A 26 minute, 34 second review of Jim Boylen

[MikeDC]

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[MrSparkle]

Yeah, I subscribe.

Top-3 WTF moments of the year for me (the affirmations that "yes, Jim is actually not mentally fit for an NBA head coaching job"):

1. Not calling timeout for Gafford's injury. What sane coach would not call timeout immediately after the Mavs scored?

2. Calling timeout as Sato/Arci scored that basket. It was in the middle of an attack.

3. The Toronto Super Bowl Sunday timeout. It came after he'd already been criticized for the stupid blowout timeouts. Was he trying to stick it to everybody? I think just about every timeout Jim ever called was dumb, but this one was icing on the cake since the Toronto announcer went off on it.

I really think that in-game, a NBA coach's 3 main tasks are basically calling timely timeouts, making timely substitutions, and motivating his guys. He literally failed all 3 with the above 3 examples, all revolving around timeouts.

The general WTFs:

1. Rotations and line-up combinations (esp. the first 2 months, good lord - the hockey swap Dunn-Arci-Coby-Thad-Kornet lineup).

2. Not admitting that the schemes were failing, and continuing to do the exact same thing for about 3 months.

3. Besides for a handful of games, genuinely the worst Bulls offense I think I've seen since the awful Floyd 99-02 days, and that was a slow-grind-iso period of ball. The DJ/Noah Bulls ran a smoother engine, along with 08 Jim Boylan team.

4. In general, I have not seen 1 good in-bounds play from Jim. They are way better off with Zach or Coby, even Arci or Lauri just free-lancing a play with the clock running.

I can not imagine this man in a playoff series. It would be a spectacle. I honestly can't even imagine what stupid thing he would think of to sabotage a game. Maybe he throws a curve-ball at us and reverts to 48 minutes per starter and insists he's worked his starters up all year to the challenge. Maybe he yells at Lauri again for scoring 35 , cause he worked the mid-range. Maybe he still thinks it's important to use his 12-man depth and has Arci and Shaq close the game?

[dougthonus]

Good video, but clearly not attempting to put in an unbiased view. Mentioning the mutiny without mentioning that later in the season, LaVine offered to pay Boylen's fine seems like a pretty big miss. The mutiny was caused by Boylen doing exactly what the Bulls wanted him to do (and someone needed to do) which was make them work hard again.

Also while mocking his offense, they don't really note that the Bulls generated mostly wide open 3s and shots at the basket, and their players were ridiculously bad at hitting wide open threes. That's actually a system that is doing what its supposed to do it with talent that isn't doing what it is supposed to do.

All that said, spot on with a lot of the complaints, and I'm certainly not carrying Boylen's torch on the whole.

[BeKuK]

".....one giant egg......." nailed it more than enything else!

[MikeDC]

Also while mocking his offense, they don't really note that the Bulls generated mostly wide open 3s and shots at the basket, and their players were ridiculously bad at hitting wide open threes. That's actually a system that is doing what its supposed to do it with talent that isn't doing what it is supposed to do.

This misses the point entirely. The whole point of a coach is to employ a system to make the best use of the talent. Boylen ran a system ill suited to his players. To add insult to injury, and pretty routinely threw them under the buss for losses. “They just didn’t shoot well.”

Ok, coach. At some point, maybe you should start tailoring the offense to create looks for players where they can make the shots, not where you wish they could make shots.

It really should be touched on more, because while it’s easy to fill up a long video of Boylen’s dumb actions, most folks will look at a number and not think too hard about it.

Boylen’s offense (and defense) is what you get when you have someone with a lot of faith in numbers but a shallow understanding of what they represent. When this happens, folks overly focus on numbers and lose sight of common sense and judgement. You’d see him get up there after losses and get all flustered and sincerely preach on how the numbers should work out. Shoot from here x number of times, get to the hoop y times, and you get victory! If we didn’t win, it’s because the guys didn’t shoot well and they need to try harder.

It’s crap, because the numbers he’s chasing are the results of a game where the opponent changes his behavior. So, duh, on average, 3 and rim is the way to go. But in any particular game, that doesn’t mean you should do what Boylen did and expect guys who can’t get to the rim to get to the rim, and just launch up whatever crap shot they can, but pass up open mid range looks. And some guys, sorry, just aren’t good shooters beyond a certain distance but are good shooters within that distance. Making no distinctions, and blindly playing to those numbers is the hallmark of Boylen’s methodology and the results were garbage.

[dougthonus]

This misses the point entirely. The whole point of a coach is to employ a system to make the best use of the talent. Boylen ran a system ill suited to his players. To add insult to injury, and pretty routinely threw them under the buss for losses. “They just didn’t shoot well.”

Ok, coach. At some point, maybe you should start tailoring the offense to create looks for players where they can make the shots, not where you wish they could make shots.

It really should be touched on more, because while it’s easy to fill up a long video of Boylen’s dumb actions, most folks will look at a number and not think too hard about it.

Boylen’s offense (and defense) is what you get when you have someone with a lot of faith in numbers but a shallow understanding of what they represent. When this happens, folks overly focus on numbers and lose sight of common sense and judgement. You’d see him get up there after losses and get all flustered and sincerely preach on how the numbers should work out. Shoot from here x number of times, get to the hoop y times, and you get victory! If we didn’t win, it’s because the guys didn’t shoot well and they need to try harder.

