Defense wins championships, but both teams play defense. Korver requires a defender, Bogans doesn’t. Korver won’t shut down Joe Johnson, dwade, or Ray Allen, but neither will Bogans. Superstars are going to score on anybody. The question is whether the Bulls can put together a unit that can outscore the other team through offense and defense. And the starters have shown through 7 games that they are a poor offensive unit.

Two person +/- comparisons are flawed in some ways, but can be very informative. For another stat backing up the argument, look at the 5 man units from Basketball Value.

http://basketballvalue.com/teamunits.php?year=2011%20playoffs&team=CHI&sortnumber=3&sortorder=DESC

Two units have played more than 16 minutes during the playoffs for the Bulls. Rose-Bogans-Deng-Boozer-Noah at 102 minutes and Rose-Korver-Deng-Boozer-Noah at 61 minutes. The starting unit is +3.1 and the Korver unit is +24.5. The starting unit has an off rtg of 97.3 and a def rtg of 94.2. The Korver unit has an off rtg of 128.6 and a def rtg of 104.6. That’s 30% more points scored per possession when he is on the court, for 10% more points allowed.

The goal of basketball isn’t to stop your opponent from scoring, it is to end up with the most points. Thibodeau may be too obsessed with defensive stops and not concerned enough with offensive execution.

As Matt said, if they are sagging off Bogans to limit the effectiveness of Boozer and Rose, the opposing defense has a much easier time of making the Bulls a bad jump-shooting team.

Second, Since they wont juggle the lineup…they need to work on spacing in a different way(without Korver)…Boozer and Rose need to work the pick and roll at the free throw line…looks like that will get Boozer a lot of easy attempts. By pulling Boozer to the top of the key that will draw open the paint for either Rose or Noah…and Boozer can make that top of the key shot efficiently.

It is not surprising that when Noah or Boozer played with Thomas–they were both more efficient offensively. Thomas played that top of the key area like the veteran he is. They need Boozer to get out of the blocks, since he is being doubled and tripled…and get to the top of the key to open up the paint. Boozer has a better chance of drawing his defender up there as opposed to Noah right now. Drawing the defenders away from Noah will open up his post play…Noah can punish this team and has shown the offense in the post to do it.

Rose has to recognize who is most efficient offensively right now…Deng in the wing–either with the 10 foot bank shot or driving the lane, Noah in the post and Boozer with the pick and roll at the free throw line. Rose has to go to his strengths against this defense…pull up jump shots 8-10 feet away–off picks…until they can get more spacing in the paint for him to drive successfully. He needs to back off the quick 3pt shot and run the offense…I would like to not see more than 3-4 3pt attempts by Rose till he finds his rhythm.

If anything, I think you should put Taj in there at the beginning of the game and have Boozer come in with Korver with the second unit. Run your offense with Rose and Deng to begin the game, then with 3 minutes remaining in the first run out a line up of Rose, Korver, Deng, Booz, Asik. Deng can D up JJ, Rose on Crawford, and run your offense between Rose, Kyle, and Booz.

considering how these playoffs have been shaping up for CHI, you’d think Korver is the guy they need to see more of.