The Chicago Bulls will have the 14th pick in the 2016 NBA Draft (for now). Throughout the offseason, we’ve looked at some different options for the Bulls at No. 14. With this piece, we’ll look at 21-year-old Timothe Luwawu from the southern part of France.
Since the Chicago Bulls won 62 games in the 2010-11 season and advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since Michael Jordan retired (again), a major weakness of the franchise has been their lack of athletes on the wing.
Entering the 2016 NBA Draft, that need is still there — along with many others — and the Bulls could use a useful jolt in their wing rotation for next season and beyond. That jolt could come in the form of 21-year-old Timothe Luwawu from the Mega Leks franchise in Belgrade, Serbia.
During this past season for Mega Leks, Luwawu improved his game tremendously, while playing for one of the fastest-paced teams in all of European basketball (76 possessions per game, per Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress).
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In France’s second-level league last season, Luwawu averaged just seven points per contest, while shooting just 29 percent from beyond the three-point line.
This season (33 games), Luwawu averaged 15.5 points per contest (second-leading scorer in Serbia’s Adriatic League), five assists, three rebounds, two steals and shot 39 percent from beyond the arc.
Not only has Luwawu’s game grown over the last couple years, he has grown himself. Luwawu’s frame is a wonderful NBA build. He’s 6’7″ with a 7’2″ wingspan and weighs in at 205 pounds. For a 21-year-old that will continue to grow into that frame, that’s something you can work with.
Luwawu’s youth fits perfectly into what Mega Leks has built. According to Givony, the franchise is built around players that are under the age of 22 and they play an up-and-down, fast-paced style of game with an array of attacking defenses.
"Averaging 76 possessions per game, Mega Leks plays at one of the fastest paces of any team in high-level European basketball according to our database, aided by their full-court pressing style. Their head coach, Dejan Milojevic (a budding star in his own right now), borrows quite a bit from NCAA basketball he told us, as he elected to implement a “Pack Line” half-court defensive scheme similar to the one employed by Tony Bennett at Virginia."
When I sat down and watch some of Luwawu’s footage, the first thing that stood out was how smooth and fluid he looked handling the basketball. He’s only 21 and looks like what you would want in a wing in today’s NBA.
Take this play from DX’s Mike Schmitz on Luwawu’s strengths. It had a Jimmy Butler feel to it (when Butler is a willing passer, which Luwawu is).
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Luwawu gets the catch on the right wing and waits for the ball screen to come. After the pass, Luwawu takes the screen, the screener’s man hedges way too hard and Luwawu makes them pay with a nice dish to the screener for the easy dunk.
When Butler was engaged in the offense and dumping off a rolling Pau Gasol, the Bulls were able to find some easy buckets. He’s a great screen-and-roll player and Luwawu definitely has the potential to be even better with his size and vision.
With his size and strides handling the basketball, Luwawu is not only dangerous in the pick-and-roll game, but when he gets a clear path to the basket, look out below.
Luwawu can handle the basketball, but it’s going to take some time for his overall handles to come along. His handles aren’t as tight as they need to be against NBA defenses and despite his ability to explode the basket (as you can see above), his ability to not only shoot from deep consistently, but his ability to finish off the dribble both need work. (In the last two seasons, Luwawu’s has hit just 33 percent of his 419 attempts from long range.)
He’s still a young player who hasn’t had that longer-term experience of playing among Europe’s best, while his game is catching up to his body.
All draft prospects have issues of their own. When it comes to taking a player inside the top 15 picks, you have to factor in the upside a prospect has and Luwawu’s arrow is pointing straight up. He’s exactly what the Bulls should be looking for on the wing. Mega Leks plays as a rapid pace, which is what Fred Hoiberg wants his teams to do offensively.
As for the defensive side of the ball, he’s just like Vanderbilt’s Wade Baldwin IV (who we’ve covered already at PAE) in the sense of his length disturbing opponents and being able to jump into passing lanes to force turnovers.
Next: 2016 NBA Draft: Michigan State's Denzel Valentine
If the Bulls are looking for help on the wing — which they should be when you look at the current depth chart of Tony Snell, Doug McDermott and Mike Dunleavy — someone like Timothe Luwawu would be a great pick if he’s available at No. 14.