Final 2015 Player Power Rankings for the Chicago Bulls
The Chicago Bulls have been about as bipolar as a team can possibly be this season. From one game to the next it’s hard to get a grip on whether they’re going to be a threat to win the Eastern Conference or going to miss the playoffs entirely.
Particularly, with the East being as competitive as it is this year, every win matters. As of New Year’s Eve, the Bulls are in fourth, one game out of second and one game out of the lottery. That’s how tight it is.
When things are that close, every game matters. And the Bulls are only playing like the games against the good teams matter. If the playoffs started today, Chicago would be 10-4 against postseason teams and 8-8 against also-rans.
Furthermore, the Bovines are 6-1 against opponents with a 60 percent winning percentage or better—their lone loss coming at the hands of the Golden State Warriors. They’ve beaten the Cleveland Cavaliers, San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder (twice).
At the same time, they’ve lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves and Phoenix Suns at home. They were crushed by the New York Knicks and dropped one to the lowly Brooklyn Nets.
And if you discount the Philadelphia 76ers, who aren’t really an NBA team, the Bulls have a better record against winning outfits than losing ones, so consistency is an issue here.
With that in mind, the report card here will focus on dependability and leadership.
The first slide will feature the bottom of the rotation, the second slide will contain the top of the bench and each starter will have a slide of his own. The players are listed according to their grade from worst to first in their respective category. In addition to the previously stated criteria, the grades also take into account performance against individual expectations.
Stats were obtained from NBA.com or Basketball-Refernece.com unless otherwise stated.
Bottom of the Bench
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13-15: Mike Dunleavy, Cameron Bairstow and Cristiano Felicio: Incomplete
Mike Dunleavy is normally the starting small forward, but he has yet to play this season as he recovers from back surgery.
Cameron Bairstow and Cristiano Felicio have a combined 24 minutes between the two of them. As such, there’s just not enough to warrant a grade. The only thing to add here is that Cody Westerlund of CBS Chicago reported via Twitter, “Cristiano Felicio will go to D-League tomorrow for a stint there, [head coach Fred] Hoiberg says.”
12: E’Twaun Moore: F
E’Twaun Moore has played a lot less recently, with healthy “DNP Coach’s Decisions” in eight of the Bulls’ last 11 games. To be fair, it’s fair. Based on his game log at Basketball-Reference.com, opponents outscored the Bulls by 16 points in the 23 minutes he did play. And that was on the heels of consistent negative outings. In the 12 games he’s played since Nov. 18, the Bulls are minus-61 and were outscored in 11 of those games with him on the court.
11. Tony Snell: D-
Tony “Snelly Cat” Snell has been mostly horrible with just enough occasional flashes of brilliance to make you think there’s hope. And that’s only followed up by another disastrous outing. Most recently, he had his best outing of the season against the Toronto Raptors following Bulls vice president John Paxson calling him out. That’s enough to keep him from failing...but barely.
10. Bobby Portis: A
The #FreeBobbyPortis movement on Twitter was fun. Even ex-Bull Scottie Pippen got in on the action. And there’s good reason for that. The more Portis plays, the more he proves he’s got the chops to make it in this league, and maybe more than just as a role player. In fact, his 20.6 points per 36 minutes leads the Bulls. He’s shooting 50.7 percent from inside the arc and 37.5 percent from three, so those points are coming efficiently. The only reason he's not higher on this list is he only recently cracked the rotation.
The Top of the Bench
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9. Kirk Hinrich: A-
All things considered, it’s time for Kirk Hinrich to get the love he deserves. He’s fourth all-time in minutes played for the Bulls. And we’ll always have the time he tackled LeBron James. Or the Hinrich Maneuver on Chris Bosh. Even in his second stint, he’s had his moments.
He’s not the player he once was, but he’s been so much better than expected this year, sporting a 52.7 effective field-goal percentage. He’s still a solid defender, and when his shot is falling, he can still be a difference-maker. In short, he’s getting an A- because I don’t know how much more anyone could have wanted from him this year.