It’s crap, because the numbers he’s chasing are the results of a game where the opponent changes his behavior. So, duh, on average, 3 and rim is the way to go. But in any particular game, that doesn’t mean you should do what Boylen did and expect guys who can’t get to the rim to get to the rim, and just launch up whatever crap shot they can, but pass up open mid range looks. And some guys, sorry, just aren’t good shooters beyond a certain distance but are good shooters within that distance. Making no distinctions, and blindly playing to those numbers is the hallmark of Boylen’s methodology and the results were garbage.

The Bulls had a lot of shooters that regressed despite shooting tons of open threes (Lauri, Satoransky, Valentine, Kornet), I just don't blame that all on Boylen. I get that you do, because it appears your opinion on Boylen is so incredibly black and white, that you're willing to die on the "Lauri Markkanen shooting a wide open three is bad offense" hill rather than saying "You know what, Lauri really should have hit more of those shots".

[WindyCityBorn]

He sucks.

[samwana]

He sucks.

This.
I'll renew my ILP when he's gone..

Sent from my POT-LX1 using RealGM mobile app

[sco]

This misses the point entirely. The whole point of a coach is to employ a system to make the best use of the talent. Boylen ran a system ill suited to his players. To add insult to injury, and pretty routinely threw them under the buss for losses. “They just didn’t shoot well.”

Ok, coach. At some point, maybe you should start tailoring the offense to create looks for players where they can make the shots, not where you wish they could make shots.

It really should be touched on more, because while it’s easy to fill up a long video of Boylen’s dumb actions, most folks will look at a number and not think too hard about it.

Boylen’s offense (and defense) is what you get when you have someone with a lot of faith in numbers but a shallow understanding of what they represent. When this happens, folks overly focus on numbers and lose sight of common sense and judgement. You’d see him get up there after losses and get all flustered and sincerely preach on how the numbers should work out. Shoot from here x number of times, get to the hoop y times, and you get victory! If we didn’t win, it’s because the guys didn’t shoot well and they need to try harder.

It’s crap, because the numbers he’s chasing are the results of a game where the opponent changes his behavior. So, duh, on average, 3 and rim is the way to go. But in any particular game, that doesn’t mean you should do what Boylen did and expect guys who can’t get to the rim to get to the rim, and just launch up whatever crap shot they can, but pass up open mid range looks. And some guys, sorry, just aren’t good shooters beyond a certain distance but are good shooters within that distance. Making no distinctions, and blindly playing to those numbers is the hallmark of Boylen’s methodology and the results were garbage.

The Bulls had a lot of shooters that regressed despite shooting tons of open threes (Lauri, Satoransky, Valentine, Kornet), I just don't blame that all on Boylen. I get that you do, because it appears your opinion on Boylen is so incredibly black and white, that you're willing to die on the "Lauri Markkanen shooting a wide open three is bad offense" hill rather than saying "You know what, Lauri really should have hit more of those shots".

While Boylen exemplifies the difference between an assistant and a HC. His system, as demonstrated was way to simplistic to succeed. I do believe that guys' injuries over the past 2 seasons are swept under the rug as a reason we suck. Even losing one starter really messes with a team's success. How many games did our starters play together over the past 2 seasons? IMO, Lauri's shooting was, at least in part, due to him playing through injuries and never finding his rhythm, and Zach's ball hogging was in part due to him playing alongside 4 guys who couldn't buy a bucket.

I want to blame Boylen, but Pops wouldn't have done much more in terms of w/l's. I will also concede that I think many of our guys were playing smarter.

[MikeDC]

The Bulls had a lot of shooters that regressed despite shooting tons of open threes (Lauri, Satoransky, Valentine, Kornet), I just don't blame that all on Boylen. I get that you do, because it appears your opinion on Boylen is so incredibly black and white, that you're willing to die on the "Lauri Markkanen shooting a wide open three is bad offense" hill rather than saying "You know what, Lauri really should have hit more of those shots".

This is a stupid and bad faith sort of argument. It's a complicated world where more than one thing can be true. For example, it can be, and was true that Lauri was hurt and also shot poorly, while still also being the case that Boylen's offense was total ****. I wasn't discussing Lauri in particular because I think it's beyond obvious that he played poorly.

Even more to the point, what you are laying out as exculpatory of the offense is actually an indictment. Sure, one guy shoots worse and most of the blame falls on the guy. But you get into a situation where most of the team is demonstrably worse, it starts to become evidence that the system isn't putting them in the right situations.

It's funny, because you're sitting there and accusing me of making "black and white" arguments, but your point is based on a pretty superficial separation of the offense (it's so good, it generates all these open 3s!) and the players (they miraculously mostly took a big nose dive in their shooting!).

It's truly not actually a response to what was saying, because what I was pointing out is that there's an obvious relationship between the offensive system and the individual player shooting results. As I said,

The whole point of a coach is to employ a system to make the best use of the talent. Boylen ran a system ill suited to his players.

