What's Behind Chicago Bulls' Home-Court Struggles?

The Chicago Bulls have had their fair share of ups and downs over the course of the 2014-15 season, and most of those hardships have occurred on the team's very own home court. So far, this club has won a paltry 54.1 percent of the games played in its sweet home, Chicago.

That puts the Bulls on pace to finish 22-19 at the United Center, which would be their poorest showing in the Tom Thibodeau era.

This anomaly is an exclusive credit. Of all the NBA teams with at least 30 wins, Chicago is the only squad that is not at least seven games above .500 in its own arena. In the Eastern Conference, the four teams above the Bulls in the conference standings have each won at least 67 percent of the contests played in front of their hometown crowds.

All of this started early on in the season and was dismissed as part of the jelling process. Now months have passed and more than half of the schedule is in the books—yet this issue remains. The players don’t seem to have an answer.

Following a January 25 home loss to the Miami Heat, ESPNChicago.com writer Nick Friedell quotes Pau Gasol giving his inexact estimation:

"

We just got to do better. I don't know if there's a straight explanation for it. We understand the importance of every game, especially here at home. We're trying to do better. We're trying to get ourselves going and get some kind of momentum.

"

In that same article, Derrick Rose was more succinct in his uncertainty. “I really don't know. If I had an answer, I swear I'd tell you, but I just don't know."

A good place to start this quest to find the cause of this new Chicago curse is the numbers themselves. Maybe a closer look at Chicago's United Center output will shed some light on where the breakdown originates.

Holding down the fort

It is a heads-or-tails affair when wondering which Bulls team is going to show up for a home game. The Bulls have been astounding in the wins, while their adversaries have been just as dazzling in the losses. Considering that Thibodeau and the gang are 13-11 in their own city, the times when their opponents stand out have occurred more often than the team would like.

Here’s a breakdown of what a United Center win looks like for the Bulls and for their foes:

	PPG	FG%	3PT%	FT%	AST	TO	REB	STL	BLK
Chicago Wins	107.7	45.6	36.4	81.7	21.8	13.0	47.8	6.5	9.0
Opponent Wins	107.7	47.4	36.9	78.4	24.3	12.7	44.9	8.1	5.9

The opponent's steals advantage suggests that a big reason why Chicago is mired in home-court mediocrity is because it does a poorer job in limiting turnovers, which lead to easy buckets for the visiting team.

Take a look at the production when that chart is flipped from wins to losses:

	PPG	FG%	3PT%	FT%	AST	TO	REB	STL	BLK
Chicago Losses	98.6	42.6	23.8	74.5	23	14.7	42.6	5.6	6.6
Opponent Losses	96.5	42.9	35.4	75.3	19.2	12.9	42.2	7.2	6.4

This chart reveals another side of the Bulls’ Windy City ineptitude—failing to protect the paint. When they are on the losing side of a contest, the Bulls are blocking 2.4 fewer shots per game. A decline in rim protection, to go along with the higher frequency of turnovers, is not a winning formula.

Now, it would easy to dismiss this and say that any team that doesn't lock down the paint and gives the ball away will likely be the loser of any matchup, but Chicago has almost as many losses as wins in the building where they are supposed to dominate. These numbers are an indicator of how the team plays home-court basketball, and that is a problem.

And another thing

While pouring over the data, there was another telling statistic that gives a little more insight into Chicago’s inability to win consistently at the United Center: free-throw shooting.

Whenever this franchise loses at home, the average margin is 9.1 points. In those losses, the team both attempts and makes approximately seven fewer foul shots. Those missing trips to the charity stripe could have made a big difference in a lot of those contests.

This shows the team is not regularly attacking the lane, and when you have slashers like Rose, Jimmy Butler and Aaron Brooks, that should not be the case.

To recap, the Bulls have a tendency to cough up more turnovers that lead to easy transition points, they get lax with their interior defense and they fail to attack the basket in an attempt to get easy-point opportunities from the free-throw line. Using the 54.1 winning percentage at home as a backdrop, it becomes clear that there is a definite consistency problem.

But where does it come from?

One could always fall back on injuries keeping the personnel out of sync, and that would be a fair argument: December was when the Bulls had almost everyone accounted for, and it was the only month during which they had a winning home record. Any other postulation would likely be too speculative without much to back up the claim.

Time is starting to run out for finding a solution to this quandary. While it is important for all players to be at a coach’s disposal, there are still two current and two former All-Stars suiting up for Chicago. That should be enough to demonstrate competence in a venue designed to give a club every advantage.

All statistics courtesy of NBA.com and are current as of February 6, 2015.

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