If the 2015 NBA Playoffs have told us anything about the league’s head coaches, they’ve generally affirmed the conventional wisdom on a number of fronts.
Doc Rivers: elite.
David Blatt, as Crossover Chronicles writer Joseph Nardone explained, is reaffirming all the wrong public perceptions at the moment.
Tom Thibodeau of the Chicago Bulls? His level of quality remains as hard to pin down as it ever has been. Though widely acknowledged as a superb defensive coach, the continued failure of the Bulls to turn the corner in the postseason casts a cloud over Thibodeau’s career.
The more specific problem for Thibs is that while Sunday’s bitter and damaging Game 4 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers might not rest primarily on his shoulders, the achingly depressing familiarity of the defeat — combined with one glaring tactical misstep — gives management ample reason to say, “Here! Here is why we don’t think Tom is the right man to lead the franchise into the future!”
It might not be fair. It might not square with the fullness of the situation in Chicago. However, it’s very easy to see and understand.
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The Bulls’ Game 4 loss is a brutal one simply because of the circumstances in which it occurred. Cleveland is rapidly losing strength, because its players continue to be physically hampered. Kevin Love is, of course, out. Kyrie Irving has no lift on his jumper. Iman Shumpert is clearly not playing at full strength. The Bulls didn’t just need to win Game 4 to keep home-court advantage; they needed to win because Cleveland was ravaged by injuries and various diminishments. Losing an 11-point lead in the final 13 minutes of play is bad enough in itself; losing that lead at home to a shorthanded and hurting opponent is what will be particularly tough to swallow if the Bulls don’t regroup to win this series.
If Thibodeau can claim a virtue other than being able to teach defense, it’s that playing the Bulls in the postseason is almost always difficult. It’s a pain — literally as well as figuratively — to play Chicago in May. Opponents are always made to work hard against the Bulls. That’s a rich compliment toward Thibs and the way he gets his guys to compete.
The problem in Chicago — one which has persisted throughout the Thibs era — is that while the Bulls regularly compete well, meaning that they always fight and persevere, they don’t regularly perform well. Precise execution, accurate shooting, generally effective late-game offense — these things continue to elude the Bulls in the playoffs under Thibs. Management might not have surrounded Thibodeau with the right pieces, but when the same thing happens over and over again, it becomes situationally and psychologically justifiable for an organization to part with its coach.
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The most central point to make about Game 4 on Sunday is that for the first time since the 2011 playoffs, the Bulls had a reasonably healthy Derrick Rose. They were able to put their superstar on the floor in the second round of the playoffs for the first time in four years. Given this reality, the Bulls had a reason to expect that they could return to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since that 2011 season. Making and then winning the East Finals this year would enable Thibodeau to say to his critics — especially those in the Bulls’ front office — “See? Healthy Derrick Rose, deep playoff run. This isn’t complicated. I can put the pieces together when I have my superstar in fairly good physical condition.”
Yet, just when the Bulls seemed ready to take a 3-1 lead over the Cavaliers, the ghosts of 2011 — ghosts of LeBron James and nightmare fourth quarters — resurfaced in ways that have Windy City sports fans thanking the good Lord for Patrick Kane and the Blackhawks.
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Let’s go back to the 2011 Eastern Conference Finals. The Bulls, down 2-1 to the Miami Heat, carried a lead into the fourth quarter of Game 4 in South Florida.
They scored 17 fourth-quarter points, only five in the final 4:09 on one made field goal. The Heat tied the Bulls, sent the game into overtime at 85-85, and won by a 101-93 score to take a 3-1 lead. With Keith Bogans as the starting shooting guard, and with Kyle Korver unable to get free against the Heat’s defense, the Bulls lacked the perimeter shooting they needed to help Rose. The offense withered, and a golden opportunity slipped away.
In Game 5 of that series, the Bulls led, 76-64, with 3:40 left. Then they got sloppy. Turnovers entered the picture. Jumpers regularly missed the mark. Chicago scored just four points in that stretch of 3:40, while LeBron James and Dwyane Wade found a brilliant finishing kick after 44 stagnant minutes. Chicago once again scored under 20 points in a fourth quarter of a playoff game it had led by multiple possessions. Miami outscored Chicago by a 19-4 count in the final 3:40 to steal that game, 83-80.
Four years later — with Rose finally healthy again — nothing has changed… except for the identities of the players who failed to make shots against a vulnerable and injury-bitten foe.
Nikola Mirotic went 1 for 9 from the field.
Mike Dunleavy: 1 for 7.
Taj Gibson: 2 for 7.
Joakim Noah, normally a very smart player, kept insisting on shooting contested shots — 12 shots are far too many for him unless they’re uncontested. Of the five or six uncontested shots Noah attempted, though, he missed a few, including a pure bunny late in the fourth quarter. Chicago could have used that made layup. Instead, a very familiar scenario unfolded in a United Center where Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen simply didn’t allow fourth-quarter leads to slip away in the 1990s.
In addition to the dose of devastating deja vu — courtesy of errant jump shooting and untimely turnovers — Thibodeau committed an appalling tactical gaffe, but one that will go unremarked upon due to other events which followed.
The Bulls pulled within two points, at 84-82, on a Jimmy Butler three with 27 seconds left. Given a three-second differential between shot clock and game clock, Chicago had to foul. Yet, after Cleveland called a (dubious and generally unwise) timeout to give Chicago a chance to steal an inbound pass, the Bulls failed to foul. Chicago ultimately wasted 13 seconds in a situation which demanded an instant foul. The Bulls got incredibly lucky that LeBron James lost focus and committed a legitimate offensive foul when trapped with 14 seconds to go. Chicago tied the score, proving that good results can flow from bad decisions and a generally deficient thought process.
(Some will criticize the failure to double LeBron on the game’s final play, but Jimmy Butler has done a very good job of containing LeBron in this series. That’s more on the player than the coach. Butler surprisingly lost track of LeBron to the extent that King James was not only able to get the ball, but turn and face the basket with a free shooting hand, moving laterally instead of backwards. That’s not on Thibodeau. The failure to foul, however, is.)
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When the Bulls lost Games 4 and 5 to LeBron and the Heat in 2011, it was easy to say that the Bulls were just getting started. They were beginning to understand what it took to play winning playoff basketball with Derrick Rose. The last three seasons robbed Rose, the Bulls, and Thibodeau of a healthy superstar presence which was supposed to have been the main engine in the drive for an NBA title. This year, Rose somehow managed to enter another playoff series against LeBron in decent shape, enough to give the Bulls hope that they could write a story very different from 2011.
Yet, in Game 4, all the demons created in those Eastern Conference Finals four years ago against the Heat came raging back to the forefront of the public memory.
Tom Thibodeau might be a luckless coach, given the lack of a healthy Derrick Rose for three playoff runs. He also might have a flawed supporting cast which continues to fail to hit fourth-quarter shots. Yet, coaching is a story of improvement — if you generate it from your players, you justify an extended tenure. If you fail to do so, management gets the easy out… and can logically pursue someone such as Fred Hoiberg to run the organization in the future.
Management has probably already made up its mind about Tom Thibodeau in Chicago. It might be too late for Thibs to save his job. With that having been said, the Bulls can still save their coach’s legacy if they can come back to win this series.
The problem is that when you continue to fail in fourth quarters of pivotal games midway through best-of-seven playoff series — and the manner of failure remains conspicuously recognizable — it’s hard to move forward with the confidence needed to prevail.
Such is life for the Bulls and Chicago sports fans on a numbingly depressing Monday morning.
