15 minutes on the floor.
The fact that Chicago had this one wrapped up in the early stages of the third quarter had something to do with Thibs' suddenly socialist approach to playing-time distribution, but it was one of the chief narratives after the contest was finished.
This is how you know the Bulls' depth is a major storyline: On a night when Derrick Rose returned, players and media were just as excited to talk about backups.
You'll never believe this, but perpetual glass-half-full guy Pau Gasol had a positive response as well:
The bench additions this offseason weren't world-altering. Gasol was the Bulls' big get, but he replaced Carlos Boozer in the first unit. Chicago eschewed splashy for smart, bringing Nikola Mirotic into the fold, drafting marksman Doug McDermott and signing Aaron Brooks to follow in the undersized, speedy footsteps of D.J. Augustin and Nate Robinson before him.
The mixture worked brilliantly, and Chicago utilized its new shooting depth to get off to a hot start against the Knicks:
It's not just the newbies that give Thibodeau's Bulls a better bench; holdover Taj Gibson, who piled up 23 points off the pine, looks ready to reprise his role as the NBA's best frontcourt sub.
Per ESPN Chicago's Nick Friedell, the rest of the bench is taking its cues from the five-year veteran:
"They are in that rhythm in large part because Gibson is playing with more confidence than ever. Every night won't be this easy, but his teammates feed off his confidence when he enters a game. Now in his fifth season, Gibson hasn't just become the leader of the second unit, he's become one of the key leaders of this team.
"
In other words, Thibodeau has options now.
A Good Problem
How he uses those options will be fascinating.
Thibs has never had the luxury of resting his key players, let alone sitting them out for entire games if necessary. For the past few years, Chicago has seemed like a team scraping by, substituting heart for health and drawing on raw effort as a stand-in for depth.
It remains to be seen if Thibodeau is prepared to go Full Popovich, but we should expect changes to his rotations. Hopefully, the days of 40-plus-minute nights are over for Noah and Butler.
McDermott figures to be a suitable replacement for Dunleavy sooner than later. He shot 5 of 9 from the field and drilled a pair of threes in the opener. And Brooks hit four of the five shots he took against the Knicks. We're dealing with an admittedly small one-game sample, but Thibodeau has had a whole training camp and preseason to realize the opportunity at hand.
There's some chance that these Bulls, made up of so many new components as they are, might actually need their top players to log big minutes during the regular season in order to establish the chemistry they'll need down the road. If Thibs wants Rose to learn how best to utilize Gasol, maybe heavy minutes are a necessary evil.
Then again, the NBA season is long, and with a veteran-led team, the jelling process should happen relatively quickly. Besides, nobody's ever said it was hard to play with Gasol, Noah, Rose, Butler or, really, anybody on the roster.
They'll figure things out. And at any rate, that's a good problem to have.
The Bulls are a championship threat this year, though their contending status is very much tied to the health of their key players. Rose can't go down or wear down. Same for Noah, Gasol, Butler and Gibson.
Depth has arrived just in time.
To this point, Thibodeau has relied on a short rotation and long minutes to make the Bulls a very good team. To make them great, he'll have to flip things around.
For the first time in memory, that's a viable option.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
