The Bernstein Brief: Interesting Bulls Not What We Thought
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Well, this is weird. Here we were all ready to see Fred Hoiberg's signature on a revamped Bulls roster, enjoying the wide-open offense and hoping against hope that they could outscore opponents racing right by them on the other end, but it turns out we have something else entirely in an 8-4 start.
After all the talk about playing with pace, the Bulls are 22nd out of 30 NBA teams in that category, with just 97.62 possessions per 48 minutes. They aren't doing that.
What they are doing is hustling and guarding people, solidly a top-third defensive team in the league so far.
The Bulls are ninth in defensive rating (opponent points per 100 possessions) at 101, 10th in opponent field goal percentage at 44.1, 10th in contested two-point shots at 44.5 percent and an impressive sixth in opponent points per game at 97.8.
They're also tied for second in the NBA in loose balls recovered per game at 5.1, one measure of how hard they have been playing.
It's way too early to draw sweeping conclusions about what's going on, but it's already clear that this departure from expectations merits further attention.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
