The Bulls "youth movement" is not going great

most improvement this year has come from veteran performances

The Bulls embarked on this pointless season expressing excitement (as much excitement as Arturas Karnisovas can muster, anyway) towards the “young players with experience” up and down their roster. Growing that talent is objectively a worthy goal, even if the motivation from AKME is more a selfish desire to justify their bad moves.

This “youth movement, per se”¹ did align with another desire of a new playing style, though it potentially conflicted with other stated goals like “being competitive” and “home court advantage”, plus inferred goals like raising trade values of veterans and keeping the top-10 draft pick protection.

As the Bulls are in the midst of a huge schedule break - the perks of not being good or even relevant - it’s a convenient time to do a kind of status check.

Team-wise, they did change their identity to play faster and shoot more threes, and have been more effective than expected. But any success is looking primarily driven by the veterans. And while it raised their trade value, it’s not nearly enough to matter for any practical use and has done more in simply having more nice things said about them. This isn’t useful! Nor is having nice things said about Billy Donovan, as if he didn’t already get universal praise from his nominal bosses.

[Wow, how did the Bulls pull this off: getting faded stars to buy-in to a system where they don’t have to play defense and can shoot way more?!?!]

This season is supposed to be more about these young players with experience showing improvement, or at least providing information to better evaluate their long-term future.

Instead, we hear this week’s practice time will emphasize making sure the 34 year old center gets more shots. Awesome.

Listing all the yutes by age:

Ayo Dosunmu (24.9 years old)

Coincidentally, the first listed may be the best of the bunch. Ayo has once again started a season passed over for a larger role only to have one foisted on him due to injury. He started the year shooting very poorly from distance (and still only at 32.3% from three) but his other skills have only strengthened: finishing inside, getting to the line more, more assists, fewer turnovers, improved rebounding totals.

And, most importantly, he is the best on the team (per no less authority than the head coach) at establishing their fast-paced identity. Ayo is so freaking fast! I recall this play where Jayson Tatum underestimated Ayo’s speed:

Ayo’s speed radiates from the screen not just in transition, but pushing the ball off of opponent makes. If playing time allocation was a meritocracy, he’d be the starting point guard.

Coby White (24.8)

And if playing time were based on reputation from last season, Coby White would be the starting point guard. Instead, the team added Josh Giddey and redeployed Zach LaVine, which took growth opportunity as a lead ballhandler out of Coby’s hands.

So far this season, Coby hasn’t exactly regressed (slightly higher turnover rate) but does look to have stagnated.

*after LaVine was effectively out (Nov 30, so this does include the half-dozen games LaVine participated in before season-ending surgery)

It’s important to remember that while White had more ballhandling responsibilities last season after LaVine was out of the picture, he actually excelled more playing off-ball alongside de facto PG DeMar DeRozan.

So I don’t think this season is telling us Coby White can’t make another leap. But maybe the Bulls are telling us they already made that determination, and adjusted their roster and playing time accordingly.

Jalen Smith (24.7)

I like having Smith around. He doesn’t really do anything well, and I don’t think he’ll ever be more than a backup. But on this team’s developmental track (if they had a sensible one!) he should be the starting center, running and gunning.

[I think I just hate watching Vuc play and when Smith plays: it’s, by definition, Vuc not playing.]

Smith’s first 4 games he hit 57.1% of his threes. Then he sat a game with an injury I don’t recall. Since then, 31.1% from three in 18 games.

Talen Horton-Tucker (24.0)

Listen, you may think THT is only on the roster because he’s from Chicago and a Klutch Sports client. And you’re likely correct.

But, despite what his physical appearance suggests, he’s actually in this youth movement cohort. And he pretty consistently is the 10th or 11th man in the rotation.

And he’s having by far the best season of his career. An AKME success story!

Patrick Williams (23.3)

Whenever I read how LaVine’s bad season last year was only because he was hurt², I thought of the “…you get why that’s worse, right?” meme.

Similarly with Patrick Williams now. He’s been ineffective his whole career, but showed some productivity floor with potential based on his age (and only based on his age). He earned his contract extension on those factors, and at the time it wasn’t egregious.

But now it looks like his foot injury never quite healed and then recurred, causing him to play even below that low standard for a while and now can’t even play. And, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the offense got a lot better with his absence. Oh and it freed up minutes for Matas Buzelis which everyone seems pretty OK with.

In short: total disaster of a season for Williams and the Bulls long-term investment in him.

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You know what….I’ll break this post up! No game until Friday, after all.

So later this week I’ll touch on the rest: Dalen Terry (22.4), Josh Giddey (22.2), Julian Phillips (21.1) and Matas Buzelis (20.2). The last of which is not “with experience”, but unlike the rest is actually promising and exciting to talk about so we can fudge the rules..

1. I’m trying to be more consistent with my “literal quotes” and ‘sarcastic quotes’. I’m not going to bother to link each but AK has said this stuff in the double-quotes

2. even emphasized to the point of inaccuracy, most egregiously by KC Johnson. Zach wasn’t hurt to start that season!