Bulls' goal: Strong defense with less fouling

They say it's tough to teach old dogs new tricks. A greater challenge might be teaching young Bulls a new way of playing defense.

New coach Tom Thibodeau became renowned as an NBA assistant for his defensive strategies. Conveying them to the Bulls has met with mixed success.

Through three games, the Bulls rank fourth in the league in defensive field-goal percentage (.400), which is an achievement. But they also lead the league in fouls per game (29) and opponents' free-throw attempts (41).

Trying to play aggressive defense apparently has come with a few side effects.

During Monday's win over Portland, Joakim Noah, Taj Gibson and James Johnson finished the game with 5 fouls, while rookie center Omer Asik fouled out.

“We're still working on it,” Thibodeau said after Wednesday's practice at the Berto Center. “Some of it is we're playing good defense for a good percentage of the clock, then at the end (there's a foul).

“You've got to adjust, too. Sometimes they're calling it tighter than normal. So we've just got to pull our hands back at the end.”

At Wednesday's practice, Thibodeau attacked the problem by using one of the trademarks of his early weeks with the Bulls stop and correct.

“When we were scrimmaging against each other, right when somebody makes a dumb foul, he stops it and we go over it again,” Derrick Rose said.

“After awhile, you're like, ‘I'm just going to let him score and contest the shot good.' We've got to stop that because we could easily put some teams away without fouling, but we haven't done it yet.”

It's amazing the Bulls (2-1) have won any games at all while getting outscored by 40 points at the foul line. During the first three halves they played this season, against Oklahoma City and Detroit, the Bulls' deficit in free-throw attempts was an astonishing 70-27.

They turned that around during the second-half comeback against the Pistons, but had problems again with Portland. The Blazers shot 41 free throws in Monday's game.

Thibodeau's basic message on this topic is to gamble less on defense.

“I want us to be solid,” he said. “We've got to minimize when we're taking chances to go for steals. I thought we gambled on (Blazers center LaMarcus) Aldridge too much, which led to layups.

“Our mistakes led to easy scoring opportunities vs. ‘play solid, make them shoot over the top, challenge his shot, give the appropriate help.'”

Playing aggressive defense is all part of the master plan, because Thibodeau knows a defensive stop and rebound can lead to Rose running out on the fastbreak, which is the Bulls' ideal offensive scenario.

“I thought that was a big part of Luol (Deng's 40-point) game,” Thibodeau said. “That's how he got going. He got some easy layups to start the game; his confidence went up. Derrick made some great plays and reads the entire night.”