The Bulls have played 12 games now, with a win last night against Utah improving their record to 8-4.  We are now just about 15% into the 2016-17 season, so while it’s still early I thought it would be interesting to see where the Bulls rank in some of the new advanced statistics over at NBA.com.

Of the eight advanced stats displayed on their front page, the Bulls rank in the top five in just one stat, but hey one is better than none.  The stat is Rebound Percentage, which is ironic because it’s a number that works much better as a player stat than a team stat as far as “advanced” statistics go.  The definition of the stat is: The percentage of total rebounds a player obtains on the floor.  So in this case, the Bulls rank #2 at 53.7% with the Denver Nuggets taking the top spot at 54.9%.

While that stat is only slightly encouraging, the Bulls also rank #10 in Offensive Rating, which is the number of points scored per 100 possessions.  The Bulls come in at 106.6 points with Golden State taking the top spot at 113.7 points.

Unfortunately, the Bulls rank in the bottom 10 in Defensive Rating, which is the number of points allowed per 100 possessions by a team.  In this stat the Bulls place #22 at 101 points.

The next logical step would then be to look at the Net Rating, which is simply Offensive Rating minus Defensive Rating.  Maybe somewhat surprisingly, the Bulls shine in this stat, coming in at #6 with a NetRtg of 5.6 points.

The Bulls come back down to earth when looking at Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%) which is a field goal percentage that is adjusted for made 3 pointers being 1.5 times more valuable than a 2 point shot.  This stat makes complete sense, and it also makes sense that the Bulls would rank near the bottom given their lack of high quality perimeter shooters. In this stat the Bulls rank #26 at just 47.7% while the leaders in the stat, Golden State, come in at 57.2%.

The picture gets slightly better for the Bulls when looking at True Shooting Percentage, which takes eFG% one step further and includes the value of free throws.  In this stat the Bulls rank #21 at 52.8%.

With such a small sample size, this exercise is more for fun than anything, but now that we have initial data points to look back on, it’ll be interesting to track these stats as the season moves along.