Bulls Nation Profile: Nick Hauselman - Part 2

Nick: And we can't ignore the greatest, the GOAT Hubie Brown. Anyway, so I had all that while I was developing as a kid growing up, I was exposed to that.

And then the origin story of BBALLBREAKDOWN, is the Bulls epic series between them and the Celtics in 2009, I want to say, when Derrick Rose, I think, was a rookie, it was a seven-game series, and there was I feel like there's a lot of drama, but I also feel like there's a lot of really bad basketball that no one understood, no one was pointing out. It felt like someone should do this. Someone should take the video like you normally see at the end of the game or after the end of practice the next day. Just break it down the way a coach would. I said, Well, look, maybe I should do that. Let's try that. That was the impetus to do that.

That's why I think it took off pretty quickly was that, obviously, nobody was doing that, really. Certainly, no one was taking video and doing that. That was a bit of a revelation. As I get worried about the shelf life of BBALLBREAKDOWN overall, only because after so many videos, people have gotten really smart. They've learned a lot about the game. Can I continue to educate? Can people still keep learning or have they learned enough? Now it's like, I don't need to watch it because I already know. There is some notion of that that makes me concerned. I got to figure out, Okay, how can I continue to evolve? But That's really where it started.

The success of it right from the beginning would let me know that there's a huge thirst for this. People wanted to know more about how these things work and not just passively watch and cheer when the ball goes in and then understand how these all things put together. It has become a monster. It was like, I've always supported that coach on the floor, even when I played. Always wanted to be able to dive in, explain, understand, and then communicate that. And primarily because of the poor way that I was coached all the way up through high school, I really just wanted to write that wrong. Give somebody else the sentences that I didn't get that would help them get further.

The Triangle Offense

Morris: What really turned me into a fan of Bballbreakdown is your prominent advocacy for the triangle offense. I understand that you actually had an opportunity to get to know [personally] Tex Winter [former Chicago Bulls assistant coach and innovator of the Triangle Offense], and he was a mentor to you. From your own experience, how do you interpret the philosophy of the triangle offense and what that offense is accomplishing in a basketball game?

Nick: I think the thing that resonated, the funny thing was as they slowly started to put it in in 1989 and the 1990, you'd see [Former Chicago Bulls Head Coach] Phil [Jackson] hold up the triangle and run it the whole time. They would only run it sometimes. And so that It captured my imagination because you learn it as they learned it, and you'd watch them run it and you'd see, Okay, you can start to recognize patterns because it was so recognizable. Whereas a lot of different offenses, different people who might not recognize or know a lot about the game, it looks all random and scattered.

But even those people, when they would watch a triangle offense work, they would probably begin to see some of those patterns emerge anyway, despite the fact that they're not well-versed. The “five fingers on a hand” is a big one for me. That's a big one that Tex liked to talk about, which is like, if you're a finger, you know what all the other four fingers are doing. That's a really important concept in terms of when you're running your offense. When I taught it [to my basketball teams in practice], I'd stop at any one moment and say, Okay, where's that guy going?

What's he doing? What's he doing? They would know right away, primarily because I had them run that position as well. Everybody played every position. You hear about positionless basketball a lot, but it doesn't mean the same thing as it does in the triangle. In the triangle, what it really means is that you will play every position in the offense. Positionless basketball now means you're just playing. There isn't a firm and hard role where you're always in the same spot. But in the triangle, it's like you're just going to play center this time. Now you're going to play the forward. Now you're going to play the guard.

That way, you'll know and probably even have more of an appreciation for all the other positions while they're happening. The biggest thing as far as teaching, and you'll still see this a little bit like with the Warriors and the way Steve Kerr coaches it, his offense, is that there's things called automatics. Depending on where the The player and the ball are and where your teammates are in relation to you, that will trigger certain things that you have to do almost by a rope. Obviously, you have to learn to paint a still-life [picture] before you can do the abstract painting.

Michael [Jordan] and Scottie [Pippen] and those guys eventually would then break the [triangle offense] route and be able to find other options out of that. Now, that can cause some consternation because other players, they were not at that level yet, and they were not allowed to do that. But the more you kept it along the routes that were predetermined based on where you are, and there's always options, that's the thing.

