I never liked this in football. It always seems to be "prevent the win" defense. You give up yards in exchange for chewing up the clock, but those yards put the other team closer to scoring. I can't begin to count the times I've seen this fail and the team loses in the end. It applies to basketball, and to the Bulls and Thibs' coaching in the playoffs. We had leads in this series against Philly that got away from us. I think it's because we played prevent defense. Sure, you play defense and try to stop them from scoring. But defense in basketball rarely means opponents don't score at all - you might have a good stretch where they don't for a few minutes, but they will score. On offense, the strategy is to use as much of the :24 clock as possible to run out the game clock. It's horrible strategy. As the :24 clock runs out, your offensive options are limited. The ball ends up in someone's hands who has to manufacture a shot, and that shot is typically not a very good one. Consider the alternative. On offense you shoot early in the clock. You don't run out the clock as fast, but you are no longer playing crunch time offense, the options for scoring or passing are more plentiful, and generally you're playing the game you did to get the lead in the first place. When you make baskets, you force the other team to score just to keep up. If you trade baskets with a 10 point lead, you end up with a 10 point lead when the clock runs out. Granted when the game clock is below about 1:30, you can take 3x :24 clock violations and win as long as the opponent doesn't score 3x 3pt shots and a 2pt shot.
Thibodeau is a very "coachy" coach. A lot of the great ones have been. As you describe, when his type gets up late in a game, they "do the math" and go into protect-the-lead mode. As long as the team executes, it's the high-percentage way to win the game. Of course, if your team makes absolutely nothing, turns the ball over and misses FTs, you can turn the percentages on their ear. Since no head coach in NBA history has a higher winning percentage in his first two seasons than Thibodeau , I can't find it within myself to criticize his late-game management.
I think I detailed why it is a bad strategy, tho. Look at 82games.com. It's rare that players shoot better with the :24 clock running out.
It's not a bad strategy if you don't have the talent to score very many points, which we didn't after Rose and Noah went down. I think shooting late in the shot clock was a function of our inability to create high percentage shots, not some grand strategy by Thibs.
I understand where you're coming from Denny. The Bulls went with a defensive-orientated lineup down the stretch of game 6. CJ Watson looked so tired that he could barely move, which is a lot of the reason the Bulls were initiating their offense late in the shot clock. Moreover, Thibodeau burned a series of timeouts mid-way through the fourth quarter so that he wasn't able to play offense-defense down the stretch. All that said I don't think it merits criticism. I was pissed when Thibodeau called the two early timeouts but he got easy buckets off of set plays coming out of them, and the Bulls needed those buckets. The bottom line is the Bulls were one bad decision away from winning the game. I think that's probably the most you can ask from your coach in a game on the road, where you team doesn't necessarily have a talent advantage.
It wasn't just game 6. And Thibs isn't the only coach who plays the slow down game. Allow me to reminisce... It was my senior year and we had a really small team. We were going up against the top team in the state. Their players were huge and it seemed like they went the length of the court in three steps. Before the game, in the locker room, coach tells us we can hang with these guys, but to do so we'd play 4 corners on offense. Stall. Keep the ball out of their hands. For the most part it worked. We were down 8-2 at half time. They scored on the opening possession and a few times when we turned it over. At half time in the locker room, coach told us we were done with the stall and to play our game. The final score seemed like about 50-19. So were we so good a team we could play that team so close? If there's a moral to the story, it's that the bulls allowed the inferior team to hang in the game by stalling. We beat a lot of teams without Rose, with Deng hurting, etc. #1 seed beat by the #8 in a weak conference.
