The Bulls’ Lonzo Ball, left, and Ayo Dosunmu, right, will be key players if the team hopes to improve its 3-point shooting.
AP
If the Bulls do better than expected this season, the personnel move that mattered most might have happened in the summer of 2023, when they hired shooting coach Peter Patton away from the Mavericks.
The Bulls have been extremely slow to embrace the successful NBA trend of heavy 3-point volume, but that may finally be happening. During preseason, the Bulls ranked second, behind Boston, in 3-point shots attempted at 47.8 per game.
They were fourth in 3-pointers made and 13th in 3-point percentage (.343). So there’s room to improve, but this is a significant change. The Bulls open the regular season Wednesday at New Orleans.
The 3-point trend has dominated the NBA since the Splash Brothers took off in Golden State. Heading into the 2014-15 season, the record for 3-point baskets in a season was 269 by Ray Allen. Steph Curry broke the mark that year, but as of 2015, no one had made 300 3-pointers in a single season. Curry made 402 in 2015-16, skipping past the 300s entirely.
Allen’s 269 now ranks 24th all-time, and long-range shooting has been a trait of successful NBA teams for roughly a decade.
Here’s where the Bulls ranked in 3-pointers made per game during the last six years: 27, 30, 29, 16, 14, 30. The one time they’ve been in the top 10 was 2017-18, the year they accidentally invented modern NBA offense with three bigs who could shoot — Lauri Markkanen, Bobby Portis, Nikola Mirotic. But that group was winning too much, so the Bulls blew things up to sustain the rebuild.
This year, coach Billy Donovan is heading into the season with a defined style: Fast-paced with lots of 3-point shooting. For the past three years, the Bulls’ style, if they even had one, was to keep games close and hope DeMar DeRozan could win it at the end.
That plan worked OK, but DeRozan is now in Sacramento. Donovan talked last week about turning to this strategy not because it’s worked for so many other NBA teams, but out of necessity.
“When you play against a team like Minnesota or Cleveland or even Milwaukee, that have huge size, if you’re going to sit down and play against those teams in the half court — with our (lack of) size — we’re just going to have a hard time generating offense,” Donovan said. “So we’ve got to collectively rebound, we’ve got to prevent fouling and we’ve got to be able to get out in transition and play in space.”
A skeptic might say, “I haven’t noticed the Bulls loading up on 3-point shooters.” No they did not. The two biggest additions this year, Josh Giddey and rookie Matas Buzelis, have no history of being accurate outside shooters.
This is where Patton comes in. His job title is director of player development, but his primary task is to develop 3-point shooters. Patton played basketball at DePaul in the 90s and was a three-sport standout at Loyola Academy before going into coaching. His first NBA job was for ex-Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau in Minnesota.
Preseason results were encouraging, with six regulars shooting above 40% on high volume. Ayo Dosunmu led the way at 61.5%, with Zach LaVine at 50%, Coby White and Lonzo Ball 45.5% and Julian Phillips 42.1%. Nikola Vucevic shot 44.4% on just two attempts per game. Patrick Williams was off-target in preseason, but he was the Bulls’ best 3-point shooters last year, so that’s another potential threat.
If any of this lasts into the regular season, the Bulls could have an interesting group. Between Giddey, White, Ball, Dosunmu and LaVine, they should always have multiple point guard-caliber ball handlers on the floor. Run the court, move the ball and hit some threes.
On the other hand, defense and rebounding could be major problems. And this is a weird year to begin with. The Bulls keep next year’s first-round pick only if it’s in the top 10. So there are both advantages to losing and young talent that needs to improve.
The Bulls appear to be in a no-win situation. That’s subject to change, but they’ll need to become competent at a playing style they’ve previously ignored.