In Defense of Mr. Carter

Wendell Carter is viewed as replaceable. He’s anything but.

Entering his second season, I foolishly assumed that Wendell Carter would finally shut Bulls fans up about how he wasn’t anything special. The difference in play between him and Gafford, in addition to the vacancy created by Robin Lopez’s departure, would afford Wendell all the comparison necessary to highlight what it is that makes him special.

I was wrong. A poll released from the NBCSports Chicago Twitter, shown below, is (almost) everything wrong with people who watch the Bulls.

This is alarming.

At some level, I know it’s fruitless to take these polls seriously. NBCS Chicago’s twitter presence primarily reaches highlight watchers and people with “Mamba Mentality” in their bios, and so, of course, the results are going to reflect that. However, that media votes align so precariously, particularly concerning Wendell’s poor showing and Coby’s frankly astonishing domination, is cause for concern.

Media members create narratives as much as they report on them, and the last thing the Bulls need to do is cast Wendell as the expendable piece of the core. Players with his intersection of IQ, passing ability, defensive instincts, and solid tools don’t come along often. Players like Coby, with A-tier speed, middling size, and a decent scoring toolkit do.

Potential Problems

In breaking down the vast canyon between Wendell and Coby, the conversation inevitably has to include skillset availability in its calculus but it doesn’t end there. Wendell is a vastly more valuable player to the Bulls. He’s fundamental. And yet, he does this without ever being schemed for (and often even being schemed against!).

Diving into the numbers:

• PIPM: Wendell (+0.44) leads Coby (-2.49) by 2.93 points, or the difference between the 120th and 458th ranked players in the NBA. While Wendell registers a negative O-PIPM and a positive D-PIPM, White is negative on both ends.
• Net Rating: The Bulls had a net rating of -0.5 with Wendell on the court (1256 min. played) and a net rating of -4.4 when Coby played (1674 min. played). The Bulls net rating on the season? -3.1.
• Perhaps the most surprising: The Bulls scored more points (adjusted per 100 poss.) with Wendell on the floor (104.8) than Coby (104.4). Part of this is minutes overlap: Wendell spends more time with the starters than Coby does, so his offensive value is ostensibly buoyed by the play of Tomas Satoransky and Zach LaVine. But even in a lineup where Coby played with four starters (Sato, LaVine, Markkanen, Carter), the team posted an ORtg of 103.5. That’s a 3-guard lineup! Those are supposed to thrive offensively.
  (It should be mentioned that the sample size is certainly tenuous on this; in a protracted season with only 65 games to pull from, most of these five-man lineups don’t eclipse 100 minutes played.)

No Offense But…

Attentive readers may have noticed my comment about Carter being schemed against in the Bulls’ offense. Jim Boylen really does not know how to make Carter look good.

To be fair, Jim Boylen doesn’t know how to make Lauri Markkanen or Otto Porter look good either. He’s not a good coach. But Carter could have really flourished with the Bulls’ commitment to a multi-handler system—if he had been one of the handlers.

One of the most intriguing skills Carter Jr. flashed at Duke was as a post/elbow passer. It’s this skill in conjunction with his stout frame and defense that drew so many comparisons to Al Horford. At Duke, his post-up passing generated 1.242 points per possession (70th percentile on Synergy Sports’ database). How have the Bulls incorporated that valuable skill? By throwing Wendell 1.8 post touches a game (per stats.nba.com).

How does this look during the course of a game? Here’s a clip of Wendell-focused offense:

Wendell can find open shooters when his post-ups draw extra attention, as he did during this game against Atlanta. One of Carter’s better offensive showings, his rim gravity in this game forces Collins into help and Carter makes the correct read.

This is great! Weakside P&R, stacking “shooters” (if you consider Thad Young and Dunn to be shooters) on the right side. Wendell, who pulls in the Atlanta D (almost like he can change the floor when used consistently!), finds Sato for an easy corner 3. Best offense in the game.

But Boylen can also be more judicious about the way Wendell operates as a screener. Too often, the lone action for Carter is setting a screen and getting the heck outta the way. Occasionally, he gets to roll and receive the ball. But he can do so much more!