So, sure, some poor shooting is just attributable to poor shooting, injury, bad luck, the law of averages, etc, the overriding point is that it's not coincidental, and totally unexpected, or shocking that most everyone got worse at a time when the superficial numbers seem to indicate Boylen's genius was giving them the opportunity to shine. Which, I guess, is the "hill you're chosing to to die on". Or whatever.

The reality is a lot more complex than "the Bulls got more open shots". For one, there's more that goes into a shot being a good shot than simply the "distance from the nearest defender" stuff that the NBA stats tech can provide. And more importantly, in every offense, you want more good shots... having a wide open shot is good, of course, but reality is that quality of looks vary. So if you create 5% more open shots but it comes at the cost of making 50% of your more contested shots even worse looks, you are going to see lower percentages across the board.

Which, in fact, is exactly what happened, and why the Bulls offense was so terrible. It's easiest to see with guys like Thad and Sato (since they were healthy and switched teams... and less fan sentiment), sure, they got moderately more "open" looks, but the overall quality of their total looks went way down, and the percentages followed.

Simple truth. the field goal percentage and for any given shot type (even open 3s) is endogenous to the offense. In the Bulls case, the offense resulted in a small increase in open shots but also a big increase in difficult shots.

[dougthonus]

This is a stupid and bad faith sort of argument. It's a complicated world where more than one thing can be true. For example, it can be, and was true that Lauri was hurt and also shot poorly, while still also being the case that Boylen's offense was total ****. I wasn't discussing Lauri in particular because I think it's beyond obvious that he played poorly.

Even more to the point, what you are laying out as exculpatory of the offense is actually an indictment. Sure, one guy shoots worse and most of the blame falls on the guy. But you get into a situation where most of the team is demonstrably worse, it starts to become evidence that the system isn't putting them in the right situations.

It's funny, because you're sitting there and accusing me of making "black and white" arguments, but your point is based on a pretty superficial separation of the offense (it's so good, it generates all these open 3s!) and the players (they miraculously mostly took a big nose dive in their shooting!).

It's truly not actually a response to what was saying, because what I was pointing out is that there's an obvious relationship between the offensive system and the individual player shooting results. As I said,

You start out with saying this is a bad faith argument, while again, your point, appears to be, that every single thing about Boylen is god awful, there is nothing redeeming about anything he does, he's a complete imbecile. Is that not the case? I mean I'm not trying to paint you in that corner if that isn't actually your opinion, but that appears to me to be your opinion.

I agree that he's probably not head coaching material, but there are things he did that were good, and having an offense that generated lots of wide open threes for players that should be good at shooting threes is one of those things. Having an active defense was another one of those things. It's highly unlikely the guy is a basketball moron like you think he is, simply because you don't make it 20 years an assistant for a lot of top coaches by being a moron. It just doesn't pass the reasonability test.

And yes, there is a relationship between offensive system and player results. I would expect and think though that if you have an offense that generates wide open three point shots for your good shooters that overall, that's a pretty positive thing and prior to the season being played out, I would be very happy with a system that accomplishes that goal. I'm much more disappointed in our shooters for not making those shots.

Now if we were just shooting tons more threes, but they weren't open threes or they were all shot by Kris Dunn, then I'd totally agree with you, that this was a bad offense, but that really wasn't the case. Our good three point shooters were taking most of these shots and we were getting above average shot quality for guys who should be good at hitting them. There were probably lots of problems around that, as you mentioned Lauri being hurt at times, overall injuries up and down the lineup, a lack of creators to bail us out, but those things are also not really Boylen problems. The overall scheme generated good shots and is a positive.

Does that mean it was the best scheme and utilized the players the best? No. Could there have been adjustments to be better? Probably. However, it wasn't awful. It generated good shot types for the players you'd expect to hit those shots.

So, sure, some poor shooting is just attributable to poor shooting, injury, bad luck, the law of averages, etc, the overriding point is that it's not coincidental, and totally unexpected, or shocking that most everyone got worse at a time when the superficial numbers seem to indicate Boylen's genius was giving them the opportunity to shine. Which, I guess, is the "hill you're chosing to to die on". Or whatever.

I'm not dying on any hill with Boylen, because I haven't taken an extreme position that everything he does is awful no matter what. That appears to be your position. Again, correct me if I have mistaken your position, and you feel there is greater nuance there.

The reality is a lot more complex than "the Bulls got more open shots". For one, there's more that goes into a shot being a good shot than simply the "distance from the nearest defender" stuff that the NBA stats tech can provide. And more importantly, in every offense, you want more good shots... having a wide open shot is good, of course, but reality is that quality of looks vary. So if you create 5% more open shots but it comes at the cost of making 50% of your more contested shots even worse looks, you are going to see lower percentages across the board.

If Lauri Markkanen has a three point shot where the nearest defender is further than six feet away (definition of wide open by the metrics that call it wide open) then that's a shot I would want him to take and would view as a good outcome of the offense and one of the better shots that your offense can generate.

I don't know maybe, we just disagree on that point, it seems like you don't think that's a good shot as far as I can tell.

Which, in fact, is exactly what happened, and why the Bulls offense was so terrible. It's easiest to see with guys like Thad and Sato (since they were healthy and switched teams... and less fan sentiment), sure, they got moderately more "open" looks, but the overall quality of their total looks went way down, and the percentages followed.

