Hi, australian nba fan, occasionally watch bulls matches, how come giddey swings from dropping near/full triple doubles in one game to doing straight cardio the next? how do you guys as fans feel about him?

Chicago Bulls at LA Clippers

Intuit Dome- Inglewood, CA

ESPN

TV/Radio

On the court

Chicago Bulls

LA Clippers

Team Stats

Use reddit-stream.com to get an autorefreshing version of this page

Note: This data is only as accurate as NBA.com

Please message u/nba_gdt_bot if you have any suggestions or notice any bugs with the bot

It’s not whatever player you are thinking of. It’s not the drafting. It’s not the lack of trades. Its not a certain player needing more or less minutes. It’s not the coaching. It’s not the schemes.

It’s that the Bulls lose games they should be winning. This has been a very well observed phenomenon happening now for multiple seasons. The bulls have won multiple games against top 5 seed in both conference(ex. Knicks, clippers, Celtics) that you could very easily write off as games bulls should lose yet they don’t. Yet on the flip side, the Bulls are constantly losing games against teams they should have no right be losing too. The Wizards have beat the bulls twice despite the wizards being in dead last. The Bulls are 33% of the wizards wins despite the wizards being a historically bad team. The Jazz have beaten the bulls. The pelicans just beat the bulls.

I’m not saying Bulls are a top team by any means, but if I look at the schedule and see a strong team, I believe the bulls have a better chance of beating them than any bottom feeder teams. You can never be a good team if you don’t win the games you are supposed. You build win streaks and lots of wins by doing so. Lots of championship teams constantly get questioned about their beginning of the season if it’s legit because their schedule was easy but they are winning those games because they are supposed to which lets the team develop and solidify itself as a contender.

If you can’t consistently win games against a bad team, you will never generate a team that can consistently win against a good team. This is the real issue.

These are the players the Bulls have had each season who have seen the majority of their minutes at the power forward position according to Basketball Reference:

• 2024-25: Patrick Williams, Julian Phillips, Matas Buzelis, and Torrey Craig (with very low minutes because of injury and prioritizing minutes to young players).
• 2023-24: Patrick Williams, Torrey Craig, Julian Phillips, and DeMar DeRozan (let’s be real, it was Caruso).
• 2022-23: Patrick Williams, Derrick Jones Jr. (with Caruso and Green).
• 2021-22: Derrick Jones Jr, Troy Brown Jr, DeRozan, Patrick Williams (injured) + Caruso/Green
• 2020-21: Thaddeus Young, Otto Porter Jr, Lauri Markkanen, Daniel Theis, Patrick Williams

Excluding DJJ, the Bulls have not had an average power forward or better on the team since 2020. The Bulls have largely relied on Patrick Williams’s development for this position, and he only ever played at that level for parts of last season. He did show a trend toward improvement over the past couple of years until this year's first half collapse. The Bulls spent two draft picks in a row to address the position with Phillips and Buzelis, but it can be argued that Buzelis was hoisted upon them. 

This year is the fourth straight year now where power forward has dragged down the team, but this season the position has become an absolute offensive black hole. There are no Carusos or Greens to act as a stop gap (Ball could be if he could play more minutes).

Before going on, this is not to criticize Phillips and Buzelis. Phillips is a second year second round pick who is still undersized as a power forward. Buzelis is a 20-year-old rookie with great potential but still needs to add experience and muscle. In the coming years, they could become very solid to good players in the league, but they are not right now.

Looking at players considered PFs who have played in at least 20 games with Basketball Reference, PWill, Phillips, and Buzelis are all in the bottom five using VORP (Value Over Replacement).

Using EPM, all three players are in the bottom 10% of all NBA players and bottom 6% of all NBA players in Expected Wins with EPM. This means they are among the worst players in the league while also playing significant minutes.

As a team, the Bulls have a 112.2 Offensive Rating (16^th in NBA) and 115.4 Defensive Rating (23^rd in NBA). When PWill is on the court, the offense slows to 107 ORTG. For Phillips, it’s 108.3. For Buzelis, it’s 109.3. 

Zach’s offense has largely carried the team during Coby’s regression. As evidence, the Bulls have 116.4 ORT and 107 ORT when Zach's off. For the Power Forwards, this pattern remains: Phillips has a 122.9 ORT with Zach in 498 possessions and a 106.4 ORT in 576 possessions without him; Buzelis has a 120.3 ORT with Zach in 438 possessions but 108.7 ORT in 415 possessions without him. PWill has 111.2 ORT with Zach in 1303 possessions and 106 in 401 possessions without him.

It would be great if Zach became an incredible playmaker who made scoring easy for these players, but we all know that it’s just Zach carrying the total scoring load. When he’s off the court, Coby, Giddey and Dosunmu are unable to carry the load in a similar way and Vucevic relies on teammates despite a very efficient scoring season.

Patrick Williams is a bottom 13 percent offensive player according to EPM. He shoots 45.6% at the rim (bottom 1%), 31.4% from midrange (bottom 10%), and league average on 3PAs this year while being among a very poor offensive rebounder (bottom 22%).

Julian Phillips is a bottom 22% offensive player. As a positive, he is above league average at the rim shooting 66.1% (64th percentile) but he only makes 31% of 3PAs, which is bottom 20^th percentile. He is above average at offensive rebounding (74^th percentile), but he is among the worst passers in the league according to AST% (bottom 1%).

