The Bulls have come crashing down to Earth after their hot start to the season, losing four of their last five games. With an 11-10 record, the skepticism that pervaded preseason predictions is back in full force.

The blowout victories early in the season were a great sign, but they masked the problems that Fred Hoiberg’s Bulls teams have had for two years now in finishing close games.

A year after ranking 18th in net rating in the clutch (defined by nba.com as the last five minutes of a game within five points), the Bulls have dropped to 22nd. They are being outscored by 9.5 points per 100 possessions, and while their defense is average in the clutch, the offense is a nightmarish 24th in the league.

The Bulls never thought that their closers would be a problem. With the additions of Rajon Rondo and Dwyane Wade to go alongside Jimmy Butler, the thought was that the Bulls would have an embarrassment of riches to throw the ball to at the end of games. But the reality is that all three have been shooting poorly in the clutch.

Butler and Wade have supplanted their poor shooting by getting to the line a lot — Butler is a perfect 15-of-15 and Wade is 5-of-6 on clutch time free throws. But Rondo, Wade, and Butler are all shooting sub-30 percent on their clutch shots, well below the 41 percent league-average mark.

One possible explanation for why the Bulls’ closing offense is struggling so much is because it’s very predictable and easy to guard. It’s no secret that the Bulls rely heavily on Butler and Wade in isolation to score. That may work throughout games, but when teams are loading up on both players in key possessions to close out games, they’re forced into a lot of very tough contested jump shots.

Butler and Wade are known for hitting difficult shots, and that’s exactly what they did when the Bulls were winning. You can’t build a good late-game offense that way though, and they’re regressing back to around where they should be.

The conventional wisdom in the NBA is to throw it to your best guys and let them work, but there’s no substantive reasoning for why teams should follow that approach. Unless you have a closer on the level of Michael Jordan, the numbers have overwhelmingly showed that getting shots within the flow of a normal offense produces far better results than star-heavy hero ball to close out games.

The same principle has held true for the Bulls, where the rest of the team is shooting within a single percentage point of league average in the clutch, while Butler, Wade and Rondo are among the worst shooters on the roster.

The answer then is pretty simple. When the whole defense is cheating towards Butler and Wade, the Bulls should use those two as decoys more often and get shots for the supporting role players. That’s precisely what they did in a close game against the Los Angeles Clippers, and it worked like a charm.

Canaan missed a similar open shot with a chance to tie the game late against the Denver Nuggets a few days later, and Hoiberg fell on the sword after the play call.

“I put this on me,” Hoiberg told reporters after that game. “I’ve got to get us a better look at the end of the game.”

Since Canaan missed that shot, Hoiberg has gone to Wade and Butler even more to close games. That’s the wrong approach. Isolating Butler and Wade has not worked and the recent spikes in their usage have corresponded to worse late-game offense.

The Bulls are also asking Butler to do way too much early in games, and he doesn’t have enough left to close out fourth quarters.

The Bulls capped off a four-games-in-five-nights stretch, and Butler’s minutes load was unacceptable. He averaged 39.3 minutes per game, more than league-leader Anthony Davis’ 38.0 minute per game average. Take out the Bulls’ early-season stretch filled with blowouts, and Butler has been averaging 38.3 minutes in the team’s last 14 games. Not only is that a recipe for injury, but it limits his effectiveness in fourth quarters, where he’s only shooting 37 percent from the field.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make the connection that having Butler carry the team, play huge minutes and guard the opposing team’s best player every single game is going to wear on him. He insists that he isn’t tired, but as Rasheed Wallace used to say, the ball don’t lie and Butler’s shots are coming up short.

Hoiberg was brought to the Bulls to get rid of what critics deemed a predictable, stone-age offense and keep player minutes reasonable. He’s gone with the opposite approach so far. Let’s see the Bulls institute that beautiful ball movement that Hoiberg’s Iowa State teams were known for. Let’s see him keep Butler from succumbing to the same late-career problems that befell Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah and Luol Deng. And let’s see the Bulls start to win in the clutch.