It isn't only one thing you can do. If I have the ball on the wing and there's a guy in the corner, there's a guy on the weak side, I can now cut to there, I can cut to there, or I can move to there. You have three options. Let's say we're on the middle. Now, if I go to the middle, then the guy in the corner knows exactly what to do because we've already trained that. And if I go down and screen for him, he knows to come off that screen. So the beauty of it is then once you start to get out of that and make it a little bit organic, the five fingers continue to function, and they can still recognize the different patterns and the spacing and the angles to move so that you're never more than one pass out of finding another action in the triangle often.

You'd see them [Dynasty Chicago Bulls] run a low post entry, and they cut through that, and they wouldn't get a shot. The guy throw one pass, and then bam, they're right back into the second option, pinch post. You don't normally see that. Normally, you'll see a set called. They run it, and then a couple of passes. They don't get the shot. It's denied or whatever, and then they go pick and roll. Let's pick and roll outside and hope for the best. That's basically what you'd see, and you still see it today.

But the flow of the triangle offense because of the five fingers in the hand meant that you were never more than one pass away from getting right back into an action that can get you focused and clearly attacking the basket, versus, hold the finger up and dribble back to the top, and everyone gets reset. I'm like, No, No, just make one pass to any one of those positions that we've gone through. Once it gets there, then you'll recognize pretty quickly, Okay, where are the other guys?

Then once you understand it, it doesn't seem as complicated as it did when I first cracked open the triangle offense book before I met Tex Winter. Now when I teach it, I almost am embarrassed at how simple it seems to me because of how much I've learned about it.

Morris: I know. Watching some of your videos and watching Bulls games quite regularly. Stacey King will talk about when he recognizes some things, he'll call out. It seems like in today's current NBA, Certainly, split action persists, and then blind pig. I'm curious, are there other aspects of the triangle where obviously no team is really running the full offensive system anymore? But what are other concepts, if there are, where they still continue to persist in today's NBA game?

Nick: Well, the one that has persisted even more than any of the other things, because the only team that really runs the splits are the Kings and the Warriors. You see a little bit of it, which is fascinating to me because it's the hardest thing to guard. But I think what we call now “Get” action.

“Get” action is basically a pinch post. Pinch post action would be on the top of the ball, I throw it to the elbow and I follow the pass back for the handoff or the fake handoff or whatever. That triggers a whole bunch of other stuff. We see that everywhere everybody does it. It's an awesome way to do this because I actually have my four must-have actions in any offense. If you're building an offense, you’ve got to have these things. One of them is the ability to sprint 15 feet into a catch where then you can attack on the catch.

That's exactly what “get” action is. It's ripped right from the triangle [offense], which, by the way, is ripped right from triple pos [offense]t, which is ripped right from the beginning of the game [basketball]. That was probably one of the initial actions invented was this “get” action that people run now, which I love the fact as a historian in the game, and I think it's important as a coach that you need to study how they used to coach back in the day and how the tactics evolved. It makes me so excited to see actions that they were running in the 1920s still exist today just with much more awesome individual skills. It works much better. But they understood even back then how to attack [defenses] and how to approach this game properly.

NBA Defense Evolution

Morris: There has been a pronounced evolution of what defense is in NBA basketball now. How would you describe this evolution we've seen in defensive schemes in the NBA over the last 30 years?

Nick: I think that there was a lack of tactics for a long time on defense. One of the reasons why you didn't have to have complicated tactics defensively was because there wasn't a lot of guys blowing by other people off the dribble. That's really what the problem is. Once people can cross you over and get in and out and get by you, now you got to deal with that. When the dribbling wasn't great, you could get into that defensive stance. You can slide all you like and actually be pretty effective.

You'd see that a lot, even at the NBA level, where there wasn't any help [defense]. The rotations, you probably would see like, okay, maybe the center would come over and maybe the backside guard would drop down a little bit to help the help or whatever. Then that slowly started to get refined into the '70s. They probably got a little bit better at it. But again, at the NBA level, without zone defense being allowed, you really had not a lot of leeway.

There wasn't much to do. No one was going to double the ball out top like they do now to get it out of like that. There wasn't this heliocentric offense where you had to get the ball out of Luka [Doncic]'s hands, for instance. They did do pick and roll, but it wasn't as much as they did now. You would see hedging would be about the extent. I'm sure you would see guys double the ball a little bit out of the pick and roll, but not that much. I don't think that the NBA level was that aggressive defensively. They really were just like, I'm going to slide my feet, get my hand up, and try and keep you out of the lane as much as I could.

