Jimmy Buckets: How a coach flipped the script and the Bulls became fun to watch again

It’s hard to imagine a worse start than Jim Boylen’s first few weeks as the head coach of the Bulls.

The practice. The meeting. The media coverage. The losses. The head-scratching quotes.

On the court, Boylen’s intentional slowdown produced one of the least efficient offenses the league had seen in decades. The Bulls were getting blown out on a regular basis as some players openly questioned his offensive strategy. The rest of the league wondered what the heck was going on in Chicago. Boylen, while signed through next season on an enhanced contract, didn’t look long for the job.

But Boylen has not only survived, he’s thrived. It’s impossible to ignore how well his team is playing by winning six of its last 10 and losing those four games by only a combined 28 points. That’s making tanking enthusiasts nervous, but it’s tough to deny there is actual enthusiasm about the Bulls’ on-court product for the first time in, well, a long time.

Boylen finally flipped the switch on the Bulls’ offense in late January, and the team hasn’t looked back since. They jumped from a 101.4 offensive rating in Boylen’s first seven weeks, ranking dead last in the league, to a 115 offensive rating from Week 8 onward. That is right behind the top-ranked Golden State Warriors’ output for the year (115.5 offensive rating).

How did this happen? Well, acquiring Otto Porter Jr. in early February sure helped.

But the most obvious change that Boylen incorporated was speeding up the game and focusing more on ball movement. His multiple ball-handler approach has reinvigorated the Bulls’ transition attack, a change that Boylen told the Tribune’s K.C. Johnson he regrets not making earlier. The way they’ve been running recently is a far cry from the walk-it-up for post-ups philosophy that Boylen hammered home at the beginning of his tenure and they’ve even been flying past defenses after made baskets.

Small thing but this play caught my eye today: The Bulls getting a fast break layup off a made basket. Would not have happened two months ago when they were walking it up. Props to Boylen for hitting the gas pedal and getting this team rolling on offense. pic.twitter.com/5W6C0vGU4u

— Stephen Noh (@StephNoh) March 4, 2019

The benefits of the Bulls’ transition attack are obvious and there were signs of how potent they could be if they ran even during that slowdown period, one that Boylen insisted numerous times was necessary to teach the fundamentals. (Bulls executive vice president John Paxson told reporter he talked with Boylen about speeding it up after the early January trade of Justin Holiday.)

But what’s much more surprising is how nuclear the Bulls have been in the half-court. They’ve gotten into their sets much quicker, but one of the biggest changes has been how Boylen has found a way to make the team add up to more than the sum of its parts.

“It’s been really fun,” center Robin Lopez said. “Everyone has been really engaged and pulling for each other. I think we all feel a little reinvigorated.”

One of the Bulls’ new pet plays is a three-man action using Robin Lopez as an initiator via dribble handoff, with Zach LaVine coming off a Lauri Markkanen screen. The Bulls ran it multiple times in the second half of Sunday’s loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Each time the Hawks made an adjustment to take something away, the Bulls found a different way to score.

This is what the great offenses in the league do — find a way to force defenses into choosing between multiple bad options, so there will be a good shot available no matter what. When defenses help off Markkanen, he will burn them for a 3. Stay with him, and LaVine will beat that 2-on-1 matchup every time.

“To our guys’ credit, we’re moving (Markkanen) around,” Boylen said. “He gets a roll for a layup or a shot in the paint. He comes off a handoff and gets downhill. He’s in transition and maybe gets a layup or a pull-up. He gets a pop-3 on a pick-and-roll. I just think he’s involved in so many plays, and the ball finds him. But he’s a big part of what we do…The ball’s in his hands a lot, which is what we want. It’s what he wants. And it’s good for us. I also think there’s an awareness on our team of who’s got it going, or that he’s out there. There’s an awareness that he’s a primary guy, and we’ve got to get him the rock.”

The Bulls have been trying to figure out a way to get Markkanen and LaVine playing off each other for over a year, and they’re finally finding some answers. It’s been fun watching coaches try and adjust, just to have their plans tossed away in a new and equally frustrating fashion.

Boylen has also found ways to maximize the combination of Porter’s spacing and LaVine’s driving skills. Another pet play Boylen has incorporated is a clear out on one side of the floor, which lets LaVine run a pick-and-roll with Porter coming off a series of screens on the other side of the floor. If teams don’t send extra help at LaVine, he will create a great look for himself or the roll man. If that extra help does come, Porter will seed chaos on the opposite side of the floor.

The additions of Porter, Wayne Selden Jr. and Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot have fundamentally changed the way that teams guard the Bulls. By getting some legitimate 3-point shooting on the roster, there are far fewer opportunities for defenses to cheat and help way off their man. If the Bulls catch the defense leaning one way, they will attack and find an easy way to score. If defenses play them straight up, then good luck guarding them 1-on-1. Nobody’s found a way to stop it yet.

The Porter trade has obviously helped more than anything, and the Bulls are now 6-2 in games he’s played in. But Boylen has also found creative and modern ways to use his players effectively. He’s had his guards screening a ton, even running Markkanen-Ryan Arcidiacono pick-and-rolls with Markkanen as the ball handler. Opposing broadcasting crews have taken note of how much space the Bulls now have to work with when Markkanen plays at center. While those lineups have not held up defensively, they’ve been unstoppable on offense.

Another positive outcome of the last month has been the player development up and down the roster. Porter immediately stepped in and looked like a completely different player than he was in Washington, where he’d been labeled as too passive. Teammates and coaches tried to find a way to get him to shoot more frequently for years but couldn’t find the magic formula.

For whatever reason, Porter has used the fresh start in Chicago to expand his game. He’s shooting more 3s and hitting them at an insane 52 percent clip. More than just shooting, he’s starting to look like a guy the Bulls can run their offense through for portions of a game rather than a role player that camps out on the perimeter. He’s also saved his best for the end of games, acting as a stabilizing force and making huge plays.

Porter is far from the only Bulls player who has taken a leap. Arcidiacono has regained his early-season form, making big plays and playing with an aggressiveness that was sorely missing months ago. Lopez is averaging 16.4 points on 64.8 percent shooting since the Porter trade. And LaVine and Markkanen have been playing the best basketball of their careers.

LaVine was the one Bull who sounded most skeptical during Boylen’s rocky start, but it sounds like he’s coming along.

“You have to learn to trust people and know what they want and how things are going to go,” he said. “I think we’re getting in a good groove and we’re getting to know each other.”

Boylen has vastly improved both his coaching methods and his team’s play over the course of the last five weeks. But he still has to prove that he can get better in various areas, and there are still legitimate questions about whether he should be the one leading this team long-term. His timeout usage has been erratic, the team’s defense has been bad as the offense improved and his all-bench lineups have been painful to watch.

No rookie head coach is going to be perfect out of the gate, and Boylen should be given a chance to see if he can make those improvements. Like his players, he has developed too. The rough start is going to be understandably difficult for many to overlook, but he deserves an opportunity to see what else he can do. Let’s see how far that growth will go.

Darnell Mayberry contributed to this article. SB Nation’s Ricky O’Donnell came up with the borrowed “Jimmy Buckets” nickname for Boylen.

(Top photo: Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports)