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Profile: New Bull Jerian Grant

By Daniel Coughlin

Mar 8, 2016; Denver, CO, USA; New York Knicks guard Jerian Grant (13) in the fourth quarter against the Denver Nuggets at the Pepsi Center. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 8, 2016; Denver, CO, USA; New York Knicks guard Jerian Grant (13) in the fourth quarter against the Denver Nuggets at the Pepsi Center. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Chicago Bulls traded Derrick Rose to the New York Knicks this week, in return they received new Bull Jerian Grant along with Robin Lopez and Jose Calderon.

This will provide a look at one of the three players that the Bulls are receiving in the Derrick Rose trade now that the deal has been finalized and no further movements were made on draft night.

Player: Jerian Grant

Position: Point Guard

Remaining Contract:

2016-17 $1,643,040
2017-18 $1,713,840 (Team Option)
2018-19 $2,639,314 (Team Option)

This contract is the perfect example to drive home the point of why teams value picks so highly in the modern NBA. Grant has a lot of development to do if he wants to not only stick in the league, but grow into a starter caliber point guard. Even if he never cracks the starting lineup in Chicago, the Bulls have a guaranteed year and two season of whatever they feel like on a contract that won’t break $3 million at any point.

Career Info: Second-year Player

Grant will be entering just his second season in the NBA when he puts on a Bulls jersey for the first time. Grant was the 19th pick of the first round in 2015. He is the nephew of famous ex-Bull Horace Grant.

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Grant is mostly an unknown quantity after just one season in the league. He is a development-level player with a fairly high ceiling that projects him as an NBA starter eventually. In 2015-16, he saw action in 76 games, averaging 16.6 minutes per game. The biggest drawback for Grant in his rookie season was poor shooting, he shot 22 percent from 3-point range and had an eFG percentage of 42.2 percent, which is a particularly low number. In 16 minutes, his averages were 5.6 points, 2.3 assists and only 1.1 turnover per game.

Role for Bulls: Backup Point Guard

Jerian is the lone unknown quantity Chicago received in the Rose trade. As a second-year player, he has a lot of growing to do. He could become a solid rotation player long term or he could flame out and never reach his full potential. For now, his job will be to get minutes as a backup, probably looking at a fairly similar role, minutes-wise, to what he had as a rookie with the Knicks.

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    • At this point, the long-term future of Grant is completely up for grabs. If he can average eight points, five assists and keep his turnovers at one per game, he will definitely be worth every dollar of his contract in the new salary cap reality. Again, it’s $94 million this year and projected at over $100 million a year from now. $2.6 million doesn’t even begin to move the meter when you have that much room to work with.

    Grant could also end up as a trade piece, depending on what the Bulls plan to do in the near future. And that is probably an even bigger question mark than what Jerian will be in two years. Chicago’s shot callers in the front office might be looking to blow it up and start over sooner than later, or they might continue to try to “retool” quickly while fighting for a low-end playoff seed.

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    The Bulls did well to get Grant added to the trade for Rose. We could credit Gar Forman and John Paxson for that, but when you’re trading with the Knicks, you never know. They might have offered Kristaps Porzingis and GarPax could have said that they didn’t think he was young and athletic. What we do know for sure is that Grant rates as the kind of prospect Chicago was right to grab when the Knicks made him available.

    The biggest question is going to be minutes distribution for the point guard position. Jimmy Butler may spend some time there, Jose Calderon is supposedly penciled in as a starter, and Spencer Dinwiddie was also just brought in via trade. That’s three players who project to play similar or greater amounts of minutes compared with what Grant will get. Hopefully, all the guards and all the minutes help to develop Grant into a known commodity instead of burying him on the bench.

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