Armed with the seventh pick in a three player draft and in dire need of an actual point guard, the Bulls managed to stand pat and have the last, good point drop right into their laps. As far as breaks go, it was a pretty good one and yet, more than they deserve.
Critics will complain that Coby White, a 6’5 guard from North Carolina, isn’t a real point guard, that he has yet to show the ability to play any meaningful defense and that his most obvious trait–his speed–will be wasted in whatever the hell Jim Boylen’s idea of an offense is.
Roy Williams is a lot of things. He’s a guy who wears bad suits. He says “dadgum” a lot. He faints on the court on occasion.
But one thing he does not do is hand his offense over to a freshman who can’t run it. Yet, he put the ball in Coby’s hands from day one. Yes, the assist numbers aren’t gawdy. White averaged just 4.1 per game for the season, and 4.4 in ACC games. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t running the offense. Most offenses don’t work that way. Gone are the days when John Stockton would pull on his nut huggers and dribble 20 seconds off the shot clock before finding Karl Malone for a dunk. College and NBA teams1 play a game that relies more on passing but less on one guy doing most of it than ever before.
SBD, a betting web site, has the Bulls 2020 NBA Championship odds as +10500. Here’s hoping the Coby White can start to make those odds a little more favorable. The knock that he may merely become a good “combo” guard should be a compliment. The NBA is a long way from the days when your point guard was supposed to shoot less than his teammates because he’s too busy “facilitating.”
Coby’s speed in a 6’5 package is a true weapon, and the Bulls didn’t put Chris Fleming and Roy Rogers on Boylen’s staff so that he could run an offense that just rams everybody into the paint on every possession. Fleming’s Nets, and Rogers’ Rockets are teams built around the opposite approach. Granted, the Rockets’ offense has devolved over the last couple of years to James Harden dribbling for a while then hoisting (and often making) 30 footers more often than is advised, but the fact remains that Boylen’s main job is to just be a guy on the bench who’s not as laid back as Fred Hoiberg, because that, for some reason pissed John Paxson off.
I like the White pick, and am glad that the T’wolves became enamored with Jarrett Culver and traded up to get him in front of the Bulls, leaving Coby for the taking. I also laugh at the idea that the Bulls’ would be reluctant to draft White because he shares an agent with Kris Dunn. Or that Dunn and White fighting for minutes will prove to be a bad thing for the team. If Coby can’t handle a pissed off Dunn, he was never going to be any damned good anyway.
What I didn’t understand was the Bulls second round pick. I’m sure that Daniel Gafford was worthy of the 38th pick. He’s long, he’s athletic and the Bulls need frontcourt bodies. But 7’3 freak Bol Bol was sitting there for the taking. It’s a second round pick, the perfect low-risk opportunity to take a big swing. Maybe Bol is too soft, or too injury prone, but one thing you can’t say about him is that he’s not skilled. He is. He can shoot, he can put it on the floor and his mere size makes him a defensive asset anywhere near the paint. You can shake a tree and Daniel Gaffords fall out of it. Bol Bol is the tree.
Last year, as Michael Porter Jr. slid down the draft board, the Bulls could have packaged their second first round pick and used it to hop in and draft him. Yes, his back injury was going to cost him all of the 2018-2019 season, and yes, you can’t guarantee he’ll ever be fully healthy. But you already had drafted in the first round. You had Wendell Carter Jr., no matter what. You were in a full rebuild. That’s the perfect time to take a chance on somebody as skilled as Porter. If it worked out, it’s like a free lottery pick. If it didn’t? You were supposed to lose last year, anyway. But the Bulls appear to have been paralyzed by a pre-draft promise to draft Chandler Hutchinson, a second round talent if there ever was one. Instead of proving to Chandler he was now in the business of pro basketball by breaking the promise, they sat still and watched the Nuggets draft Porter. Last night, the Nuggets made a trade to get Bol. If Theo Epstein or Rick Hahn were drafting for the Bulls the last two years, you damned well better believe they’d have taken Porter and Bol. And neither would have sold a 2017 second round pick to the Warriors.
It’s just not in it for these Bulls to ever be bold. It’s why they’ve been stuck in irrelevance for so long.