Simple truth. the field goal percentage and for any given shot type (even open 3s) is endogenous to the offense. In the Bulls case, the offense resulted in a small increase in open shots but also a big increase in difficult shots.

What evidence do you have that they had an increase in difficult shots? I'm not saying this is false. I want to know why you think it is true? Are you saying that while the Bulls had an increase (these are made up numbers for example) of really good shots (say 30% wide open shots up from 25%) that this was accompanied by an increase in really bad shots (say tightly covered contested mid range 2s went from 20% to 30%) and that the middle shots were just less (from 55% to 40%) which caused an overall increase in shot difficulty?

Just trying to clarify what point you're making, and if you are making that point, is this backed up by something, or are you using the results of the offensive overall to assume your answer? My position is that the Bulls actually had reasonable shot quality based on what I can tell, but they did not finish those shots at the expected rate which is primarily a problem with talent not offensive scheme. Granted, as you point out, it's not always easy to measure shot quality. A shot at the rim that's a dunk is a lot different than one where you are diving to the side and shooting a high floater off the glass against a 7 foot rim defender with a guard on your back, and I'm not sure we really have access to all the data we need to make a determination around that while openness of jumpers is pretty black/white available.

In the end, I actually agree with a lot of your points, I'm not trying to make everything so contentious. I agree that Boylen should be let go for sure. I just think you significantly overstate your case (like when you say things like Boylen is a complete moron with nothing to offer, which so clearly isn't true given he's coached in the league on some elite staffs for 20 years and obviously know a heck of a lot about basketball even if he isn't head coaching material) that you actually detract from the merit of your valid points.

Some of the complaints from this video, like him working players too hard, are also silly to me. This was a hallmark of Tom Thibodeau's coaching style as an example, and I think if you asked most fans if they thought someone needed to come in and bring accountability and work ethic after Hoiberg that we would universally have said "yes, we need that".

Boylen has still failed, but some of that is also a larger failure of our GMs and players. That we have put together a team that mutinied over two hard practices is a larger problem than having two hard practices IMO. Boylen also clearly didn't establish a good relationship with his players and is out of touch, and a lot has gone wrong here. I don't think he's the right guy going forward, but some of the blame I just find over the top and overly absolve the players of problems they had that are very real.

This last year was a trainwreck all around, Boylen led it, but it wasn't all his fault. There's plenty of blame to go around, and a lot of that poor performance rests on the players to me, and there were things Boylen did to me that were clearly good but failed due to poor player performance.

Overall, I'd say he's a bottom 3rd coach in the league for sure and hope he is replaced though.

[MikeDC]

You start out with saying this is a bad faith argument, while again, your point, appears to be, that every single thing about Boylen is god awful, there is nothing redeeming about anything he does, he's a complete imbecile.

I didn't actually say this. I took issue with a particular thing and explained why. All that other baggage is stuff you're bringing. I'm sure Boylen and he has his good qualities, and I want him to be free to pursue a life of religious fulfillment. But none of that is really germane to the specific points I raised.

Just trying to clarify what point you're making, and if you are making that point, is this backed up by something, or are you using the results of the offensive overall to assume your answer?

That is the point, and it's backed up by detailed study of the stats (shot type, openness, etc), observation, and maybe most importantly, fitting it all into a coherent logical model of how basketball is played. To put that last part in simple terms, one has to make apples to apples statistical comparisons. When we say "Lauri took more open 3s", it needs to be in context of how many and what other kinds of shots does he get. This, turn, flows into a way to understand what we're actually seeing in game time.

To give an example, Lauri went from shooting 23.6% of his shots as "wide open 3s" last year to 29.9% this year. His shooting percentage fell from 43.2% to 37.9% on those shots. This seems to be the sort of evidence you're pointing to that "the offense" was doing good things and the player's just weren't following through with good shooting.

But let's think about these numbers a bit, before we even move on to anything else.
1. The shooting percentage fall really isn't a huge one. Falling from 43% to 38% is basically within a margin of error. You see similar variances over player's careers. Likewise, if you look at his FG% on "open" 3s, it was 27.1% last year and 29.5% this year. He actually shot better in that situation than last year. And... he shot more. Last year that was 15% of his shots, and this year it was 20.6% of his shots.
2. The increase in % of shots taken is actually not that huge either. Altogether, he went from shooting about 38.6% of his shots were open or wide open 3s to shooting about 50.5% of his shots in that category. It's a change, but not a dramatic improvement just judging by the base numbers.

And that is why, when you couple it with his 3 point shooting % not actually falling that much, these numbers don't really tell the story about Lauri.

The real story is about opportunity cost. What opportunities, on the basketball court, we given up in order to raise Lauri's percentage of open 3s from about 40% to about 50% of his shots?

To tell that, you have to look at the rest of his numbers, and also fit that into how he was asked to play. That starts to point out some obvious issues that call the numbers into question.

1. It becomes obvious that "more open 3s" is actually kind of misleading. While it's true that a higher percentage of Lauri's shots were open 3s, this came at a cost of having him take fewer overall shots. The percentage increased because the denominator decreased! He went from taking nearly 23 shots per 100 possessions to taking 19.

