Chicago Bulls: Can Kris Dunn be a starter on a championship team?
By Luke Askew
With the 2018 NBA season officially over and the draft approaching, it’s time to ask the question… Can Kris Dunn be a starter on a championship team?
One thing I’ve learned from my many years of following basketball is that the point guard is the most important player on the team.
If you look at the success of recent NBA teams, nearly all of them have had a Hall of Fame level point guard.
The Chicago Bulls aren’t quite there.
The Warriors have won three championships in the last four years. Their point guard? Stephen Curry. The Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers combined for three championships in five years. Their point guard? LeBron James. No matter what the box score reads, LeBron was the point guard. He was the primary playmaker on all three of those teams. If you want too, you could make the argument for Kyrie Irving in 2015, which is fine because he’s a future Hall of Famer, too.
My point is, championship teams need good point guards.
Let’s just look at the 2017-18 NBA season. The point guard/primary playmaker on each of the playoff teams was: Chris Paul, Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, Russell Westbrook, Ricky Rubio, Rajon Rondo, Dejounte Murray, Jeff Teague, Kyle Lowry, Kyrie Irving (then Terry Rozier III), Ben Simmons, LeBron James, Darren Collison, Goran Dragic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and John Wall.
Out of those 16 playmakers, two of them aren’t great (Dejounte Murray and Darren Collison). However, Murray is a good, young player with tons of potential and Collison is a serviceable NBA veteran.
Neither made it past the first round.
Is Kris Dunn really ready to be included in that list of playoff guards? Does he even have the potential?
Is Kris Dunn the guy?
At times this year, it seemed like Dunn was the point guard of the future.
He averaged a much-improved 13.4 points, 6.0 assists, and 4.3 rebounds per game. Those are decent numbers, but did he show enough for the Chicago Bulls to think he can be better than a guy like Trae Young or Collin Sexton? I don’t think so.
A decent guy to compare Kris Dunn to is the aforementioned Dejounte Murray. Both players are insanely talented on the defensive side of the ball, have good size, can make plays, and struggle to shoot the ball from 3-point range.
The difference?
The Spurs have a proven veteran in LaMarcus Aldridge and are likely to go forward one of the best players in the league – Kawhi Leonard. They are one team who doesn’t need a good point guard. On the other hand, they only won 1 game in the playoffs before losing in the first round to Golden State. When the Spurs won their most recent championships, they had future Hall of Famer Tony Parker running the show.
Back to Dunn.
While I think Dunn is a good player and has a lot more value than people originally thought after his poor rookie season – I don’t think you can win a championship with him as your primary ball-handler. However, that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up on Dunn just yet.
A while back I wrote an article suggesting that the Chicago Bulls need to find their own version of Marcus Smart (you can read more on that here) – maybe Kris Dunn can play that role.
He works insanely hard on defense, has good size for his position, and would be an incredible backup point guard. You could let him run the second unit with Bobby Portis and then bring him in to close games defensively (especially in a small-ball lineup).
Next: Underrated prospects at pick No. 22 for the Bulls
I’m not ready to suggest that the Bulls should draft Trae Young or Collin Sexton in favor of a guy like Wendell Carter Jr., Michael Porter Jr. or Mikal Bridges – maybe soon I will be, though. If the Bulls fall in love with one of those players at No. 7, fine, but if they don’t, maybe Young or Sexton should be considered the point guard of the future – not Kris Dunn.