Then that changed into the '80s when the [Detroit] Pistons come along. Then it became the [New York] Knicks. Basically, as the offense began to evolve, then we got better. Shooting a lot better. The [shooting] percentages there, by the way, have never really risen. Three point percentage has almost been the same forever. But there's a little uptick in that a little bit into the '80s.

Certainly, ball handling was getting a little bit better. Defenses, with the Pistons, decided we're going to use our physicality to overcome any potential deficits we might have offensively. The irony is that that Pistons team was awesome offensively. Joe Dumars and Isiah Thomas is the best backcourt offensively you're going to have in the league, or one of them. Then what's his face? [Bill] Laimbeer was the first stretch five. Well, not the first, but…

Morris: One of the early ones for sure. Yeah.

Nick: [George] Mcginnis is up there. Mcginnis is probably the first one back in the day who could shoot the 20-footer at 6'11” or 6'10”. The point being was they started to model a whole different version where they would rotate a lot more. Obviously, this is Michael Jordan. So suddenly the heliocentric offense comes in before the triangle [offense] takes over the Bulls.

And so what they're forced to do is you see the extra physicality to try and take them out of their game, which has always probably been some version of a tactic where if you get aggressive, then they get mad, and now they can't perform as well as they want to. And then we got them. I want to say it's more of a distinctive '80s thing. Then the Knicks [of the 90s] took that to another level. Ironically with Pat Riley, the team where he was with the [Los Angeles] Lakers, and they were all up and down.

Morris: It was just fast-breaking all day. Yeah, that is one of the fascinating transformations. Pat Riley going from West Coast to East Coast, and they're hot and cold.

Nick: Their [90s Knicks] teams were worse [than the 80s Lakers teams]. So it was like, Well, we don't have a good enough talent. We don't have [James] Worthy and Magic [Johnson], and Byron Scott and [Michael] Cooper. We're going to have to beat you up.

And that was what was frustrating about being a Bulls fan then was that it was clearly, I don't have to say good versus evil, but it was like skill versus not skill, skill versus strength, I suppose. And it was frustrating because basketball is supposed to be skilled. It's like, if you can't beat them by skill, then you should just lose. You shouldn't be able to do what you're doing. They knew that they kept fouling. Eventually, the referees weren't going to call it every single time. The irony being that Michael Smith, not Michael Smith.

Morris: Charles Smith.

Nick: My favorite thing is there's a shot where Scottie [Pippen], he looks like he's fouling him, but it's actually the loose ball after he missed on the rebound, which would not be the foul. The actual shot was clean, whatever. But the Bulls were able to be somewhat physical, I suppose, win and pull that game out, which is huge. Nonetheless, so that was the evolution, whatever. Now, obviously, the NBA themselves had to come in and cut this all out.

So they decided to change the rules as a direct output of that, because they got afraid. It became the Knicks. Then after that, I want to say Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning in Charlotte, they were starting to do a little bit. That's when the rules started to change. At the very least, what they did… It's almost like they don't have enough foresight to realize exactly what's going to happen with each rule change. The hand-checking thing was freedom of movement and “we want more scoring”, but then it directly relates to other problems.

Nick: But it also did lead to the fourth evolution of defense. It also led them to allow zone [defense] at that point. Because if I can't put my hand on them at all and it's a foul, then we really can't stop any ball handlers now. So you got to let us have somebody earlier to help on that stuff. So that's when we started to see that. I can remember the Bulls running a one-three-one [zone defense], by the way, in the mid '80s. As I'm remembering now, and I remember going to a game.

This is how crazy I was. In eighth grade, I went to the game with some paper and a pen, and so I wanted to diagram it in eighth grade because I heard about it because remember, I don't even know if they all were… They might not have all been televised in '85, maybe. But I remember reading about it because you read everything in the [Chicago] Tribune they had, whatever, and they talked about the one-three-one. I remember diagramming it. It was insane. I do remember they [Chicago Bulls circa 1985] were trying it. It was always a very gimmicky thing, and it was tough because you couldn't get stuck.

The illegal defense [rule] is weird because if you were out of the lane, there was some gray area there where you can be in a zone. But they used to say back then that you could never run a zone in the NBA, not because it wasn't fair, it was because they'd [opponent’s offense] just light you up. They'd hit shots all over the place. They were too good for a zone. Guess what? When they [NBA teams] got it in [zone defense], they started playing. It turns out, you know what? Some of these guys are pretty good defensively. It isn't as easy as they thought.