8. Doug McDermott: B-
This season, Doug McDermott has been much more like the player the Bulls front office traded two first-round picks for in the 2014 draft. You probably won’t get a whole lot of argument from most people that he’s exceeded expectations. He’s already scored more than twice as many points this season (250) as last (109). He’s also the Bulls’ most efficient shooter, with an effective field-goal percentage of 54.1.
And his defense has evolved from simply deplorable to the point where you can actually hide him. There are times where teams have tried to exploit him and actually failed. Most recently, on Christmas Day, McDermott successfully guarded Kevin Durant for a part of a possession. That's a small sample size, but he’s gotten better, and with his scoring being far more complete than Kyle Korver’s, the three-point specialist and fellow Creighton alum McDermott is often compared to, he’s looking like an NBA player.
7. Aaron Brooks: B-
Aaron Brooks is either a really good shooter or a really awful shooter. He’s rarely in between. Of the 22 games he’s played, he’s had an effective field-goal percentage of at least 55.6 percent nine times and 39.9 percent 10 times. Only three games fall in the in-between chasm that spans 15 percentage points.
When you see he’s shooting 51.1 percent on the season, it’s misleading. And while there’s no particular correlation between his brand of streakiness and the Bulls winning or losing, it sure doesn’t help. If the Bulls got more of the Aaron and less of the "Errin’," they’d have a much better chance of winning.
6. Joakim Noah: B
There is an ongoing debate about who is the true leader of the Bulls: Jimmy Butler or Derrick Rose. But in actuality, it's Joakim Noah's team. Whenever controversy flares up in Chicago, Noah’s the one that settles it down. The leader of a team doesn’t have to be its best player.
Noah was just finding his traction off the bench when he sprained his shoulder in the Dec. 22 game against the Brooklyn Nets. For the month of December, he averaged 6.4 points, 9.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists. In his last full outing, he racked up 21 points and 10 rebounds against the Knicks. The rebounding monster with amazing court vision was coming back, and his knee was looking good before the shoulder injury.
5. Nikola Mirotic: D+
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Nikola Mirotic has been another Bull with consistency problems. And by that I mean he’s mostly a hot mess with sporadic episodes of competence. However, he’s been almost all the former and none of the latter over the last month.
He’s averaged 7.6 points, 5.4 boards and 1.3 assists per game since Nov. 30, and he’s shooting just 36.2 percent from the field. He’s constantly getting destroyed on defense. His once potent pump fake is utterly ignored now, as the scouting report is out on him.
All that's left for him to do is gun up shots too far behind the three-point line, which invariably clank harmlessly off the rim. The duality of his ineptitude has resulted in the Bulls sporting a minus-1.3 when he’s on the court in that span and plus-3.8 when he’s not, according to NBA.com stats.
And while sometimes such stats don’t tell the whole story or an accurate one, this is not one of those cases. Mirotic’s sophomore season has more of a bust than star look to it. He can be better. We know this because he has been better.
4. Derrick Rose: Pending Extra Credit
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Derrick Rose’s grade is hard to come by because of the circumstances. On the one hand, he’s been pretty downright awful for most of the season. Based on his real plus-minus at ESPN, there are only three players in the league playing worse than him right now.
His effective field-goal percentage is 40.6 percent, and there’s frankly no way to spin that. The only player in the three-point era to be that bad and take at least 15 shots per game is this year’s version of Kobe Bryant.
That said, Rose does have the fact that he broke his orbital bone during training camp and played most of the first month with one eye tied behind his back, metaphorically speaking. On top of that, he missed most of camp, where the team was learning the new offense. That’s a lot to saddle a player with.
For the first part of the season, he was wearing a mask, and it seemed to be bothering him, even if he denies that.
"I love the mask. I just felt I have too much faith to be hiding behind something. So I just took it off and put it in God's hands. As far as playing with it off, I really can't tell the difference. It's just that I'm getting my legs under me a little bit more," Rose said, per K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune.
However, if you go back to the time he ditched the shield, there’s a definitive improvement. Based on the math I worked out myself, his effective field-goal percentage peering through the plastic lens was 37.5 percent, while it’s been 45.9 percent bare-faced.