2. Further, the 2 point looks fell, and the quality of those looks also fell because This is pretty easy to link to actually watching the games, because his positioning and movement on the court was often not anywhere close to the basket. Asking Lauri to "make a play" and score from the elbow is a reasonable opportunity. Asking him to start at the 3 point line and beat a defense just isn't.

As a result, while Lauri saw a moderate increase his productivity as a 3 point shooter, this came at the cost of a lot of productivity as an all around scorer. If you walk through his 2 point shooting percentages, this is actually born out. His shooting percentages actually went up in the 2-4, 4-6 and 6+ categories... he just shot less of these shots, because he was ordered to not take them unless they were blatantly good looks. Again this is basically just changing the denominator. He changed his shot selection because the coach demanded it, but the coach demanded that he go away from shots he was effective in taking.

The bottom line is that Lauri's shooting ability didn't change that much. What changed is that he was taken out of positions that were relatively good shots for him and put into positions that were relatively lower percentage shots. And, at the margin, this wasn't just a one for one replacement, some of the good shots were replaced with someone else taking the shot. So a reasonable Lauri mid-range shot in 18-19 became a hopeless Sato foray into the paint or yet another Zach hero-ball heave in 19-20.

My position is that the Bulls actually had reasonable shot quality based on what I can tell, but they did not finish those shots at the expected rate which is primarily a problem with talent not offensive scheme. Granted, as you point out, it's not always easy to measure shot quality. A shot at the rim that's a dunk is a lot different than one where you are diving to the side and shooting a high floater off the glass against a 7 foot rim defender with a guard on your back, and I'm not sure we really have access to all the data we need to make a determination around that while openness of jumpers is pretty black/white available.

I mean... just watch Sato play. He's a guy that doesn't have much in the way of hops. This is why he's judicious (being polite) with his shooting. Last year with the Wizards, he shot 11.2% of his shots with tight (0-2 ft) defense and made 51.7% of them. With the Bulls, his number of tight defense shots fell to 7.2% of his total, but he shot only 28.2% on this shots.

The superficial story is "Hey, Sato got more open looks. The offense works!". What I'm pointing out is that when you add in the other stats, like the fact that his shooting in these situations fell apart, the more likely story in the stats is that the quality of opportunity fell dramatically. In that 11.2% number, it's very likely (since the % was high) that there were some good looks mixed in with the bad ones. That's a functional offense for you.

In that 7.2% number, with the trash 28.2% eFG, that's more likely a sign of a non-functional offense where, following your example, the guy is shooting that shot because he's got no other choice.

If you comb through the Bulls numbers, the shot charts are littered with these kinds of examples. As I said, look at Sato's and look at Young's. Even Lauri's is consistent with this story. The tell a clear story of a team playing to the numbers instead of actually generating good looks.

This is consistent with observations (that have come from countless folks) of the Bulls passing up open shots because they weren't the type of open shots Boylen wanted, of him criticizing guys, and of him placing guys on the court in positions where they had limited options (especially based on their talents).

Which is the source of the disconnect. Boylen, and you, are pointing to these numbers as a source of success without understanding how they're also one of the sources of the team's failure.

This was a hallmark of Tom Thibodeau's coaching style as an example

This is a terrible example and equating the "coaching style" of these guys seems to be pretty silly. A mouse and and elephant both have four legs and hair. This doesn't mean you should use a mouse as an example of an elephant.

I'm not trying to make everything so contentious. I agree that Boylen should be let go for sure. I just think you significantly overstate your case (like when you say things like Boylen is a complete moron with nothing to offer, which so clearly isn't true given he's coached in the league on some elite staffs for 20 years and obviously know a heck of a lot about basketball even if he isn't head coaching material) that you actually detract from the merit of your valid points.

To you. I would say in response, if you want to stop making everything so contentious, stop being so contentious. Look at the forest instead of the trees. If you acknowledge that the forest sucks, arguing about one particular tree being a nice, shining example of a tree seems kind of pointless.

To put it another way there's really no point in talking about whether Boylen "knows a heck of a lot about basketball" because it's a given that anyone who's going to be an NBA coach (or even a college coach) is going to fit that description. And yet, no other NBA coach in recent memory (and few if any college coaches, if you want to go back to Boylen's time at Utah, which I do) has done and said so many buffoonish things.

[dougthonus]

..

I appreciate the thoughtfulness and research of your reply overall, even though I still disagree with some of the things you think. As I said, I think those disagreements are around the margins and not really worth discussing further about as I doubt we'll close the gap between our view points and arguing in depth about the 10% of things we disagree with rather than the 90% of the things we agree on makes it sound like we're further apart than we really are.

[PaKii94]

You start out with saying this is a bad faith argument, while again, your point, appears to be, that every single thing about Boylen is god awful, there is nothing redeeming about anything he does, he's a complete imbecile.

I didn't actually say this. I took issue with a particular thing and explained why. All that other baggage is stuff you're bringing. I'm sure Boylen and he has his good qualities, and I want him to be free to pursue a life of religious fulfillment. But none of that is really germane to the specific points I raised.

