Chicago Bulls: Prospects, Lonzo Ball, more seventh pick options
By Willie Lutz
The ping pong balls didn’t fall in favor of the Chicago Bulls on May 14. They’ll have to be creative with their pick to improve a complicated team.
Lottery night was miles from what the Chicago Bulls fans and front office alike had hoped when the team spent a majority of last season losing games for draft positioning. Instead, they slid to the seventh pick for the third straight year.
Now, opposed to a lucky draw granting the Bulls a shot at a superstar, it’s going to take a lot of roster juggling to get this club back to playoff contention.
My going theory for the Bulls’ bad luck is The Curse of Jimmy G. Buckets; three straight seventh-overall selections, 7×3=21, which we know better as Jimmy Butler’s number.
The Bulls have to consider the lack of cohesion from their young core heading into this off-season. While John Paxson and Jim Boylen might want to blame these issues on injuries holding back the players’ time to gel, they just haven’t been that good as a unit.
Let’s consider the Bulls’ three most important players, for the sake of this conversation, Zach LaVine, Lauri Markkanen, and Wendell Carter Jr. While all three have found success in some Bulls rotations, they’ve struggled to play well alongside each other.
Per NBA.com, Markkanen and LaVine had a -5.1 net rating when sharing the floor in 41 games last season. The pairing of Carter with LaVine resulted in a -13.5 rating in 38 games and -14 with Markkanen in 21 games. If you’re a Bulls fan, this should freak you out.
Maybe I’m sending too much fear into the air. Such a big part of the Bulls woes dating back to the trading away of Derrick Rose is the lack of a distributor.
Right now, the Bulls have their best chance to use the seventh-overall selection in the 2019 NBA Draft to acquire a point guard.
How they go about acquiring that point guard is something the front office will have to weigh; there potential are trades to be made or prospects to be drafted who could fill the void.
Here are a few options for the Chicago Bulls, based on what’s floating around following a dramatic NBA Lottery on Tuesday night.