Derrick Rose and Fred Hoiberg haven't been on the same page about pushing the ball for a while now.

Earlier in November, Rose and Hoiberg both had completely contradictory evaluations on how Rose was doing in playing with tempo:

Rose: "As far as my performance, I love the way I pushed the ball." Hoiberg: "We gotta get (Rose) back to playing with more pace." — K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) November 4, 2015

Rose has continued singing praises to the media of how great he is at pushing the ball, while secretly it's been killing the offense that he doesn't consistently run off misses.

Hoiberg called a meeting with his star player before this game to re-emphasize that the offense depends on Rose pushing the ball across half court early when the other team misses.

Fred Hoiberg said he had a meeting today with Derrick Rose, the main topic being to push the pace. — Cody Westerlund (@CodyWesterlund) December 10, 2015

Despite this meeting, Rose still struggled to bring the ball up the court fast, especially in a critical 4th quarter where the Bulls were outscored 26-19, had a long scoring drought, and almost gave away another game amidst a 3 game losing streak.

Hoiberg specifically addressed the speed issue to Rose, giving him a deadline of when to get the ball past half court:

Rose said Hoiberg has instructed him to get ball past halfcourt by 21-second mark on shot clock. — K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) December 11, 2015

Let's look at how Rose failed to heed his coach's words in the 4th quarter.

The Bulls had 6 chances to run off of Clipper misses in the 4th. Each Bulls' defensive rebound is broken down below. Rose should be crossing half court with 22-20 seconds if he is really pushing the ball off rebounds. Anything slower than :20 and he usually jogging up the court.

Chance 1: Rose jogs up with :19 on clock

Josh Smith missed a baseline jumper to start the 4th quarter. Ironically, Hoiberg is pictured in the corner of the telecast here telling David Aldridge, "We need to try to get some pace going on the [offensive] end." Meanwhile, Rose has received an outlet pass and very lightly jogged up the court, not clearing the half court line until :19 on the clock.

Chance 2: Rose sprinted up the floor, crossed half court with :21 on clock. Good tempo by Rose.

Chance 3: Rose crosses with :18 on clock

Rose again jogged the ball up the court after receiving the outlet. He crossed half court with 18-19 seconds on the shot clock. None of the other Bulls are running, so Rose wasn't the only culprit here.

Chance 4: Jimmy Butler crossed with :18 on clock

Rose doesn't get all the blame. Jimmy Butler was also slow in pushing the ball up in the 4th quarter. Here, Butler jogged up and was slowed even further by some light pressure by M'bah a Moute.

Chance 5: Rose jogs up with :18 on clock



Rose walks it up again. The Bulls ended up wasting a lot of time on this possession and Rose made a contested 3 as the shot clock expired. Not a good possession, largely because they wasted time in the beginning of it.

Chance 6: Brooks brings it up with :20 on clock

Brooks gets this one across half court. He crosses with :20 but the Bulls can't get anything in transition or secondary transition because the only player who has hustled back is Taj Gibson. It should also be noted that even though Brooks got across half court with :20 on the clock, this was off of a long rebound and Brooks was really jogging the ball across the timeline. The Clippers' defense was totally set on this Bulls' possession, and Derrick Rose narrowly missed airballing a 3.

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The rest of the Bulls' defensive rebounds in the quarter came with under a minute remaining, where end game strategy dictated that they take extra time on the clock so running wasn't really an option.

In total, the Bulls had 6 defensive rebounds in the 4th quarter where they should have been running, especially with the offense extremely stagnant. They ran on one of the plays and the other 5 the team jogged into their offense, falling below Hoiberg's edict of getting the ball across before :21 on the clock.

On the 5 possessions where they jogged it up, they drew 1 foul, went 1/4 from the field, and scored 3 points (off a tough Rose 3). The offense was in short terrible because the team didn't take the easy chances it could have had in transition and secondary transition sets.

It is incredibly disheartening that Hoiberg is constantly preaching speed, speed, speed and the guards still aren't getting it.

This stuff isn't hard - the Suns used to run on the vast majority of their possessions. The Bulls should be running on at least 5/6 of these possessions. Even 4 out of 6 would be bad. For them to only run on 1 out of their 6 chances in the 4th quarter is baffling.

The offense will continue to be bad unless Derrick Rose and others finally get the message to run off rebounds every time, especially when the offense is stalling.