Statistical look at who is struggling during this 3-6 stretch in February (6 game losing streak)

It’s been tough to watch Bulls basketball lately… Demar is injured, they are blowing big leads and struggling to hit 3’s. I wanted to take a look at some numbers such as eFG%, plus minus and clutch shooting to see who has been hurting this team during this cold stretch for the Bulls…

**Plus Minus (+/-) \[**[Plus Minus (February)](https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/plus-minus-player-rankings-on-bulls-in-february-2023)**\] and Win Probability on/off the court \[**[Win Prob. On/Off Court (February)](http://stats.inpredictable.com/nba/onoff.php?season=2022&pos=ALL&team=CHI&po=0&frdt=2023-02-01&todt=2023-02-16&mpos=300&rate=tot&sort=sdf_wpa&order=DESC)**\]**

You can see with both of these statistics that players like Zach, DJ and Drummond are making a positive impact when on the court this month while players like Ayo, Vucevic & P-Will are making a negative impact. In fact when Ayo, Vucevic and P-Will are all on the court (190 minutes in 9 games) at the same time this month the Net Rating = -8.5 with a notorious 104.0 Offensive Rating.

**If the offensive rating is that bad with those three on the court than those 3 players must be shooting badly this month right?**

Let us look at efficiency field goal % for February vs. Pre-February

||MPG|Pre-Feb. eFG%|Feb eFG%|Difference|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Zach LaVine|37.2|54.0%|54.9%|**+0.9%**|
|Coby White|27.4|52.5%|52.3%|**-0.2%**|
|Ayo Dosunmu|33.3|56.0%|54.5%|**-1.5%**|
|Demar Derozan|37.2|52.4%|49.4%|**-3.0%**|
|Nikola Vucevic|33.8|58.4%|53%|**-5.4%**|
|Patrick Williams|27.2|55.4%|46.4%|**-8.6%**|

Yep they are shooting significantly worse this month… especially P-Will and Vuc. From 3, Vucevic is shooting 5.0 threes game but only hitting 28.9% while Williams is shooting 2.9 threes a game at only a 30.8% clip. Overall the team isn’t shooting well from 3 at a clip of 30.1%, but key 3 point shooters for this team like Vuc and P-Will shooting this poorly greatly effects the team especially because we shoot a low volume of threes. With all the negativity for most of the team shooting wise I do want to point out that while Demar has been injured this month, Zach has elevated his scoring while being more efficient this month. He is only shooting 31.6% from 3 but making up for it with super efficient scoring from the 2 and getting to the line a lot (8 FTA per game).

**Clutch / 4th Quarter \[**[Bulls 4th Q. Advanced Stats (February)](https://www.nba.com/stats/players/advanced?CF=MIN*GE*6&DateFrom=02/01/2023&Period=4&TeamID=1610612741&dir=D&sort=TM_TOV_PCT)**\]**

Link provide data on TO Ratio and eFG% in the 4th quarter. Four things I wanted to bring to attention:

1. Ayo: Struggling mightily with turning it over in the 4th as well as shooting efficiently. Not good to see from our “Point guard”.
2. Zach: 2nd in TO Rate but to be fair he does have the highest usage on the team in the 4th and usually from a non-PG, high usage correlates with a higher TO Rate. The eye test at times does look careless with controlling the ball for Zach but I don’t think Zach being a ball dominant guard is where he excels best. If you are Billy, you are kinda stuck until you get a true PG though in my opinion. I do like the solid eFG% and TS% though from Zach and I really don’t think he gets enough credit for him carrying the team in the 4th quarter at times and some times really only being the one attacking the rim and drawing fouls.
3. Demar: I know he is dealing with an injury currently but his abysmal shooting in the fourth has not helped especially because he shoots a lot when on the court. ***Believe it or not, the in-efficiency in the 4th Q is not just this month; January and prior Demar’s eFG% is 48.5% in the 4th while Zach and Vooch are shooting 57.0% and 60.4% respectively. I know Demar has hit some clutch shots for us in the past, but people need to realize that Demar’s hero ball is not the best path to success especially at a high volume in the fourth.***
4. Coby: Shooting very well and is shooting 26% of our shots in clutch time *(You can find out what is identified as Clutch time on* [*inpredictable.com*](https://www.inpredictable.com/2016/01/heroes-goats-and-garbage-men-new-clutch.html)*).*

**Summary**

Other key contributing factors go into this skid for the team as well such as team defense in the 4th quarter being abysmal at a defensive rating of 120.5 (7th worst in NBA in February). I tried to cover just some of the more offensive player focused stats that I found shocking and as seen above I think the skid mainly goes on guys like Vuc and P-Will. While the last 2 minutes in some of these games have been tough to watch, a game is won in 48 minutes.

by Willispeterson20