Bulls Hit: vs Utah 3/19

Bulls 95 Jazz 86

So the Bulls beat the Jazz, a team that is better than the Bulls in almost every conceivable way. They, however, were hindered by injuries to Rodney Hood and Derrick Favors. In a previous post I introduced the Will Ferrell in Old School win, in which a bumbling doofus experiences an out-of-body experience to achieve victory. The Bulls have had their fair share of those over the years.

The other movie analogy victory I’ve introduced is the Seth Rogen in Knocked Up win, where a bumbling doofus manages to take home a tall, gorgeous blonde only because she was drunk.

This game was another type of win: one where the Bulls actually played a valiant game with tight defense. It took guts— they were on the ropes. They looked done for. The fact that the Jazz were sitting two of their regular starters shouldn’t be held against the Bulls. It was a victory, but everything here should be taken with a grain of salt.

So let me introduce the newest entry to the Movie Analogy Victory Index. The win last night was a Bruce and Harriet Nyborg victory.

Don’t know the reference? Damn, well, you should stop reading this article and go see Glengarry Glen Ross. Never heard of it? Let me guess: you’re either in high school or you think Space Jam is the greatest movie about basketball. In other words, you’re either young or uninformed.

(Just kidding. Mostly — Space Jam is overrated.)

Anyway, Glengarry Glen Ross is a movie that’s mostly remembered for its cast that’s pretty much the Hollywood equivalent of the Golden State Warriors: Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, Jack Lemmon, and Alec Baldwin. It’s also remembered for its frequent use of F-words, C-words, and words beginning with C and ending with “-ocksucker.”

The plot revolves around a cadre real estate salesmen who have 24 hours to sell a bunch of land. At the end of 24 hours, the two salesmen who sell the least amount of land will be fired. Here’s the most famous scene from the movie, which sets the plot up nicely. It also features career-performances from Alec Baldwin and his brass testicles:

The four salesmen (Lemmon, Pacino, Harris, and Arkin) become increasingly desperate over the course of the movie as their fate approaches. Each resorts to different, increasingly smarmier and duplicitous tactics to sell land to people over the phone.

Halfway through the movie someone breaks into the office manager’s (Kevin Spacey) office and steals a stack of contact information for potential clients (“leads”). The thief turns out to be Jack Lemmon, the oldest, most weathered, and most desperate salesman. His tactics are outdated and he’s on a wicked streak of bad luck. He also (allegedly) has a sick daughter whom he’s trying to support. He becomes increasingly reckless and desperate over the course of the movie, resulting in him breaking in, stealing the leads, and selling them to the competition.

He only gets caught by a slip of his tongue, but he thinks he’s alright, because that same night he breaks into the office he managed to close a sale of $82,000 worth of land to Bruce and Harriet Nyborg. In one of the film’s most pivotal scenes, Kevin Spacey is able to extract a confession to the break in from Lemmon, as well as crush his spirits by revealing to him that Bruce and Harriet Nyborg are, in fact, wackos. Lemmon, exasperated, asks Spacey about the check he got from the Nyborgs.

“Frame it. It’s worthless.”

Shit.

Here’s the scene:

I know what you’re thinking: this isn’t an apt analogy. Well, you’re right and you’re not right. (Let me remind you that you also think Space Jam is better than Hoop Dreams and Hoosiers.)

So let’s break this down:

Yes, this win was nice. It was good for the Bulls’ confidence and it showed me and other fans something we can be kind of excited for.

Maybe I’m overstating the Jazz’s injuries here. Maybe I seem jaded.

Well, I’m not jaded. I think this was one of the best victories of the second half of the season. The Bulls’ defense was stingy and tight, and the bench played out of their minds.

In essence, they rose to the occasion when their backs were against the wall. It’s just that the victory was a tainted. That’s all.

