Best DNP
How many times this season did Hoiberg send a player from the starting five to a DNP? I feel like this happened to Rondo, Portis, Nikola Mirotic, MCW, Grant, and Cristiano Felicio. Maybe it didn’t happen to Felicio, or maybe it was injury related, but all of these guys started games and got DNPs this season.
Part of my wants to scream at Hoiberg for all of this. But the reality is this, Paxson and Forman gave him a roster of players who should have all received DNPs this year had it not been for the need to have someone to play the games.
The DNP situation was probably most dire for Mirotic. He was supposed to emerge this season, but again only did so for a brief time in March and April.
There are so many frustrating things about Mirotic, that he’s easily the most intriguing DNP of this whole group. He is going into a summer of restricted free agency. Chicago traded Taj Gibson, the last player that was standing in the way of Niko have command of the power forward position. He was relatively healthy. It never added up to the revelation that we all wanted Mirotic to become for the Bulls and for himself.
One of the notes on another frustrating season for Mirotic was DNPs. He had several of them this season and that was a new trial for him. And it seems to me that Niko doesn’t deal well with trials. An underrated part of his storyline is that he seems to be rather easily shook. Sometimes it’s a freak injury that sucks and is beyond his control. Other times it’s coming off the bench behind a player that is clearly better than him. And then there’s the times where he picks up a DNP in the year when everything was set up for him to emerge and lock in a lucrative long-term deal from the San Antonio Spurs, Chicago or some other team.