New Questions, New Answers for the Chicago Bulls
Last night’s draft — the first of the new Bulls regime—settles some questions but raises others about the Bulls' future.
Patrick Williams. Marko Siminovic. Devon Dotson.
The smoke has cleared and the dust settled around the Bulls’ mysterious draft plans, and no, they didn’t take Deni Avdija. Nearly everyone had linked the Israeli PF to Chicago off the strength of “international GM wants international player” and instead new GM Arturas Karnisovas ended up snagging the youngest NCAA player in the draft in Williams at the fourth overall spot.
Williams is a combo forward, though normally when that word is applied today, it refers to a player who would probably be best at power forward but can spend a bit of time at small forward. That is certainly true with Williams, whose massive 6'8" 225lb frame should be NBA-ready from the first day. His hip mobility could use improvement, which is the primary limiting factor in his SF viability. He simply won’t be able to flip and slide along the perimeter with most of the NBA-level true wings.
Herein lies the first answer to an old question: What does the new Bulls regime think of Lauri? Answer: Not sold.
Lauri has not progressed like many expected after a promising rookie season, partially due to horrendous coaching—but not entirely. The Bulls will likely give Lauri every chance to prove himself, but with Williams waiting in the wings, there should be some level of acceptance that Lauri may not be “The Guy” to play power forward for Chicago. Williams brings a fair amount more to the table than Markkanen in theory: defense, ball-handling, and a vertical presence on both sides of the ball. Should the Finn falter, it could be easy for Billy Donovan to make the switch.
Here’s a new question: How will Patrick Williams fit with Wendell Carter Jr.? Williams is less of a shooter than Markkanen was coming out of college and Carter’s shooting has not progressed as well as most experts expected. How viable will that spacing be? Both players are solid passers for the position, and if both become consistent shooters, it could open up lanes for other players to cut into space, which either Williams or Carter Jr. could take advantage of. If the shooting doesn’t pick up, the Bulls could have a tricky time fitting a full roster around those two.
The second pick for Chicago was even less expected than the first, with Marko Siminovic throwing many curious fans for a loop, in part due to some funny Google hijinks that showed a DIFFERENT basketball-playing (Serbian) Marko Siminovic—only this one was 34 years old. Rest assured, the correct (Montenegrin) Siminovic is only 21 and brings the classic European cocktail of skills to the table: a little bit of passing, a little bit of shooting, and some really solid screens. Even if the shooting doesn’t come through, Siminovic is such a solid P&R roller that he’s already worth the Cristiano Felicio upgrade at the bare minimum. Though he comes from the same Balkans team as Nikola Jokic, he’s much closer to being a Jusuf Nurkic/Joffrey Lauvergne hybrid.
Will Karnisovas take more advantage of the draft-and-stash system than Gar Forman and John Paxson ever did? Answer: Sure seems that way.
The expectation is that Siminovic will be stashed for at least a year, per Karnisovas. There are a lot of big men on this team with unclear futures and stashing Siminovic overseas to keep an eye on his development with KK Mega Bemax makes an abundance of sense until new management has a clearer picture of who’s staying and who’s going. One year after selecting Daniel Gafford (plus signing Luke Kornet) and two years after taking Carter Jr., Siminovic may be sitting overseas for more than one season until the Bulls have a real need for him.
As for a new question: can we expect many more obscure European players like this from AK? I personally think that’s an unfair takeaway and one that doesn’t really give the new department any credit for scouting; rather, it just ascribes these guys to the Bulls “because their president is from Europe”. It’s all lazy analysis. AK has the advantage of European connections, connections that many of us armchair scouts and even some NBA teams don’t have. He has a wealth of information at his fingertips and an apparent desire to use as much of that information as he can. I’d prefer that to a guy like Gar Forman, who reportedly never even worked out Lauri Markkanen before drafting him. How’d that work out? If that leads to more European players, well, I’m down to clown. There is an ideal balance between NCAA and Euroleague/Eurocup talent and AK might be just the executive to strike it.
Finally, Devon Dotson was acquired as an undrafted free agent and signed to a two-way deal. The All-American guard out of Kansas could have gone anywhere from 20–60 and it’s frankly a little surprising he didn’t (I had him rated in the mid-20s). Early suspicions were that Dotson had resisted signing a low-reward 2nd rounder tender, but the news this morning that he had signed a two-way deal with the Bulls would seem to negate any financial motivations. Either way, Dotson is a steal as a UDFA and should shine in Hoffman Estates with the Windy City Bulls G-League team. If there had been a Summer League this year, it would have been a lot of fun to see Dotson running the break with Patrick Williams trailing for the lob. Could be something we see down the line.
Many people wondered if the Bulls would take a point guard in this draft, and vague links to Kira Lewis, Killian Hayes, and LaMelo Ball all went out the window just 10 minutes into the draft with the Williams selection. They could have taken a guard again at 44 and opted not to. Perhaps they knew all along that Dotson, a Chicago native and Derrick Rose fan, would wait for their call. Either way, the acquisition of the 6'2 speedster answers a lingering vacancy in the Bulls roster.
But a new question arises: how close is Dotson to actually making the roster? The Bulls have been a confusing team for many reasons, but their mediocre use of the relatively new Windy City Bulls team as a resource has gone under the radar. Aside from Ryan Arcidiacono, the Bulls have failed to really utilize their reserve team in the way that the Denver Nuggets have. The Nuggets stashed PJ Dozier at Windy City last year before calling him up during the bubble run and Dozier played quite well at both levels. If Dotson gets called up to the full extent of his available NBA days (50 games, as stipulated by the updated 2020 rules about two-way deals) then he should get plenty of chances to shine. The Bulls have rewarded organizational loyalty and affordable hustle with Archie, and Dotson could very well follow in those footsteps to earn a fully-compensated contract going into 2021–22.
The Bulls remain a mystery in many ways. How Marc Eversley and Karnisovas manage roster crunch and developmental minutes will shape the players they selected tonight, but the early returns are promising.