But then we get to the time where, in my mind, what Draymond Green ended up doing at his height [of his career], playing a quarterback role and directing everybody and then helping, playing on the ball, and all those things in between is a different order of magnitude than even Bill Russell. Bill Russell had to stop the guy he was guarding, and then he would come over from the weak side and block a shot or two every so often. That was all he had to do. He never had to really worry much about switching on a pick and roll and dealing with anybody on the perimeter. He didn't quarterback a defense like Draymond did.

Now, in order to be a really successful defense, you got to be able to master all manner of switching, guarding different positions on the ball, scram switching, where you can switch before the pick and roll happens so you don't get stuck in a bad switch and a bad mismatch, or scrambling them out of there if they're down the post. By the way, even the way they close out is a lot different, generally.

Innovating the CHASE DEFENSE

Nick: I invented a defense. Did you not see that? Did you see it? No?

Morris: Oh, yes. No, that's actually a good point. Yeah, your CHASE DEFESNE, which I've listened to a few conversations you've had about that. Yeah, let’s dive into that.

Nick: Listen, the jury is still out. I'm still trying to get the rest of the data. I have a whole bunch of teams running it this past year at the high school level and a little bit in college. I'm trying to mass all the footage and really go through it again for next year. But yeah, we played behind the basketball because something radical in my mind needed to be done because what we were doing in the traditional way [of on-ball defense] was not working.

Certainly at its best, the CHASE DEFENSE does everything we're talking about, which was A, eliminates ball screens, it almost eliminates all threes, and it beats the offense up so much that they make a lot of mistakes. No longer are they going to dictate the pace and dictate where they want to go.

If you were thinking about what you need defense to do, it's those things. It checks all those boxes. So there's always counters. There's always ways to beat any defense, no matter what you do. But I'm really encouraged so far. What I've seen, and the reason is that the skill to be able to handle someone pressuring you from behind doesn't exist.

Nobody has that skill. And they might eventually develop it, but that could take a little time. There's several years here, I think, where you can get something out of it. Then it'll probably morph into something different as well. One of the things we were talking about, as I've done like 100 Zooms to teach this to the different coaches, was that ultimately, it might just be a thing where you're playing defense normally, and then in the middle of that touch, you jump behind the guy, randomly.

So they'll never know when you're getting behind or when you're getting in front. And the other four guys who are playing the zone, it doesn't matter to them. They just still play their position anyway. So that might end up being the most powerful version of this, where you keep the offenses just confused, and they just never know. They're shell shocked, never knowing where you're going to be.

Morris: Yeah, that must be exciting because I imagine there is a creative process involved with trying to flesh out what the premise is of coming up with that technique or that scheme and then just experimenting.

Nick: Absolutely. Yeah, that was fun. I have a goal. I want to get it to the NBA eventually, but they won't ever run it until a [NCAA] division one team runs it. So there's a little bit of anxiety there where it's like, jeez, is anybody really going to like this? Is anybody going to stick with it? Are there good enough coaches to do it?

Because the other thing is you spend time with other coaches, you go to their practices to help them, and then you start to observe and you realize, all right, maybe this coach really isn't that good anyway, generally. They're not going to be able to do this and teach it and do whatever. You got to really know your stuff. So that's the other problem as I'm learning a little bit about that, too. So we'll see. Otherwise, I'll have to just try and take over another high school program or something and run it myself.

Analyzing the Chicago Bulls Young Rotational Players

Morris: The current Bulls. This has been an interesting season for Chicago Bulls basketball in general. I think a strong contingent of fans who have felt somewhere between apathetic and frustrated with the direction of the franchise this season, and basically running back the entire roster from last season has not been all that thrilling.

I wanted to get your thoughts on what you see in these three guys here. Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu, and Patrick Williams. Obviously, Coby White just had Monster Game the other night in the [2024] play-in [game against the Atlanta Hawks]. From a skills standpoint, if you're going through skills conversations with any one of these guys, what are the things that you're talking to them about in their game?

Nick: Well, I always liked Coby White, even when he first got there, too. I always feel like, Okay, he's got something there, and it took him a little bit longer than… Well, it actually just took him probably a normal progression of a player coming in to really start to figure some things out. I really like his progression. I think decision-making and reading the floor and managing the ball was a difficult thing for him in the beginning in the first couple of years. Now, he seems like he's got a sense of changing speeds, under control, finishing, and then hitting threes.

There's a nice progression there. I don't know, is he a starting guard on a Eastern Conference Finals team? No, I don't think so. But there is a progression there. I like him. I like what he does. Defensively, he's active. All those things are really good.

