How Billy Donovan is fixing the Bulls' offense

They have drastically improved their numbers by emphasizing different concepts.

The Bulls’ offense under Billy Donovan has been a joy to watch this season and a stark contrast from Jim Boylen’s rock throwing fights. With mostly the same personnel, Donovan has taken a group that finished 29th and 28th in the league in offense under two years of Boylen and turned them into the no. 13 offense, according to stats at Cleaning the Glass. 

How did this happen? Is Donovan some sort of offensive genius? 

Donovan has done some nice stuff, but a big part of it is also that Boylen was just that bad. 

The Bulls kept one of the main designers of their offense, assistant coach Chris Fleming, on the staff through both head coaches and the actions they run have not drastically changed. Coach Nick of BBallBreakDown had some good video footage of what the Bulls have been doing in both years. 

As Coach Nick points out, the main difference has been putting players in better positions to succeed. Rather than running plays for guys who don’t have a particular skill set, Donovan has used similar actions but utilized players more sensibly in roles that fit. 

Another one of Boylen’s big downfalls was his strict adherence to shot quality. Boylen’s reductive view of the analytics movement, that smart basketball is all about eliminating the midrange shot, was severely limiting the Bulls’ offense. He was a slave to shot quality metrics, believing that if his teams only took paint and 3 shots, they would eventually see their offense climb out of the basement.

Boylen was demonstrating a concept known as Goodhardt’s law, which states: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. 

The Bulls shot the fifth-least amount of midrangers last year, but their offense was terrible because they were forcing completely out of control shots at the rim and from 3. Those wild layup attempts also led to a lot of fast break runouts for opponents, and it was a terrible coaching decision that led to a lot of losses.

Donovan is trying to break the Bulls of those bad habits. Rather than encouraging his players to try harder, put their heads down, and finish through an army of defenders at the rim, he wants his players to focus on driving, collapsing the defense, and kicking the ball out to force opposing defenses into rotation. 

Donovan explained emphasis on passing out of the paint after the team’s win against the Houston Rockets on Monday. 

“It’s hard shooting for, you know, Coby, or even Wendell, trying to finish over bigs. It’s hard in there. What you need to do is get a big [defender] to step up, and find the open man.” 

This approach -- stop throwing up slop at the rim and swing the ball when you draw two defenders -- is total common sense and what every other team in the league does. It’s not surprising that the offense has gotten a lot better by following that advice. 

Donovan’s refocusing of the offense has been reflected in the numbers. The Bulls were no. 1 in shots attempted at the rim under Boylen but 27th in field goal percentage. Their attempts at the rim have gone way down and midrange shots have gone up, but they’re shooting much better from both spots.

Rather than forcing up shots in good zones, they’re generating open looks from all over the court. Note that this is what analytics is actually preaching. You look for the highest percentage shot possible on the court, which is usually the one that is open.

Donovan has created a simple message for his team called “paint to great.” It means that the team gets into the paint and gets something great out of it by passing the ball around. The results have been beautiful to watch. 

Stephen Noh @StephNoh

Billy Donovan gave some nice insight last night, explaining his offensive motto: "From paint to great." Listen to his audio, with some video examples of how the Bulls are getting better at drive + kick.

Another area where Donovan has improved the Bulls is in after timeout (ATO) plays. Despite getting plenty of practice in drawing up plays when down by 20 against garbage time defenses, Boylen was the worst in the league at getting his teams to score on his ATOs. Donovan’s Bulls are ranked 12th according to data at PBPStats, and he’s fought back against his reputation as a non-imaginative coach with some pretty creative play calls. 

Nice ATO designs aside, the main takeaway here is that the Bulls haven’t fixed their offense by incorporating innovative, brilliant new play designs. Most teams run variations of the same actions. The secret sauce is in getting better execution and setting your players up to take advantage of their strengths. Donovan has done this beautifully, and the Bulls have reaped immediate benefits. 

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