Just trying to clarify what point you're making, and if you are making that point, is this backed up by something, or are you using the results of the offensive overall to assume your answer?

That is the point, and it's backed up by detailed study of the stats (shot type, openness, etc), observation, and maybe most importantly, fitting it all into a coherent logical model of how basketball is played. To put that last part in simple terms, one has to make apples to apples statistical comparisons. When we say "Lauri took more open 3s", it needs to be in context of how many and what other kinds of shots does he get. This, turn, flows into a way to understand what we're actually seeing in game time.

To give an example, Lauri went from shooting 23.6% of his shots as "wide open 3s" last year to 29.9% this year. His shooting percentage fell from 43.2% to 37.9% on those shots. This seems to be the sort of evidence you're pointing to that "the offense" was doing good things and the player's just weren't following through with good shooting.

But let's think about these numbers a bit, before we even move on to anything else.
1. The shooting percentage fall really isn't a huge one. Falling from 43% to 38% is basically within a margin of error. You see similar variances over player's careers. Likewise, if you look at his FG% on "open" 3s, it was 27.1% last year and 29.5% this year. He actually shot better in that situation than last year. And... he shot more. Last year that was 15% of his shots, and this year it was 20.6% of his shots.
2. The increase in % of shots taken is actually not that huge either. Altogether, he went from shooting about 38.6% of his shots were open or wide open 3s to shooting about 50.5% of his shots in that category. It's a change, but not a dramatic improvement just judging by the base numbers.

And that is why, when you couple it with his 3 point shooting % not actually falling that much, these numbers don't really tell the story about Lauri.

The real story is about opportunity cost. What opportunities, on the basketball court, we given up in order to raise Lauri's percentage of open 3s from about 40% to about 50% of his shots?

To tell that, you have to look at the rest of his numbers, and also fit that into how he was asked to play. That starts to point out some obvious issues that call the numbers into question.

1. It becomes obvious that "more open 3s" is actually kind of misleading. While it's true that a higher percentage of Lauri's shots were open 3s, this came at a cost of having him take fewer overall shots. The percentage increased because the denominator decreased! He went from taking nearly 23 shots per 100 possessions to taking 19.

2. Further, the 2 point looks fell, and the quality of those looks also fell because This is pretty easy to link to actually watching the games, because his positioning and movement on the court was often not anywhere close to the basket. Asking Lauri to "make a play" and score from the elbow is a reasonable opportunity. Asking him to start at the 3 point line and beat a defense just isn't.

As a result, while Lauri saw a moderate increase his productivity as a 3 point shooter, this came at the cost of a lot of productivity as an all around scorer. If you walk through his 2 point shooting percentages, this is actually born out. His shooting percentages actually went up in the 2-4, 4-6 and 6+ categories... he just shot less of these shots, because he was ordered to not take them unless they were blatantly good looks. Again this is basically just changing the denominator. He changed his shot selection because the coach demanded it, but the coach demanded that he go away from shots he was effective in taking.

The bottom line is that Lauri's shooting ability didn't change that much. What changed is that he was taken out of positions that were relatively good shots for him and put into positions that were relatively lower percentage shots. And, at the margin, this wasn't just a one for one replacement, some of the good shots were replaced with someone else taking the shot. So a reasonable Lauri mid-range shot in 18-19 became a hopeless Sato foray into the paint or yet another Zach hero-ball heave in 19-20.

My position is that the Bulls actually had reasonable shot quality based on what I can tell, but they did not finish those shots at the expected rate which is primarily a problem with talent not offensive scheme. Granted, as you point out, it's not always easy to measure shot quality. A shot at the rim that's a dunk is a lot different than one where you are diving to the side and shooting a high floater off the glass against a 7 foot rim defender with a guard on your back, and I'm not sure we really have access to all the data we need to make a determination around that while openness of jumpers is pretty black/white available.

I mean... just watch Sato play. He's a guy that doesn't have much in the way of hops. This is why he's judicious (being polite) with his shooting. Last year with the Wizards, he shot 11.2% of his shots with tight (0-2 ft) defense and made 51.7% of them. With the Bulls, his number of tight defense shots fell to 7.2% of his total, but he shot only 28.2% on this shots.

The superficial story is "Hey, Sato got more open looks. The offense works!". What I'm pointing out is that when you add in the other stats, like the fact that his shooting in these situations fell apart, the more likely story in the stats is that the quality of opportunity fell dramatically. In that 11.2% number, it's very likely (since the % was high) that there were some good looks mixed in with the bad ones. That's a functional offense for you.

In that 7.2% number, with the trash 28.2% eFG, that's more likely a sign of a non-functional offense where, following your example, the guy is shooting that shot because he's got no other choice.

If you comb through the Bulls numbers, the shot charts are littered with these kinds of examples. As I said, look at Sato's and look at Young's. Even Lauri's is consistent with this story. The tell a clear story of a team playing to the numbers instead of actually generating good looks.

This is consistent with observations (that have come from countless folks) of the Bulls passing up open shots because they weren't the type of open shots Boylen wanted, of him criticizing guys, and of him placing guys on the court in positions where they had limited options (especially based on their talents).