The guy that's frustrating a little bit to me is Ayo [Dosunmu] because I'm familiar with his game. I remember him popping up a little bit here and there. I'm like, Oh, look at that. This is exciting, a young player for them. But I went through the games. By the way, the thing with Coby White having the Monster game, I started going through it, and it was like, they're going against the Hawks defense.

I had to stop. It was so frustrating watching how bad the defense was. I hope the Bulls fans are not anticipating another 40-point bomb against the [Miami] Heat. Even without Butler, they're much better defensively.

Morris: I just think somehow the Hawks are the one other team I feel like in the NBA right now that is as small as this current Bulls roster. They don't really have any size in the lane. Because Coby was just getting to the rim, at will.

Nick: They [Hawks] have [Clint] Capella.

Morris: Well, the wing depth, I suppose. Yeah, it's probably… Yeah. They have Capella.

Nick: Even he [Capella] is bad now. He used to be good. The whole whatever's going on there, I don't know It just looks so disjointed. But at any rate… So Ayo, though, I was going through it. He makes a lot of mistakes offensively. Now, he does remind me a little bit of [Tyrese] Maxey. He's got a Maxey feel. He's probably that fast with the ball, but sometimes speed kills. My only issue with him is I'm going through this and I'm like, Wait a minute. What year is he? I call it up and it's like, he's finishing his third year and he's 24.

He came in the league at 22. That's giving me some concern because he's doing mistakes he shouldn't be doing as a third year. He's not like a 21-year-old third year or a 22-year-old. He's 24. That's what I'm concerned with a little bit is that that progression should be farther along for him. Again, a lot of it is just slowing down, changing pace. And that's the things we'd see in a 19-year-old or a 20-year-old. So that's why I'm concerned. I feel like he's beyond what he should have been for that. So that's Ayo. But he's a fan favorite, right?

Morris: He is. And he's a local product. He's from Chicago. He played college [basketball] at Illinois. So, yeah, he really does have the heart of most Bulls fans right now on multiple levels.

Nick: Yeah. And he's played a lot of games. He's had a lot of minutes. He's been in that development phase for too long at this point, in my mind. I would have expected to be a little bit better. So coming back, is he under contract for next year?

Morris: I have to look at it. I know he signed an extension in the offseason. I believe it's for two seasons.

Nick: Yeah, it's for two more seasons. So you can bet that from day one, my eye would be staring at him to see. Has he progressed? He missed shots at the rim going too fast or taking bad shots. Now, the shooting, though, from three, I like. He's got that down. He's clearly worked a lot on that and probably maybe too much on that and not enough on the rest of the game. So that's the next level here. And then there's time, but he better get it done this summer and better figure some things out and going through the film.

Otherwise, if he's still doing the same mistakes next year, then I don't know. I'd be really concerned that he might not progress beyond that. And so that leaves us with Patrick Williams, who, again, I never really understood. I remember going through his college footage when he got drafted and being like, All right, I don't know. When did he get drafted?

Morris: That was the 2020 draft, I believe.

Nick: Yeah. But was in the top 10?

Morris: Yeah, fourth pick. And it was interesting because I have to be honest, I didn't know who Patrick Williams was when he was selected. Because what I remember is a lot of the draft hype or the rumor about what the Bulls were going to do. A lot of it was centering on Deni Avdija at the time who ultimately went to the [Washington] Wizards. So I just thought we're probably about to get Avdija.

Nick: Yeah, it's funny. I remember going through that footage and being like, Yeah, I didn't understand why he went so high. And it bore out. Offensively, he was really, really raw and didn't have a lot of skills. But I will say this, what I did notice going through a little footage, he drives to his left pretty well. It just caught my eye. He's a righty, and he was able to put the ball down and go. Now, again, was he getting ripped a little bit? Yeah, he's still doing that stuff. But I saw some notions of some handoff stuff or some fake handoff in the driving, which I like, and then maybe he's sneaking in some finishing around the rim that I like.

There's something there. They're also hoping that he can be a defensive stopper, which I also don't know. I'm not positive he's ever really ever really fulfilled that role. I don't think I'm talking out of turn on that one. Obviously, there's a very short window here for a lot of these young players. You’ve got to be able to prove it within a couple of years or else it's not happening.

You can follow Nick Hauselman on X/Twitter at @bballbreakdown and find Coach Nick's NBA analysis content at YouTube.com/bballbreakdown.