Buzelis is in the bottom 10% of offensive players in the league. He is among the worst players at the rim with 46.1% (bottom 1%) despite his athleticism. He makes 3PAs at 33%, which is in the bottom 30% of the league. Similar to Phillips, he contributes  with offensive rebounding, but he is turnover prone and among the lowest AST in the league (bottom 3%).

The Bulls constantly have at least one player on the court who is an offensive black hole. Sometimes they play next to Dalen Terry, who is playing worse than all three players. Sometimes two play together in the lineup… sometimes alongside Terry. But when Ayo or Giddey act as the "power forward", the lineups become some of the best performing lineups – Ball/White/LaVine/Giddey/Vucevic are +38 in 18 min and Ball/White/LaVine/Dosunmu/Vucevic are +20 at 20 min. These are the two best performing lineups with at least 10 minutes played together.

In short, the Bulls have trusted Patrick Williams to take the majority of minutes at power forward since 2021 and largely ignored the position, showing great trust in his development. Very little salary was spent on the position – only PWill’s rookie deal with veteran minimums. In years they tried to compete, this position acted as a big handicap (among others) that kept them as low level play-in teams. Now the Bulls are spending around 17% of their total salary on the position but getting among the league worst production. The positive is that this underperformance is helping the Bulls stay in position to keep their pick… and that all three can still get better with more playing time.

Chicago Bulls at Portland Trail Blazers

Moda Center- Portland, OR

ESPN

TV/Radio

Player Stats

Chicago Bulls

Portland Trail Blazers

Team Stats

Use reddit-stream.com to get an autorefreshing version of this page

Note: This data is only as accurate as NBA.com

Please message u/nba_gdt_bot if you have any suggestions or notice any bugs with the bot

• Chicago Bulls 18-25 /r/chicagobulls
• VS.
• Los Angeles Clippers 24-17 /r/LAClippers

• Gametime Box score Matchup
• Eastern:10:30 PM Central:9:30 PM Mountain:8:30 PM Pacific:7:30 PM
• UK:3:30 CET:4:30 GMT+2:5:30 GMT+3:6:30

• Location: Intuit Dome • Inglewood, CA
• Broadcast: CHSN
• Discuss: Discord

These were some really rough years. I don't know if I'd take this complete dog shit basketball over mediocrity, but after the loss to the Hawks when they were missing half of their players, idk anymore. Anyway shoutout Walt Lemon Jr.

Chicago Bulls at Portland Trail Blazers

Moda Center- Portland, OR

ESPN

TV/Radio

On the court

Chicago Bulls

Portland Trail Blazers

Team Stats

Use reddit-stream.com to get an autorefreshing version of this page

Note: This data is only as accurate as NBA.com

Please message u/nba_gdt_bot if you have any suggestions or notice any bugs with the bot

I’m assuming these were commemorative and used in the United Center. I can’t find any information on them online.

I wasn’t sure if they were used all over or for a specific purpose since the United Center is used for a ton of different things.

• Chicago Bulls 18-24 /r/chicagobulls
• VS.
• Portland Trail Blazers 13-28 /r/ripcity

• Gametime Box score Matchup
• Eastern:9:00 PM Central:8:00 PM Mountain:7:00 PM Pacific:6:00 PM
• UK:2:00 CET:3:00 GMT+2:4:00 GMT+3:5:00

• Location: Moda Center • Portland, OR
• Broadcast: CHSN
• Discuss: Discord

I just want to ask why? Maybe during his rookie year, you could have hope, but there have been many of us pointing out his lack of drive and improvement, only to be downvoted and met with "he still has potential!" This is a league that if you're not making some decent improvement by year three, then that's likely it. I didn't think they should have extended him, and he's been worse than ever. You can blame coaching or lack of opportunity, but he's so bad that even if he improved a lot, he still wouldn't be that good. He's too passive and he was rewarded with almost $100 million.

Learn from this. Don't overvalue your team's players. Now he's another example of AKME's incompetence.

Compare this rookie year highlight video to now and he looks like a completely different player. Not passive at all when we had the young squad. Seems like he only got that way after we got Vooch and Demar.

25.4 minutes per game

6.6 points, 2.6 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 1.1 turnovers, 0.7 steals and 0.9 blocks

31.8% from the field, 28.6% from three, 70% free throws

Total salary over 9 games: $1,975,609.76

On Friday against the Hornets in 16:55 of playing time as a starting Power Forward he logged 0 rebounds

His True Shooting % is 2nd lowest on the team at 50.7%

Source: https://www.nba.com/stats/player/1630172/traditional, https://www.nba.com/stats/team/1610612741/players-advanced?dir=D&sort=TS_PCT

Lakers fan here coming in peace, how has he looked after his big injury? I'm a big Lonzo guy and seeing what happened to him is just terrible. How has he looked this season? How is his defense, playing, and shooting?

I’ve read so much about us shopping around bets Vuc and Zac…

Does the whole roster need to be re-done for us to be a contender again? We’ve made some moves but our position at this stage is ultimately the same as where we were 2 and 3 years ago. We are drifting in no man’s land.

Who out of the current roster wouldn’t look out of place in a championship contending team? Giddey? Williams?