Which is the source of the disconnect. Boylen, and you, are pointing to these numbers as a source of success without understanding how they're also one of the sources of the team's failure.

This was a hallmark of Tom Thibodeau's coaching style as an example

This is a terrible example and equating the "coaching style" of these guys seems to be pretty silly. A mouse and and elephant both have four legs and hair. This doesn't mean you should use a mouse as an example of an elephant.

I'm not trying to make everything so contentious. I agree that Boylen should be let go for sure. I just think you significantly overstate your case (like when you say things like Boylen is a complete moron with nothing to offer, which so clearly isn't true given he's coached in the league on some elite staffs for 20 years and obviously know a heck of a lot about basketball even if he isn't head coaching material) that you actually detract from the merit of your valid points.

To you. I would say in response, if you want to stop making everything so contentious, stop being so contentious. Look at the forest instead of the trees. If you acknowledge that the forest sucks, arguing about one particular tree being a nice, shining example of a tree seems kind of pointless.

To put it another way there's really no point in talking about whether Boylen "knows a heck of a lot about basketball" because it's a given that anyone who's going to be an NBA coach (or even a college coach) is going to fit that description. And yet, no other NBA coach in recent memory (and few if any college coaches, if you want to go back to Boylen's time at Utah, which I do) has done and said so many buffoonish things.

I'm gonna make a thread seperately about the offense eventually. The most simplified basics (3s and layups) isn't bad in theory but it requires a specific set of players to run it. The bulls as setup last year were too young and too unbalanced to run it and that's where I fault Boylen. A good HC caters his system to the personnel (Thib's/Pop) .

On average I think most of the players had like a 4% dip in efficiency compared to last year regardless of the open shots they were taking.

[MikeDC]

I'm gonna make a thread seperately about the offense eventually. The most simplified basics (3s and layups) isn't bad in theory but it requires a specific set of players to run it. The bulls as setup last year were too young and too unbalanced to run it and that's where I fault Boylen. A good HC caters his system to the personnel (Thib's/Pop) .

On average I think most of the players had like a 4% dip in efficiency compared to last year regardless of the open shots they were taking.

That sounds about right. It’s a hard thing to describe because there are so many different factors at play, but I think of basketball offense in game theory terms. A criticism I have of the 3 and layup offense as an idea is that it confuses the results with the actions.

It’s axiomatic that the best shots are layups and 3s. But that’s the result in the same way that if play rock-paper-scissors 100 times, you will see that rock, paper, and scissors each win about 33% of the time.

With basketball it’s a little more complicated, but if you follow the analogy, you can imagine “rim”, “middle”, and “3” as something like rock, paper and scissors. Unlike Rock Paper Scissors, if you play basketball over and over, you find that (with some exceptions) 3 and Rim are more dominant than middle. Instead of 33% for each, it might be something Rim 45%, 3 35% and middle 20%.

But, this doesn’t mean that you abandon the mid range any more than it means if you’re playing rock, paper, scissors, the fact that rock and paper wins 66.67% of the time means you should totally cut out scissors from your strategy. It’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of what the numbers represent.

And that’s a simplified example. On top of that basic template, you’ve got, as you say, the fact that your players have different strengths and weaknesses and your opponent’s defense has different strengths and weaknesses.

In that context, unless the three and rim strategy is the true strength of your players, it’s almost a self imposed penalty when played to the way the Bulls played it.

As a final note, I’d really love to hear Fleming’s unvarnished take on the Bulls. This was his offensive concept in Brooklyn, but with a set of players it suited pretty well (Russell, Dinwiddie, Levert, Collins). It still wasn’t a great offense or a great team though, and I wonder how much of the failure of the system with the Bulls was recognized. Did he recognize it? Or was he pushing to keep Ignoring the elephant in the room too?

[PaKii94]

I'm gonna make a thread seperately about the offense eventually. The most simplified basics (3s and layups) isn't bad in theory but it requires a specific set of players to run it. The bulls as setup last year were too young and too unbalanced to run it and that's where I fault Boylen. A good HC caters his system to the personnel (Thib's/Pop) .

On average I think most of the players had like a 4% dip in efficiency compared to last year regardless of the open shots they were taking.

That sounds about right. It’s a hard thing to describe because there are so many different factors at play, but I think of basketball offense in game theory terms. A criticism I have of the 3 and layup offense as an idea is that it confuses the results with the actions.

It’s axiomatic that the best shots are layups and 3s. But that’s the result in the same way that if play rock-paper-scissors 100 times, you will see that rock, paper, and scissors each win about 33% of the time.

With basketball it’s a little more complicated, but if you follow the analogy, you can imagine “rim”, “middle”, and “3” as something like rock, paper and scissors. Unlike Rock Paper Scissors, if you play basketball over and over, you find that (with some exceptions) 3 and Rim are more dominant than middle. Instead of 33% for each, it might be something Rim 45%, 3 35% and middle 20%.

But, this doesn’t mean that you abandon the mid range any more than it means if you’re playing rock, paper, scissors, the fact that rock and paper wins 66.67% of the time means you should totally cut out scissors from your strategy. It’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of what the numbers represent.

