Throughout this week’s stretch of dwelling video games, DeMar DeRozan’s locker was embellished with a brand new acquisition — a duplicate of Thor’s hammer emblazoned with a Chicago Bulls brand.
It’s a prized possession, one DeRozan had been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to brag about after a win towards the Atlanta Hawks.
“I don’t know how they keep score or how they go about it with numbers, but I got the hammer,” DeRozan stated. “That’s all I know. I’m Thor for the week.”
The hammer is a brand new custom that displays the Bulls teaching employees’s need to award particular person enchancment on the defensive finish of the courtroom. It is awarded to a participant after every five-game stretch of the season based mostly on quite a lot of defensive statistics.
Assistant coaches John Bryant and Josh Longstaff got here up with the concept through the offseason, presenting it to educate Billy Donovan and the gamers as a method to encourage defensive enchancment all through the season.
The key to the system is monitoring and displaying defensive and hustle statistics on the apply facility day-after-day, which retains gamers conscious of their output on the defensive finish.
“We’re just trying to keep defensive charts on deflections, help (defense), all the things we’re trying to emphasize,” Donovan stated. “Everybody gets a score after five games. It’s not so much the total scores, it’s who’s got the greatest percentage from five games to the next.”
For DeRozan, incomes the hammer got here after a very robust defensive stretch, the kind that may be missed by an off-the-cuff viewer extra intrigued by the group’s current offensive surge. DeRozan, who averages 1.1 steals and 0.8 blocks per recreation, is having a robust defensive season.
The number of the participant worthy of the hammer is set by enchancment, not outright efficiency. Donovan laughed whereas acknowledging that in any other case, defensive star Alex Caruso probably would maintain the prize hostage for everything of the season.
“It’s one of those things where you’ve got to look at yourself in terms of the individual improvement you make because it’s the percentage of improvement you make in a five-game stretch,” Donovan stated. “Guys have a chance to markedly improve over a period of five games.”
It’s a bit goofy. The gamers comprehend it. But the system additionally works.
“We all make fun of it with the hammer and everything, but I’ve been bragging about it ever since I got it,” DeRozan stated.
Defense is a key for the Bulls, particularly as their offense struggles to soak up the lack of key starters equivalent to Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević.
The Bulls (15-19) — who defeated the Philadelphia 76ers 105-92 on Saturday on the United Center — have improved defensively all through the season, elevating their score to eleventh within the league within the final 10 video games and second during the last 5. They’ve moved to seventh within the league in steals, averaging 8.1 per recreation.
This is a well-recognized sample. The Bulls began final season with a bottom-10 defensive score and ended within the high 5.
Individual defensive performances aren’t the one piece of limiting opposing groups’ scoring — the Bulls have realized that group protection in rotations and assist conditions outweighs the person heroics of high defenders equivalent to Caruso. But the emphasis for every participant to lift expectations has been necessary in holding the group accountable after a gradual defensive begin.
“We see our numbers every day when we go into the practice gym,” DeRozan stated. “You want to be better for yourself and for your teammates. You take on that challenge.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com