Chicago Bulls player reviews: Cameron Payne, Lord of the Dance

Take the phrase, “danced his way into our hearts,” then remove “his way into our hearts.” There you go, now you’ve got the 2016-17 Cameron Payne experience for the Chicago Bulls.

I wanted to make sure that all of our player reviews met a minimum word quota, keeping the content higher and the depth a little deeper. After all, we’ve watched all of these players for anywhere from a handful of games all the way up to the impressive 81 appearances of Robin Lopez.

However, that first “paragraph” summed up the entirety of the Cam Payne experience.

Next: GarPax Presser Winner: Rajon Rondo

Payne suffered a foot injury while still a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder and that severely limited his playing time this season. He played 31 games this season, 22 of them were with Oklahoma City. He was also a DNP or Inactive for 18 games over the course of the regular season and playoffs with Chicago.

There’s a lot of hostile animus directed at Payne. Not entirely because of his disastrous time with the Bulls to date, but more because of what it took to bring him to Chicago in the first place. Payne was the centerpiece of assets acquired from the Thunder in exchange for Taj Gibson, Doug McDermott and a second-round draft pick. Sound like a terrible trade? It was.

Given the circumstances, it will take a long time for fans to get over that deal. Also, they just might not get over it and he might never live up to expectations.

Speaking of expectations, there was a question about Payne at the end of season press conference held by John Paxson and Gar Forman on May 3. This is how Forman responded, per The Athletic’s transcript:

"“He was hurt a lot of this year with the foot injury at Oklahoma City so he hadn’t played. When he came in, realistically, our expectations weren’t very high this year. It was more, ‘We’re getting a player that we have under a rookie scale contract.’ We’ve got him under team control for several years and is a guy we can develop and look forward to in the future.”"

Basically, even the guys who paid a very high price for Payne didn’t expect him to do a single thing of value this season.

The highlight of Payne’s 12 games, including his one game and four minutes in the playoffs was this:

That’s right. My favorite Payne moment of the entire year was a trash photoshop that I created.

According to Basketball Reference, Payne had a negative, yes negative win share this season. He was -0.3 and that is the guy Forman and Paxson say is the point guard of the future that they want to develop and see if he turns into Isaiah Thomas.

To go back to the playoffs thing quickly, Chicago lost Rajon Rondo to injury after Game 2. Over the rest of the series, Fred Hoiberg tried several people at point guard. Jerian Grant was pretty awful, just like he was for most of the season. Michael Carter-Williams was awful, just like he has been for most of his career. Still, Payne spent most of his time in ugly suits, trying to choreograph dance routines with his teammates.

Payne’s on-court highlight this year was 14 points, three rebounds and three assists in a loss to the Detroit Pistons. He got nearly 23 minutes in that game, the most he has played as a Bull. If you got that kind of performance out of him every night, he’d possibly be Grant, but not as good with his shooting.

He also appears to be physically underdeveloped, like significantly so. It looks like a full body effort for him anytime he went from no speed to full speed. That must improve this year and it’s so obvious that even Paxson mentioned it in the end of season press conference.

In the last 20 games of the 2016-17 season, including the playoffs, Payne played less than eight total minutes. Guess that leaves a lot of time for dancing.