And that’s a simplified example. On top of that basic template, you’ve got, as you say, the fact that your players have different strengths and weaknesses and your opponent’s defense has different strengths and weaknesses.

In that context, unless the three and rim strategy is the true strength of your players, it’s almost a self imposed penalty when played to the way the Bulls played it.

As a final note, I’d really love to hear Fleming’s unvarnished take on the Bulls. This was his offensive concept in Brooklyn, but with a set of players it suited pretty well (Russell, Dinwiddie, Levert, Collins). It still wasn’t a great offense or a great team though, and I wonder how much of the failure of the system with the Bulls was recognized. Did he recognize it? Or was he pushing to keep Ignoring the elephant in the room too?

There were some quotes out there at the end of the season that Boylen was pretty much a puppet for the FO and their directives were listen to the analytics department. The undermanned analytics department told him "3s and layups GOOD!" And that's what he went with. Apparently Flemming checked out early on and didn't bother to give input (he thought it was a useless cause). Lemme find those quotes.

At the beginning of the season I thought it was going to be the nets/Fleming offense so I was putting Zach at fault but rewatching the games it's easy to see it was a broken system even when Zach wasn't dominating the ball (and that's when zach's numbers/efficiency were down earlier on before he started hogging the ball)

Here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1963650#p82998225

[MikeDC]

I'm gonna make a thread seperately about the offense eventually. The most simplified basics (3s and layups) isn't bad in theory but it requires a specific set of players to run it. The bulls as setup last year were too young and too unbalanced to run it and that's where I fault Boylen. A good HC caters his system to the personnel (Thib's/Pop) .

On average I think most of the players had like a 4% dip in efficiency compared to last year regardless of the open shots they were taking.

That sounds about right. It’s a hard thing to describe because there are so many different factors at play, but I think of basketball offense in game theory terms. A criticism I have of the 3 and layup offense as an idea is that it confuses the results with the actions.

It’s axiomatic that the best shots are layups and 3s. But that’s the result in the same way that if play rock-paper-scissors 100 times, you will see that rock, paper, and scissors each win about 33% of the time.

With basketball it’s a little more complicated, but if you follow the analogy, you can imagine “rim”, “middle”, and “3” as something like rock, paper and scissors. Unlike Rock Paper Scissors, if you play basketball over and over, you find that (with some exceptions) 3 and Rim are more dominant than middle. Instead of 33% for each, it might be something Rim 45%, 3 35% and middle 20%.

But, this doesn’t mean that you abandon the mid range any more than it means if you’re playing rock, paper, scissors, the fact that rock and paper wins 66.67% of the time means you should totally cut out scissors from your strategy. It’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of what the numbers represent.

And that’s a simplified example. On top of that basic template, you’ve got, as you say, the fact that your players have different strengths and weaknesses and your opponent’s defense has different strengths and weaknesses.

In that context, unless the three and rim strategy is the true strength of your players, it’s almost a self imposed penalty when played to the way the Bulls played it.

As a final note, I’d really love to hear Fleming’s unvarnished take on the Bulls. This was his offensive concept in Brooklyn, but with a set of players it suited pretty well (Russell, Dinwiddie, Levert, Collins). It still wasn’t a great offense or a great team though, and I wonder how much of the failure of the system with the Bulls was recognized. Did he recognize it? Or was he pushing to keep Ignoring the elephant in the room too?

There were some quotes out there at the end of the season that Boylen was pretty much a puppet for the FO and their directives were listen to the analytics department. The undermanned analytics department told him "3s and layups GOOD!" And that's what he went with. Apparently Flemming checked out early on and didn't bother to give input (he thought it was a useless cause). Lemme find those quotes.

At the beginning of the season I thought it was going to be the nets/Fleming offense so I was putting Zach at fault but rewatching the games it's easy to see it was a broken system even when Zach wasn't dominating the ball (and that's when zach's numbers/efficiency were down earlier on before he started hogging the ball)

Here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1963650#p82998225

Yikes... what terrible picture that paints of lots of guys, but especially Boylen and Reinsdorf. For guys who are "not morons" they sure do a lot of moronic things.

[TheStig]

I imagine watching a 26:34 min review of Boylen's coaching is what hell must be like.........

[samwana]

I imagine watching a 26:34 min review of Boylen's coaching is what hell must be like.........

It's actually enjoyable..

Sent from my POT-LX1 using RealGM mobile app

[HearshotKDS]

Boylen isn't an NBA head coach, that much has been pretty obvious to anyone masochistic enough to watch these games over the last year and change. I'm not sold all of the problems in the video are 100% his fault although he definitely played a large role in them. Ultimately though it's tough to get worked up about it anymore. Boylens clearly on his first & last NBA head coaching job, he gives off the same stench of "lame duck" that Hoiberg had before Boylen replaced him. Just another bust of a coach for the pile.

With that said - the Bulls have a roster that would make Popovich retire. The team's biggest flaw in my mind is roster construction, and Boylen big dumb egg head had little to nothing to do with that. Boylen will be gone, it might not be now, it might not be for the remainder of the covid season, but he will be gone before 2022 and all of his bull headed idiocies will be gone with him. However that dang roster problem is going to be a lot harder to fix.