Unconventional, unapologetic, abrasive … there’s a lot of ways to describe Jim Boylen’s coaching style.
The latest “Boylen-ism’’ that has the Bulls fan base in an uproar?
The way he chews through timeouts as if they were laid out on a chip platter for Super Bowl Sunday.
In Saturday’s loss to the Celtics, Boylen’s last timeout was taken from him when he was forced to send trainer Jeff Tanaka onto the court to attend to Lauri Markkanen’s left sprained ankle with 4:09 left in the game.
Four minutes is an eternity in an NBA game, and if the Bulls were able to make it a one-score game in the final seconds, gone would be any opportunity to use a timeout to advance the ball into a much more advantageous position.
Of course Boylen was asked about it, and gave his explanation.
“I’m not going to save a timeout when I got a guy out there that looks like he got really hurt,” Boylen said. “That’s not what I’m about.’’
Boylen then doubled down on his mentality of having timeouts in his pocket, and insisted, “We practice to not have timeouts. I’m not in fear mode that we don’t have timeouts, because we’re prepared to not have them.’’
Crazy sounding? Maybe, but he wasn’t lying.
A Bulls player did tell the Sun-Times via text on Sunday that they have in fact practiced end of the game situations with no timeouts in scrimmages.
There’s bigger issues with this Bulls roster than timeout-gate, however.
Specifically, why there continues to be so much slippage in the third quarter of games? The numbers across the board show just how bad the Bulls are when coming out of the halftime locker room, with the biggest indictment being their -8.9 third-quarter net rating.
At least against Boston, Boylen was flinging those timeouts around to try and stop the bleeding that was taking place.
What the coach should be focusing on is understanding that halftime adjustments are being made by the opposition, and there continues to be an organizational failure in throwing the counter punch to those adjustments.
Until that wound is healed, timeouts, shortening the rotation as Boylen did against the Celtics, and praising fourth-quarter fight is all secondary.
“We gotta be more locked in, have more sense of urgency,’’ guard Kris Dunn said, when asked about the third-quarter stumble. “We have to have awareness to understand that we have been poor in the third quarter.’’
That’s why Dunn is admittedly “frustrated.’’
While he did point out that he’s not frustrated with his teammates as much as the situation they continually put themselves in, there has to be a roster-wide understanding that fourth quarters of NBA games is when opposing teams start putting their foot on the throat.
To have to climb out of that hole night after night is unrealistic. Especially against teams that have playoff potential like Boston and Utah – the last two teams to beat the Bulls after third-quarter no-shows.
“Fourth quarter, that’s when the level rises for each team,’’ Dunn said. “It’s time to buckle down and see who can execute more, who can get more stops. So, in the third quarter we can’t have those mishaps and allow teams to jump out on us where now we’re down 12 and we’re playing catch up.
“That takes a lot of energy, playing catch-up. So we gotta be able to withstand and keep things close.’’
