Something strange is going on in Chicago...

44 points. That is what the Celtics scored on the Bulls in the first quarter on Friday. Not a half, one quarter, and Chicago lost it by 19. Four days earlier, the same team had lost 134-99 in the same building. The Bulls are 1-5 and sliding down the East. There are three problems that explain it, and they're all connected. But the one thing that actually worries me the most isn't one of those things we're going to talk about. It's the good one that is coming from this. Problem one, the Bulls are losing games before they're even starting. And quickly before we move on, if you want Bulls breakdowns like this every single day, go down below, hit that subscribe button. It's completely free to do so. According to Sports Illustrated, Chicago's first quarter net rating is minus 40.4. That's the worst in the NBA. Think of it like a race where your opponent gets a 40-second head start every night. Friday, Boston shot 16-24 in that quarter. Their bench had 22 points before the Bulls starters could settle. And the Bulls had seven turnovers early, which turned into 12 Celtics points. Peyton Pritchard, a bench guy, went four for four in his first six minutes. That's how open it was. It was like the Bulls were still walking into the arena while the Boston Celtics were up 44. On the other end, Chicago shot two of 11 from three in that quarter. Over the whole season, the Bulls shoot 34.8% in the first quarter and scored just 24.3 points in it. It isn't new either. Back on October 9th, after a preseason loss to Memphis, coach Giorgio Splitter described the first quarter as slow thinking, slow feet, not aggressive enough. So the new coach saw this before the season even started, and it's continuing to happen. A slow start can be one bad night, but the next question that Sports Illustrated said in this article is the one that makes me uncomfortable. Problem two is the effort. The Sun-Times, Joe Cowley, wrote after the first Boston game that the defensive lapses, especially for entire quarters, were issue number one. Look at that first game. Boston scored 39 in the third quarter alone. The Bulls scored 21. They also lost the boards 54-40, and Boston grabbed 19 offensive rebounds. Offensive rebounds are not about talent. It's about who wants to ball more. And Sports Illustrated's point is simple. This young team shouldn't need to be down big before they start to play hard. And after losing 134-99, you'd think that this young team will be filled with fire and come out in the rematch against them, play hard, and try to beat this team. But they fell flat at the beginning of the game. They started to bring some momentum up towards the end of it. But of course, it wasn't enough. There's one more thing about that Friday night. Sports Illustrated wrote that the Bulls only showed more energy in the second half. That's the pattern. The effort rises and falls every single quarter. And that's the reason we can't win games is because our effort is falling in certain quarters. And that's what loses us games. A good team plays the same way through all four quarters of a basketball game, and right now, the Bulls aren't. It's not that nobody on this team cares. Caleb Wilson said it himself, quote, I'm never going to accept being a loser. Okay, but that's a quote. Now the next four games are Philadelphia, New York, and San Antonio. That's where the quote gets tested. Because effort you can fix with a speech, the next problem you can't. Problem three is the paint. The Bulls allow 52.3 points in the paint a game. That's fifth most in the NBA. Friday, Boston scored 58 in the paint and made 22 of 30 shots in the restricted area. When you can't stop them at the rim, they go to the line. Boston took 40 free throws and made 31. Across the season, opponents averaged 31.5 free throw attempts against Chicago. That's second most in the league. Put it together, and the Bulls' defensive rating is better than only Phoenix's. The easy answer is Nick Claxton, who is still working his way back from injury. And he does block shots, 1.1 a game in the 92nd percentile. But his defensive rating is 120.3 in the 7th percentile. He blocks the shot, and the team still gives up the points. And even over his last five games, he averaged five rebounds, down from seven before that. And in the clutch, his net rating is minus 38.7 in the first percentile. That's a small sample, so don't read too much into it. But it does tell you something, on the other team that he was on, he wasn't really anchoring the defense, and that's what his job is going to be. Hopefully we will get to see that in Chicago, because we haven't seen him yet, and hopefully when he comes back, he will be better, and play really well on this team, and really be able to lock it down, down low for us, and stop giving up so many points in the paint. So Sports Illustrated says Claxton might not fully solve the defensive problem in the paint, but that will be something to address in the offseason if Claxton isn't the answer. Which leaves the one thing that this team has going for it, and that's the thing that scares me. So can the offense outscore