Chicago Bulls: 8 2019 NBA Draft Combine prospects worth following

The best backup option for the Chicago Bulls in drafting a point guard behind Morant in the lottery this year should be the Vanderbilt Commodores former five-star 2018 signee Darius Garland. ESPN ranks Garland as the fourth best prospect overall in this draft class. That should mostly be due to the lack of point guard depth in this draft class.

Garland is a similar situation to Bol Bol in that both had a very limited sample size at the collegiate level due to various lower body injuries that were both serious. The injury to Garland was a torn ACL that held him out of all but five games. And while it’s nice to see what Garland was able to do in five games for Vanderbilt, it was against mostly sub par competition outside SEC play.

Nonetheless, Garland did manage to register 16.2 points per game, 3.8 rebounds, and 2.8 assists in the five games that he did play for Vandy. The 53.7 field goal percentage and 47.8 three-point shooting percentage were both great and could translate to the next level.

Since Garland did have such a limited sample size during his true freshman campaign with Vandy, he needs to show out in the NBA Combine and through this pre-draft process in general. He won’t have much time to show what he can do and what the ACL recovery looks like at this point. It’s crucial to have a big combine here.