This is going to be another mostly aggregation of my tweets from the game so if you’ve already seen them, feel free to skip this one.
The Bulls’ 128-124 loss to the Kings on Wednesday could have been sharpied in as a schedule loss. Teams almost always lose road back-to-backs, and they were in Portland the night before. To keep it close within the final minute was a respectable outcome, and you could definitely see the fatigue on some of the older players on the roster.
Even with somewhat sloppy play, there were some nice moments from the game that are worth pointing out.
Coby White had a ridiculous line of 36 points, 7 assists, and no turnovers. Postgame, Billy Donovan credited White’s development to taking advantage of change of pace, and you could see it in the highlights that friend of the newsletter Ricky O’Donnell clipped together.
Zach LaVine was the other obvious big performer with 32 points on only 24 shots.
Wendell Carter Jr. has struggled a ton to start the season, but I thought this was one of his better games. He was only credited with four assists, yet he was creating a ton of high-value open 3-pointers for his teammates that they were missing. He also was dominant on the glass and forced a ton of missed layups by altering shots despite not recording any blocks.
Carter still looks extremely shaky offensively, but at least the passing is starting to come around.
Carter has also come under fire for his effectiveness in the Bulls’ drop defensive scheme. The criticism seems a little odd to me given that a huge swath of teams throughout the league use drop coverage as their base defense.
There are moments where the team’s drop defense looks bad, but that is true of every single coverage in the league. The NBA is a copycat league and if there was one “best” way to play defense, believe me that you would see it implemented by every team very quickly.
It’s also important to recognize that the Bulls’ base drop is not the only type of defense they play. They mix it up based on personnel. They’ve been switching or hedging with Thad Young in his minutes at center, and Carter also blitzed, showed, and dropped in this game depending on the situation.
Donovan also continued a fun wrinkle which I love about him. With the Kings coming out of a timeout, he completely foiled Kings coach Luke Walton’s drawn-up Spain (or Stack) pick-and-roll.
I had previously seen Donovan employing zone out of timeouts, and this was a more subtle adjustment that was harder for the Kings to immediately spot. They were forced into a contested midrange shot, which they missed.
I had two high school coaches point out to me that this is an extremely common strategy at that level, but for whatever reason NBA coaches don’t employ it more often. Why? I’m sure there’s a reason but I have no idea what it is.
One last thing: Big thanks to Adam Amin and Stacey King for the shout out on the broadcast. It gave me a brief respite from doom-scrolling through the news yesterday, and I’m thankful for that.
My stories are going to be totally free this year. Click the link above to subscribe if you’d like to be alerted when a new one comes out. You can also follow me for extra tidbits on Twitter.
If you liked this one, please consider donating. All one-off donations through Venmo at Stephen-Noh-1 are appreciated. Read for free, pay whatever you want! No donation is too small.
That's awesome getting a shout out from the broadcast crew. Well deserved. Great notes as always.