the Bulls "youth movement, per se" season one part two

The 22 and under cohort

See part one:

The Bulls "youth movement" is not going great

previously, on BlogABull: the Bulls are supposedly trying to be competitive yet also grow (and at least evaluate) their young talent. The competitiveness, inflated but not insignificant, has been pretty much entirely due to absurd performances by guys they can’t find a way to trade.

How are the younger players actually doing?

Dalen Terry (22.4)

Prior to the season, I didn’t think Dalen Terry deserved to be on an NBA roster, only still on this one because it’s run by the same people that drafted him.

Currently, Terry comes off the bench in a really narrow role: a defensive disruptor on the perimeter. So in a way like Alex Caruso, but not at that level against ballhandlers, and with zero instincts/talent necessary to contribute off-ball. He does possess the most demonstrative ‘my bad, dangit!’ in basketball.

It’s year three, and Terry’s offensive game has never developed. He’s hitting a league-average amount of threes, but attempts are paltry and below even last season. A supposed playmaker coming out the draft, Terry’s turnover percentage is a ghastly 19.6% of used possessions.

So is there a place for Terry in the league? I suppose, as a two-way contract or end-of-bench prospect you can hope develops into a 9th man someday. He did not earn his guaranteed $5.4M next season, and thus is likely to have negative trade value if the Bulls were actually interested in the concept of churning through bench guys instead of over-committing to them.

Josh Giddey (22.2)

Oh brother, this guy stinks!

The games since haven’t shown Giddey to be much different than what I said on November 19:

In short: he’s abysmal defensively, struggles to score, and doesn’t seem to raise the offense when he’s on the court because teams don’t respect his shot. What’s especially worrisome is this cratering +/- of any lineup he’s in is happening while he’s making his three point attempts (36.4% on 4.8att/36min).

…except now his 3pt% is down to 31.9%

There’s a theory that you can take a flawed-yet-young player from a good to bad team, and if you give him more responsibility and runway he’ll develop. There’s an alternate theory that if the player wasn’t able to thrive with much better teammates covering those flaws, they’ll be even more exposed on a bad team.

I think we’re seeing how this is going with Giddey out of OKC and with the Bulls. He’s undoubtedly helped raise up team pace through his defensive rebounding and willingness to push the ball. But that his shot looks so bad (including a career-low not-nice 69% on free throws!), and that he’s more careless with the ball than ever, and the egregious lack of defensive competency…

[sure, this is post defense against an over 7-footer, but if you heard the Celtics call of this play they were aghast that Giddey somehow turned the wrong way on this]

At some point it’s more than an inherent lack of athleticism and also suggests a lack of effort. And this is his contract year!

Giddey, like Vuc before him, is the prism from which we can see Arturas Karnisovas’s aptitude as a GM. He already has displayed a blatant overvaluing of Giddey when acquiring him. Now with more, and more close, evidence, does he double-down and overpay Giddey this summer? Like my old pal Ricky said¹, there’s a case that Donovan should be kicked upstairs to take AK’s job if only because Donovan has already acknowledged Giddey stinks, benching him in any close game late.

He shouldn’t be necessarily given up on, he’s so young he’s in the bottom half of Bulls prospects in these posts. But that was the hazard the Bulls took on by acquiring Giddey before he hit restricted free agency. Maybe it’ll work out to where he’s not a “made man” like Vuc and his next contract is actually market driven like the Ayo and Coby extensions. Which would be below half of what he was reportedly ‘seeking’ last summer, but maybe the only thing gained this season is humility.

Julian Phillips (21.1)

Most NBA teams could use more wings. The Bulls really really could use them. With their odd decision to placate so many guards (including guys they want to trade) they don’t start a small forward. Ayo has some similar skills as one but is more useful as a guard. Patrick Williams is even less of a small forward than he is a power forward.

Phillips is, undeniably, wing-sized. The team aimed low with him by from the outset establishing they just want him to 3-and-D and run the floor. That’s fine for a 2nd rounder², but is he meeting that standard?

He’s certainly playing how they want him to play, taking 57 threes (making 31.6%, same exact percentage as last season…) and just 20 twos (5 dunks), 21 FT attempts and 11 assists.

I can’t really tell if he is good defensively, he doesn’t look bad but he’s not being tasked with much responsibility either. He’s still extremely skinny and has a lower Defensive Rebound Percentage than Coby White (though 2x that of Dalen Terry…).

[As I just referenced playing time, time to talk about the bench and Donovan: I give credit to Donovan for not playing Torrey Craig and Jevon Carter. As though I think that’s incongruous with their other decisions on ‘showcasing’ veterans, they would be blocking minutes for Phillips and Terry evaluation. But they still have LaVine playing a ton and Lonzo Ball seeing his minutes increase. I don’t think this actually harms Phillips and Terry, but it does provide cover for AK insisting they don’t know what they have, which is annoying.]

I dunno, what are we really hoping for with Phillips? I suppose the pie in the sky hope is that he develops into a knockdown corner three point shooter. As he’s not there yet, as of now Phillips is performing at his league-minimum contract, and it looks like it’ll be an easy decision to pick up a 2026-27 option of $2.4M when the time comes but little chance that he’ll be so underpaid they’ll lose him after that season. He’s been mentioned as positive trade value in the context of being attached to LaVine’s contract. This would matter more if the Bulls cared about the margins at all.

Matas Buzelis (20.2)

Insomuch that he can make anything clear, AK did emphasize in words and actions a prioritization of young players with experience over draft picks. And that they didn’t even try to pretend they weren’t lucky that Buzelis fell to them in that draft.

So any praise towards Buzelis is not a praise for AKME!³

That out of the way: it’s been encouraging to see that Buzelis doesn’t look physically overwhelmed. He isn’t good defensively, sort of an inverse of Patrick Williams: Williams doesn’t do anything that stands out, but is overall solid. With Buzelis, he’s shown great instincts and flashes the physical tools producing his high shotblocking rate.

And Buzelis isn’t mentally overwhelmed either, he has had his playing time jerked around and had some really bad misses but keeps shooting, and has put his season percentage from three up to 36.2%.

He has shown next to zero playmaking ability, but he can finish plays: Buzelis has 12 dunks in 304 minutes, second on the team to LaVine’s 19 (in over double the minutes).

This is all good, and though Donovan has been weirdly patronizing whenever he discusses a rookie like Buzelis ‘earning’ minutes, he’s played him a suitable amount. But it’s something to watch, as the recent uptick in playing time is because Williams had been out injured. We’ll see what happens when Pat’s back.

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That’s a good spot to wrap the “youth movement” conversation, with acknowledgement that there are conflicting goals and entrenched thinking that has led to this aimless season. Williams plays because he has the contract extension and draft pedigree. Giddey plays because AK targeted him with his prior best asset in a trade. LaVine plays because of his former fringe All-Star status, and Vuc plays because ::AK Drago voice:: he’s double-double machine. The youngest players don’t play because Billy Donovan is coaching like a coach who is trying to be competitive in every game (as coaches do).

Whether this all leads to a given-up draft pick or a top-4 selection (where anybody selected shoots directly to the top this list) has been pretty much left up to chance. The Bulls aren’t trying hard for either direction, and like most things if they even did try they’d fail.

But you’d hope that we’d at least get some valuable information to evaluate the young players with experience now that they have more experience. There’s been some of that, but not as much as there should be, as instead much of the success - slight as it’s been - has been due to veterans we have long since stopped caring about.

1. on the app I won’t link

2. Or two 2nd rounders, which is what was used to acquire him

3. I have a feeling long-time readers wouldn’t dare think otherwise!