Chicago Bulls: Free Billy’s Benchwarmers
The Bulls are “better” but they’re still missing out on opportunities to improve.
On November 21, 2020, I was a little befuddled by new Bulls president Arturas Karnisovas.
He and GM Marc Eversley had to make one of their first calls as the new faces of management, choosing between defensive pest Kris Dunn, frenetic hustler Shaq Harrison, and Luka Doncic wannabe Denzel Valentine. Each was up for their qualifying offers, and with a relatively inflexible roster elsewhere, only one would be returning to the roster. Karnisovas sent out the QO to Valentine, stamping his name on a $4.7 million check that probably does not justify the time I spent bothered by it.
At the time, Karnisovas emphasized the importance that passing and shooting would have under this new regime. Valentine certainly did both of those things, though whether he did them well enough to warrant a roster spot over two adept guard defenders is certainly up for debate. Or maybe it’s not, because the former MSU Spartan shot 43% from the field and 32% from behind the arc. His TS% was a frankly horrendous 48%, saved from even more startling numbers by his ludicrous 94% from the free-throw line. Hindsight is 20–20, of course, but maybe a career TS% of 50.7 after four seasons in the league (well below the four-season league average of ~56%) would suggest he’s not really the shooter he’s claimed to be.
Not that it really matters, but Dunn and Harrison both crushed Valentine in DARKO, and both played for playoff teams. Whatever. Not mad about it, no sir.
Believe it or not, this is not intended to be a Valentine hit piece. He’s one symptom of a looming, subtler problem: the Bulls are still not hitting on the little things.
Don’t get me wrong: some of the macro moves have been really encouraging. The Boylen firing was as clear as day; the Donovan hiring was, at worst, a step away from all-time-badness; the Vucevic trade showed a willingness to make splash plays and move like a contender and the Gafford-for-Brown Jr. trade was an admirable effort to shuffle prospects to new environments.
But moves at the margins, which are often the moves that take teams from pretender to contender, have been less than impressive. Garrett Temple was the lone addition in free agency, and the Bulls could have likely added another body had they renounced the aforementioned lighting-money-on-fire Valentine, but instead, they entered the regular season without a single positive guard defender on the full-time roster. Coby White and Tomas Satoransky, adept scorers and ball-movers though they might be, were often on skates trying to stay in front of opposing point guards, and Zach LaVine, for all his improvement in that department, was understandably busier on the scoring end as he tried to elevate an identity-less and Boylen-scarred roster to playoff contention. Temple was asked to play starters minutes early on at small forward as Chandler Hutchison disappeared into a long, unexplained series of absences from the team before he was shipped out with Daniel Gafford to Washington the same day as the Vucevic trade.
But of all these tiny missteps and mysteries, perhaps most egregious was how little the Bulls used their two-way players. Entering the first (and hopefully only) entirely COVID-cognizant NBA season in history, the league loosened the service days restrictions on two-way players. Previously, players on two-way deals could accrue a maximum of 45 “NBA days” — games and team practices would both count toward this total. Knowing the rest issues that a pandemic-hastened season would present, the NBA altered this restriction to 50 games (rather than games or practice days) in January before removing it in its entirety: any and all two-way players were essentially part of a fully functioning 17-man roster, albeit being paid a far inferior salary for the first 50 games before being bumped up to the NBA minimum following the 50th played game.
The Bulls were praised by draft-minded individuals following the shrewd UDFA signing of former Kansas PG Devon Dotson. Dotson was the starting guard for two years as a Jayhawk, where he racked up numerous Big 12 honors for his play and was viewed by many as a high-level bench guard, thanks to his tremendous speed, point-of-attack defense, and sharp P&R ability. He was clearly a good player and the Bulls were still without a convincing solution at the point guard spot, making him the theoretical perfect two-way player.
Fast-forward to the end of the season and Dotson has played less minutes (50) than Arcidiacono has assists (56). Just fifty minutes. In a season where he could have played 50 games for the exact same amount of money. It’s criminal asset management, laughable team building. Two-way contracts generate a ton of team-building value: they’re heavily cost-controlled fliers on young players with zero long-term commitment until the team wants it.
It’s how the Nuggets got to test-drive PJ Dozier, now a regular fixture of their rotation. Tacko Fall gives the Celtics an interesting 11th-hour option as the last line of rim defense. Garrison Matthews has gotten a good deal of burn for a Wizards team that is in just about the same spot as the Bulls, the difference being that Washington made the playoffs. The Lakers signed Alex Caruso to a two-way in 2018 and now the TAMU product finds himself a key rotation player for the incumbent champions. Same with Damion Lee and the Warriors, Torrey Craig and the Nuggets, Derrick Jones Jr. and the Heat, etc. These are playoff teams who found a good rotation player for literally the bare minimum cost. Meanwhile, the Bulls are stuck paying a player as replaceable as Garrett Temple $5 million.
All of this G-League talk doesn’t even begin to touch on the cheapskate move Bulls ownership pulled this year when they opted to withhold the Windy City Bulls GL team from the “Gubble,” the colloquial term for the G-League’s socially isolated season. Perhaps that decision would have made some sense if they wanted to keep Dotson and fellow two-way guard Adam Mokoka (56 MP all season) near the big-league roster for playing experience, but as covered above, that was not even remotely the case. Instead, Arcidiacono and Valentine, two practically invisible players who have an impending team option and free agency, respectively, soaked up minutes showing absolutely nothing of promise at age 26/27. Yes, they’re older than Zach LaVine, shooting well below league average percents, and still siphoning minutes from the possibly promising young players.
Faithful Bulls fans may recall a similar situation in 2016, the last time the Bulls made the playoffs. The Bulls made a number of questionable moves that summer, including the signings of Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo, but perhaps the worst in hindsight was their handling of Spencer Dinwiddie. They acquired the guard from the Pistons for Replaceable Lumbering Oaf Cameron Bairstow (very good value, considering just how awful Bairstow was), cut him to make room for Dwyane Wade, resigned Dinwiddie (who had a big hand in the Bulls’ Summer League title and played well in five preseason games), and then waived him again for Michael Carter-Williams.
The Bulls rostered four point guards that year (Rondo, Carter-Williams, Isaiah Canaan, and Cameron Payne) and none were very good until Rondo’s two-game takeover in the first round of the playoffs. Dinwiddie, in the meantime, tore up the G-League. In his 9-game stint before the Nets came calling, the guard averaged 19.7 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 8.4 assists. Somehow, Bulls brass preferred the 4.6 points, 0.9 assists, and 48 TS% they were getting from Isaiah Canaan. Everyone knows what happened next: Dinwiddie went to the Nets and became a stud role player/spot starter as a steady-hand distributor with a legitimate pull-up shooting threat. Dotson may not become the same high-level contributor, but the Bulls are yet again passing up a metaphorical open layup by refusing to let him see the court in a wayward season.
The new-age Bulls say they want to compete. For what it’s worth, they seem to mean it. But the splashy moves for big names can’t be the only thing driving team growth, and Karnisovas and Eversley will have to pay attention to the minutiae if they want to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors.