This, for one, is a good play design by Boylen/Chris Fleming. Wendell screens weakside for LaVine off-ball, then immediately flips to run the screen handoff with Sato (guarded by Joe Ingles) while LaVine screens Sato’s initial defender (Royce O’Neale). Satoransky gets a wide-open shot as a result.

Again, leveraging Carter’s screen setting, the Bulls run another play from the perimeter to get LaVine downhill. Carter feigns the screen on Bogdanovic, who braces for contact and gives Satoransky the upper hand as Carter goes on to actually screen Ingles. Knowing Gobert isn’t gonna step out to guard him, Carter times the trailer cut perfectly so that LaVine can drop the ball off and get the center two points off a nice running floater.

As an aside: the above play is one I’m very drawn to because of the avenues for growth. Bulls coaches, media, and fans have made their disappointment with Carter’s shooting developments abundantly clear, but he’s rarely put in situations to shoot and the confidence has obviously waned. He shot 28 threes in his freshman season at Duke, 32 threes in his rookie year, and 29 threes this season. In 20 games this season, he didn’t attempt a single three. Encouraging him to shoot and putting him in settings where it makes sense for him to shoot (rather than dumping the ball off to him with 4 seconds to make something happen) could lead to big dividends. If he hits threes at even a 30% clip, the space we see in the above clip is no longer a viable defense. He can roll like he does here or take the breathing room to spot up. Freaky.

Even quick hitters like this, coming out of a timeout or even as a set entering half-court for fast points, rely on Wendell’s ability to screen reliably and execute the pass. It’s in these areas where he is far more valuable than Daniel Gafford. Gafford is good at some things; he’s an incredible athlete, he has good block timing, and he provides more vertical spacing than Wendell but there are many things he struggles to do: screen reliably, defend in space, pass, defend without fouling.

The Defense Rests Its Case

In addition to the wasted potential on offense, Carter is often leaned on too heavily in defense to anchor a scheme that places insane pressure on his 20-year-old shoulders, broad though they may be. Boylen & Co. made a statement this year with a high-pressure, sell-out-for-turnovers scheme that made their guards look very good and their bigs… less so. It’s pretty simple to understand why. The Bulls often threw double-teams at the guard in PnR settings, which created a ton of pressure and plenty of turnovers, but also created wide-open gaps for smarter guards to exploit. I won’t break down every aspect of the Bulls defense; Stephen Noh of the Athletic did that already (and a lot better than I could). However, for those without an Athletic subscription, here’s a slight breakdown.
Also, get an Athletic subscription. You can try it for a full month free.

A blitzing defense can work. It hasn’t with the Bulls because not enough players can navigate the switching assignments with fluidity. This problem is particularly pronounced with LaVine, Markkanen, and White. Noh put it best:

“When everyone has nailed their responsibilities, the defense has looked great. But blitzing puts a ton of pressure on every player on the floor to get their assignments right, close out quickly and make difficult rotations. Get mixed up, fail to communicate or take too long in recognizing where you’re supposed to go, and defenses will get roasted on open spot-up 3s and layups.”

This breakdown often leads to easy drives at the rim or Carter having to fill the gaps left by other scrambling defenders. He’s the one who suffers optically for this; the play has failed around him but all that TV viewers see is Carter vs the scorer and the scorer winning. It’s not only misinformed but outright unfair to his perception. A traditional defense, or one that uses Carter in mixed drop coverage, would play to his strengths far more often.

In Conclusion

Maybe this isn’t an exciting breakdown. Carter isn’t a dynamic offensive engine in the vein of DeAndre Ayton or John Collins. He’s not a unicorn shooter-defender like Jaren Jackson Jr. or Kristaps Porzingis. But he is a valuable player with a proclivity for winning plays if he’s allowed to showcase his strengths. Frankly, that’s something the Bulls simply don’t have enough of on this roster.

Carter is fascinating to me. He’s not the highlight-reel player that LaVine is, the microwave scorer that White is, or the theoretical nightmare mismatch that Markkanen is. However, his skill set is vital to this team’s success. Boylen fails him by not actualizing those skills, and by extent, fails the team as a whole. It’s hard to say what the future holds, what with rumored FO changes (and possible coaching replacements), but I’ll be holding onto my Carter stock for the right time.