I also don’t like that it took an otherwordly performance from freakin’ Bobby Portis to make it happen. There was a lot I liked and a lot I didn’t like. Some should be considered in the future, and some shouldn’t. Maybe it’s not worthless, but it’s not dripping with worth either.

We can still frame it, but it’s worthless.

To wrap, here are ten things I like and don’t like from the game, n true Zach Lowe fashion:

1. Bobby Portis. Great game dude. I’m glad Fred Hoiberg finally took my advice to bring you off the bench. You made the most of it, going 10-for-13 from the field. I pray that you thrive in your new role off the bench and that Hoiberg doesn’t use this game as any justification to start you next game. Frame this game, but don’t dwell on it.
2. Minutes distribution. The aphorism to invoke here is whether or not the ends justify the means. The Bulls won, but the trio of Denzel Valentine, Michael Sharter-Williams, and Bobby Portis played nearly 18 straight minutes from when they were first subbed in in the middle of the third to the end of the fourth. Luckily they each still looked relatively spry by the end of the game, but if their shots hadn’t fallen (they shot a combined 10-for-13 in the fourth alone), this would be a very different story. The coaching staff fell ass-first into a victory in this respect. Again, frame it, but it’s worthless.
3. Michael Sharter-Williams. Excellent defense. He was able to stay in front of the zippy Dante Exum, getting up into him on the perimeter and sliding your feet. Point guards have given the Bulls fits over the past few weeks and I’m glad they might have found a solid point guard defender, assuming he can stay out of foul trouble and not turn the ball over on offense. He also recorded three of the team’s nine total blocks and had a game-high +17 plus-minus.
4. Nikola Mirotic. Good game, but Fred reared his ugly head again. While Mirotic started, he played a bench player’s minutes. This treatment used to be reserved for Bobby Portis alone, who was actually a bench player playing bench minutes who happened to start. Mirotic, this game, was a starting-caliber player (compared to the other power forwards on the roster, at least) playing bench player minutes. While he shot 1-for-5 from deep, he still snagged four rebounds and played good defense on Joe Johnson. Hopefully he still starts because he deserves it and deserves to play more than 17 minutes and zero in the fourth.
5. Denzel Valentine. Shooters gon’ shoot. Sometimes they also gon’ rebound.
6. Paul Zipser. He’s already a better defender than Doug McDermott ever was. While he had some dumb fouls and generally looked like a lost German tourist on offense, he was able to switch onto smaller guards, stay in front of them, and keep his hands active without fouling for the most part.
7. Robin Lopez. They need to feed him for easy buckets in the paint. While he isn’t a particularly efficient scorer on pick-and-rolls (Per stats.nba.com, 24.5% of his offensive possessions are used as the roll man on pick-and-rolls, around 2.6 times per game. He scores on 46.3% of these possessions, averaging 0.92 points per possession, putting him in the bottom third of the league), it’s all they’ve got. They could also post him up. According to the same site, Lopez posts up 2 times a game, good for 18.7% of his offensive possessions this season. He ranks in the 65th league-wide percentile on these, scoring 48.2% of the time for an average of 0.94 points per possession. Lopez has always been a defense-first center, which is important for this team. He just might have to take some of the scoring load too now that Wade is injured.
8. Jimmy Butler getting to the line seven times. Before the All Star break, Butler averaged 9.6 free throws a game. Since the All Star break, he’s averaging only 5.9 per game. His scoring has also dropped from 24.5 to 18.7 points per game, and his true shooting percentage has fallen from 58.9% to 51.9%. His net rating has dipped from 3.0 to -3.6 as well. Last night he shot 54.6% true shooting.
9. Bench production. 44 points total compared to only 23 for the Jazz.
10. Joffrey Lauvergne. I haven’t seen a lot of this guy, but by the looks of things he can pass (2 assists in 7 minutes) and he’s mobile enough to guard guards on pick-and-roll without letting them score at will. Not sure I’ll see too much more of him, but it’s been real, Jeff.

Thanks for reading, mom and dad.