TORONTO — For their first 24 minutes in the game against the Thunder in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, the Chicago Bulls couldn’t hit a shot if it wasn’t behind the 3-point arc.
Coby White kept the Bulls in the game by hitting six 3-pointers — three times as many shots as the entire offense was able to make from inside the restricted area.
Eventually, the offense kicked back into a more regular gear. But that first half drudged up a familiar frustration for an offense struggling to find any sort of spark — why can’t the Bulls hit their layups?
“When that happens it gets a bit deflating,” coach Billy Donovan said. “You’re gonna get down the way we got down when you don’t shoot the ball from anywhere. That’s been the issue for us. We’ve had a couple halves where we’ve had 39 or 40 points. We, for whatever reason, haven’t been able to shoot the ball consistently through the course of the game.”
Last season, the Bulls were proficient from within the restricted area, shooting 66.8% on 27.2 attempts per game. It wasn’t the most impressive showing, but it still placed them in the top half of the league in that shooting category, an important boost for a team with the seventh-worst offense in the NBA.
But in this season’s opening weeks, the bottom dropped out of this previously reliable aspect of the offense. Through the first 16 games, the Bulls shot 60.7% from within four feet of the basket — the third-worst accuracy in the league.
The Bulls are getting to the rim, that’s not the problem. They produce 26.7 attempts per game from within the restricted area — 14th highest volume in the league on pace with stronger offenses like the Thunder. But once they get there, the shots aren’t falling.
To be fair, shots aren’t falling for the Bulls in general. This has been an abysmal trend of the first fifth of the season, in which the Bulls have the fourth-worst overall shooting percentage (43.8%) in the league.
But missing layups is a specific mental blow for offenses — they’re nicknamed “bunnies” for a reason — that risks trickling down to shot confidence across the floor.
The issue starts at the top. Both Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević have seen major drops in their accuracy. LaVine’s shooting has dropped from 67.1% at the rim last season to 58.4% in the first 16 games, while Vučević’s has plummeted from a team-best 70.4% last year to 59.3%.
They are supposed to be two of the most surefire players on the roster at close-range — LaVine as a slashing star who can finish any shot at the rim, Vučević as an efficient closer on the block. DeMar DeRozan is the only member of the central trio to remain consistent between the two seasons, shooting only 1.5 percentage point lower from within the restricted area.
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Not every player has seen an individual dip in this statistic. Alex Caruso has actually improved from 70.3% to 74.1% this season. Coby White has seen a slight dip in his accuracy but he’s also nearly doubled his production at the rim, a reflection of his heightened offensive tasks.
But the result is still a team-wide drop-off in finishing at the rim. Every player who finished the season with the Bulls last year shot at least 60% from within the restricted area. Through the first 16 games this season, only five have shot above 60%.
This has led to an odd realignment for the Bulls — one that was reflected in Wednesday’s game, when White’s 3-point shooting kept the Bulls alive.
Relative to the rest of the league, the Bulls have actually become better at shooting threes than twos. They’re third-worst in the league in 2-point percentage (49.3%) while only eighth worst (34.8%) from 3-point range. (In first halves, their 2-point accuracy drops to 43.6%, the absolute worst in the NBA.) And their 3-point frequency has risen to 38.3% of their total shot volume, rising to 16th from dead last in the league last season.
That’s still comparing bad to slightly less bad. But it’s a strange shift for the Bulls, who are used to being a team that thrives within the arc while struggling behind it.
Players and coaches haven’t offered much in the way of solutions. There’s a shared belief across the roster that shots will begin to — and have to begin to — fall eventually.
“We just got to make shots, man,” White said. “You can’t control missing or making shots. That’s out of our control as a team. So for us, we’ve just got to keep playing the right way, keep trusting each other and keep uplifting each other.”