That Was Ugly

 An ugly game with few bright spots.  Lets run through the things that the organization claims it wants in public


  1.  Try to play with more pace:  Check.  Early on the Cavs were pushing and got some easy transition buckets (early being late in the 1st quarter).  However they didn’t have the correct approach when in semi-transition.  Semi transition is when your transition doesn’t lead to an open look but the defense still isn’t set and a full half court possession isn’t necessarily in the cards.  The Cavs weren’t pushing this advantage properly, their guards would often attack in iso for (I assume) pace reasons, but what you need is a quick action to take advantage of the confusion.  


The attempts at pace (plus youth, plus unfamiliarity) lead to a ton of turnovers, 20 for the game but most (I think the announcers said 15 at the end of the first) in the first half.  This was a large problem last year and can’t continue if we are going to watch a solid team.  It hurts them far too much on both ends.


  1.  To exploit Lauri Markkanen’s offensive range better than Chicago had done.  Volume wise he had 12 TS attempts in 16 mins, vs 11 in 26 mpg last season.  It was a fast paced/sloppy preseason game but even so they looked for him a fair amount.  However some of those looks didn’t make sense.  Once they posted him on Lonzo late in the shot clock, this was dumb.  Lonzo is Chicago’s best defender, Lauri isn’t great in the post, he didn’t have deep position and the limited time on the clock meant his move was easy to defend against (Ball stripped him, and it bounced around with the shot clock expiring before the Cavs could retain it fully and get a look off). In general I wasn’t impressed with the actual looks LM got outside of transition.


  1.  To get Okoro more ball handling.  This one was a complete fail not just from the fact that Okoro barely touched the ball but also the fact that the Cavs were running their offense into Chicago’s best defenders while DDR stood with a foot in the paint ‘on’ Okoro in the corner.  After closing the gap and making it a 33-30 game early in the 2nd there were multiple times down the court where the Cavs tried to cram a 2 man game against Ball and Caruso.  This would be the time to take Okoro out of the corner.  Ball and Caruso are the best two defenders on the Bulls, get them over on one side of the court and then turn that into the weak and swing the ball up top to Okoro.  Either DDR follows Okoro and one of Chicago’s worst defenders is at the point of attack or you have Garland or Sexton in the corner making the 3pt threat from that side much stronger.  


The big issue with the SexLand backcourt on offense is this ‘my turn/your turn’ mentality which prevents them attacking the best matchups and forcing defenses to change up their approach.  Sexton brings it up with the mindset of ‘my shot’ or even ‘get Mobley his post up’ and it relieves the weaknesses of a team that is starting really bad defenders in Vuce and DDR.  This gets ridiculously frustrating, you can understand it last year as a natural consequence of having to use their 5th and 6th guards consistently, a whole slew of big men going through and not much shooting.  This year they (at least for now) should be able to have a pair of strong ball handlers constantly on the court, plus two stretch PFs and two rim running bigs.  All the tools are there to force Chicago to make choices at every position on every play if you want.


Alright, the bright spots.


  1.  The Love/Rubio combo beat Chicago’s 2nd unit with no issues.  It was 16-5 against the Cavs when Love stepped onto the floor with 5:22 remaining and it was 33-27 when he subbed out (technically 26 but he subbed out on FTs earned while he was on the court).  

  2. Mobley is (again) as advertised defensively.  His footwork and length allows him to handle guards easily on switches.  He had a pair of blocks in 21 mins.


The really bad spot


  1.  The Cavs guards got eaten up on simple screens around the perimeter letting Chicago get a lot of open 3s with little effort.  Mobley and Allen’s defensive abilities aren’t going to be noticeable unless that gets fixed, be it effort, scheme or both.



Conclusions:  Vomit inducing to watch its still game one of the preseason, against a team entirely composed of vets on the road, so nothing too harsh (yet).  We get no real feel for the actual big man rotation here… I hope, it seems like a complete misallocation of resources to have Markkanen or Love standing in a corner while on the court together and then having both on the bench while Sexland has limited spacing options.  

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