And over his last two games, it’s 56.9 percent. He’s trending in the right direction. Because he was basically missing class days, we’re not going to grade him. He’s doing extra credit right now to get his grade up.
3. Pau Gasol: C+
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Pau Gasol is a conundrum. On the surface, his numbers look good. Beneath, the eye test says that the numbers are missing something. But another layer deeper shows that the eye test can be just as misleading.
Let's start with the stats: Gasol is averaging 16.2 points, 10.7 rebounds and 2.2 blocks. He joins just Patrick Ewing and Artis Gilmore as the only players to average those numbers at 35 years or older.
The problem is that those numbers don’t show what he doesn’t do. He’s too slow-footed to defend the high pick-and-roll, and teams have exploited that repeatedly. Oftentimes, he just doesn’t hustle for rebounds, and opponents get the second- or third-chance points. He wants the ball in the post, but with the offense that Fred Hoiberg likes to run (and was brought in to run), that slows things down.
Those things don’t show up in the box score. But neither does it show that opponents shoot 4.5 percent below their season average when Gasol is on the court, that he’s saving 6.34 points per 36 minutes at the rim, per Seth Partnow's rim protection stats at Nylon Calculus, or that his defensive real plus-minus is 10th in the NBA, according to ESPN.com.
In short, Gasol is a future Hall of Famer who is too slow to be an elite player but still contributes at a high level. He does need the right players around him to help compensate for what he can’t do, though.
2. Taj Gibson: B+
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Taj Gibson has been making a difference since finding his way back into the starting lineup. The numbers aren’t particularly spectacular, but he’s been solid and, more importantly, consistent. His grade would be higher if it weren’t for his slow beginning to the season.
The Bulls have been trying to find something that works at the small forward, utilizing Tony Snell, Nikola Mirotic and Doug McDermott all. They've also occasionally moved Kirk Hinrich to shooting guard and slid Jimmy Butler to the 3.
With the other four starters on the court and whoever happens to be playing the 3, the Bulls boast a net rating of 3.9 in 216 minutes, and Gibson seems to be one of the main reasons for it. He and Butler are the two guys out there constantly hustling.
Gibson’s biggest issue last season was trying to go with 17 post moves every time he got the ball down low before getting the chair pulled out from under him and collapsing to the floor, bemoaning the “missed call” as he pulled himself back up.
This year, he’s not doing that. Last year, he passed out of the post on 24.3 percent of his post touches. This season, that number is all the way up to 32.3. Only three players who get at least four post touches per game have a higher rate, and Gibson’s 8.1 assist percentage out of the post is the highest of any in that group.
Gibson’s making the team better.
1. Jimmy Butler: B+
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Setting aside the banality of the whole “leader of the team” circus, Butler is easily the crew's best player at this point. And honestly, if some people get all worked up that he deigned to call himself that after those in the media had been determining that for a year, then that’s their issue.
Noah is the leader of the Bulls, and Butler is learning to be. When the controversy was brewing over Butler’s comments on new coach Fred Hoiberg, it was Noah who came in with the sage-like quip, as reported by K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune: "Times like this usually bring a team together," Noah said. "Or it doesn't."
Noah has a way of keeping things in perspective:
"I just wish it would've been kept in-house, maybe. That probably would've been better. Everybody, including myself sometimes, we're talking about some of our issues. Everybody has issues. Every family has issues. We're growing together through the good and the bad.
Everybody needs to be a leader. It's not about Jimmy. It's not about Coach Hoiberg. It's about everybody coming with the right mindset every day and getting it done as a group.
"
In the Bulls' last game of 2015, it was Butler who scored the last nine points of regulation against the Indiana Pacers to send it into overtime. It was Butler who guarded MVP candidate Paul George. It was Butler who tipped in the game-winning shot in overtime. And it was Butler who guarded George on the Pacers’ ensuing attempt to tie and send it into a second overtime.
It was the third time this season that Butler made a defensive play to save the game.
On the court, it is his team. He’s learning to lead, but that's a process. It was a bit boneheaded to call out his coach in public, but, all things considered, it’s hard to fault the Bulls’ most consistent player in a season scarred by inconsistency.
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