all of this? That's the question people always ask. Not right now. Sports Illustrated says the Bulls offense is the second worst in the league in efficiency to start the season. And that's the same Sports Illustrated article that has the defense worse than every team, but Phoenix both ends at once. The shooting is a big part of it. Through the first three games, Chicago was the worst three-point shooting team in the NBA at 22.6%. Then in Boston on October 26th, they went four of 17 from three. That's one made three on every four attempts that you do take. You don't win many games shooting like that. And Splitter has said it plainly. We don't have ISO players on our team. Which is an honest answer, and it's very scary because this basically means that none of these guys can cook one-on-one and get a bucket themselves. They're always relying on a screen or a pass or something that will involve them into the play where they can knock down a shot. So we need some more guys that can do it themselves. That's why the threes matter so much for this team. It's not because the three-point shot is magic or anything. It's because the Bulls don't have another way to score. Caleb Wilson is starting to make threes, and watching it, honestly, it's great. In his one season at North Carolina, he shot 25.9% from three on a little over one attempt a game. He spent the summer on it, reports say 2,000 to 2,500 threes a day. So when a player puts that much work in, you start expecting it to show, and the Bulls have a lot riding on him start knocking down a few three-pointers. Sleeper Chicago has him fourth on its rookie ladder, so the league is noticing. And so far, the work shows. With Josh Giddey on the floor, Wilson is shooting 40.5% from three. Here's the problem. When Giddey sits, that number is at 19.4%. Same shooter, same shots, cut in half. And look at how he gets them. Spot up is his number one play type, 30% of everything he does. That means someone else creates it, he knocks it down. That's a corner shooter from the fourth overall pick. And he can do more than that. Over his last five games, he's averaging 3.7 assists. Before that, it was 1.3. So the question isn't whether he can shoot it or not. It's whether the Chicago Bulls need him to shoot more or run it more. Remember the opener? The Raptors won 135-92, and Wilson had a nightmarish first half, according to the Sun-Times. Then against Boston, he had 17 points, 5 rebounds, and 2 blocks on 7 of 15 shooting. And he held Jayson Tatum to one make on 5 shots. That's a rookie doing everything he can do, and they still lost by a lot. Meanwhile, the team's true shooting percentage is at 53.7%, 28th in the league. Last season, it was 58%, 16th in the league. And remember, he isn't a one-night wonder. Against the reigning champs, he scored 20 points and went 3 of 8 from 3 in a 133-127 loss. Which is the one, which is a good thing about Wilson, is that he can keep the Bulls in these games, but he can't single-handedly win the first quarter by himself. So the threes are falling for him when Giddey is on the floor, but that isn't a fix, that's a dependency. No shooter can fix a team that gives up 44 and a quarter. So where does this go? Over the next four games, I'll be watching these three things. First, the opening quarter. If a team is minus 40.4 in the first 12 minutes, even a flat quarter would be progress. Second, the paint. 52.3 a game is the number. If the Bulls can't get it below that, nothing else matters. Third, Wilson without Giddey. He shoots 19.4% right now. If that climbs, the good sign becomes a real one. That's going to be a real test if he is a real shooter or a beneficiary, because right now, yeah, we know Giddey's a great disher, and Wilson's going to knock down a lot of these shots, because Giddey's going to find him some good looks, but when you're getting bad passes from other teammates, and you're still knocking him down when teammates are closing out and stuff like this, that's when we'll know he's starting to become a real good shooter in the league, but if he can only really depend on Giddey, he's not going to get very far with his shooting beyond the arc. And the paint matters for him, too, because every layup or easy layup that the Bulls do give up, they're going against a defense that isn't set, and he can't get into his spot to knock down a shot. And Claxton coming back matters, too, because it's one piece, but it's not the answer, quite yet. The season isn't gone yet, but another week like this, and it starts to be. The Bulls aren't a lost cause. It's only early in this season, and they have a rookie who doesn't want to be losing. But right now the problems are a lot bigger than one guy making threes and that's something that's very scary and hopefully we can start to turn it around. I want to hear below in the comments do you think that Wilson's shooting is real or do you think he's a beneficiary off of Giddey? Let me know down below in the comments. This has been another episode of Bulls Digest. If you enjoyed go down below hit that subscribe button and as always I've been your host KC we'll catch you in the next one.