Rising Stars Report Card: Grading the Young Chicago Bulls

Nikola Mirotic

Nikola Mitotic has shown a lot of growth recently in his second year with the Chicago Bulls and is showing how valuable he can be down the stretch as a role player coming off the bench.

Strengths

Mirotic entered this season with a lot of promise and praise after the way he performed in his rookie season for the Bulls. Hoiberg made a tough decision early on in the year placing the forward in the starting lineup. While Mirotic has since lost that job to Taj Gibson, he’s shows improvement and continues to develop the skills necessary to be a good cornerstone in pace-and-space offense.

He would suffer a setback this season with an emergency appendectomy, but his ability to score has shown to be less streaky since returning to the rotation. As we’ve become accustomed to the way Mirotic plays, it become clear that he’s most effective when he puts the ball on the floor and shoots without hesitation in the flow of the offense. He’s doing all of that and more down the stretch.

Weaknesses

Mirotic was a streaky shooter prior to undergoing an appendectomy. Some days, he would perform noticeably well and on other nights, he would fade into the background. As a young player, it’s true that Mirotic can and has made some costly mistakes, but he’s learning from them and putting himself in a better position in moving forward. As much of a handicap he presents on the defensive end at times, it cannot go without saying how better he is moving his feet since the surgery.

Even as Mirotic still has some learning to do at the defensive end, it would come as a ray of hope if he starts to recognize how he can use his long, lengthy body to disrupt the opposing team’s offense.

Final Grade

B

Next: Cristiano Felicio