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Counterpoint: Doug McDermott is mostly still awful

By your friendly BullsBlogger
Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Now, I think Tyler made some very good points when it comes to Doug McDermott as an offensive player: if you're going to play him (and considering where the Bulls are at and their options, there's little reason not to) he's the type who needs to have plays run for him.

Whether that's a strategy that will pay off, for Doug or the team, is less obvious. While the Bulls could do more in their offense to get Doug sprung free, you can notice several times in any game where he just can't get separation from NBA defenders, with our without going around picks.

But he IS shooting well, so you can't say that McDermott hasn't improved in his second season. If you take the arbitrary cut-off of 100 attempts, he's in the top-10 in the league in 3 point percentage. That's huge, because if he was also not shooting well from three, this would be truly disastrous. Instead Doug's overall game is just...fairly awful.

For one thing, his inside finishing, a relative strength in the beginning of the year, hasn't held up:

The poor rebounding (biggest reason he can't play PF, though maybe worth a shot...alongside Taj-only) and lack of playmaking is clear. And though it's tough to isolate defensive contributions statistically (McDermott is 78th among small forwards in ESPN's defensive RPM, for what it's worth), what I'm happy to do is take hilarious Vines.

And this one you need the sound for:

This is anecdotal, and probably Pau Gasol's fault to some degree, but you can see that and similar things in nearly every Bulls game: McDermott is outright targeted, and especially now having to play alongside other poor defenders like Gasol and Bobby Portis (and unaware team ones like Rose, Snell, and Jimmy when he's ball-hawking) he can't be hidden as much.

I'm not sure of the last time we brought this up, but McDermott's lack of steals and blocks...

It can be thought of as merely funny, but also worryingly indicative of a lack of athleticism. In that list you see a lot of guys who became mere specialists (and I'm sure there are other similarities who didn't qualify for enough minutes). Even if he continues to shoot very well from three, maybe that level is all the Bulls can hope for.