Chicago Bulls: Is Zach LaVine underrated or overrated?

Chicago Bulls guard Zach LaVine is coming off a career year, but how do fans view him? Is he underrated, overrated or properly rated?

There are fun metrics we can use to compare various players and teams, but outside of wins, losses and a grab bag of statistics, so much of who/what we compare is subjective. That’s where perception comes into play.

Whether we like it or not, perception matters in the NBA. Devin Booker is a good example of this. We see Booker as a star player since he scored 70 points in one game (an impressive feat, but let’s not forget that the Suns were getting blown out for the entirety of the game). Booker’s 70-point night isn’t the only reason fans are high on him, but it definitely is a huge piece of the pie. If that night doesn’t happen, do we look at him any differently? Maybe we see him as an up-and-comer who needs to improve his all-around game in order to help the Suns win games. We’ll never know. The 70-point game happened, and it shapes the way we view D-Book.

So how do we view Zach LaVine, the 2x NBA Slam-Dunk Champ?

LaVine became famous in NBA circles when he brought the NBA Dunk Contest back to life. He’s one of the most exciting dunkers the basketball world has ever seen, and he showed off his hops in back-to-back years on the biggest stage. Does that change how we look at LaVine? Definitely.

Dunk-contest fame can be both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s awesome to have a guy on your favorite team who’s capable of making highlight-reel plays. The excitement that the home crowd feels when LaVine is on a fastbreak is like no other. But for those who haven’t watched LaVine’s play day-in and day-out, they can fall victim to thinking he’s overrated (see the “all he can do is dunk” crowd).

I get why the casual fan might think of LaVine as overrated. He’s never made an All-Star team, he’s never played on a winning team and he struggles mightily on defense. You know what, though? Zach LaVine is actually a really good player. He’s an underrated playmaker, he can score from all three levels of the floor and he has an innate ability to make tough shots that most others can’t.

Let’s do a quick player comparison between two guys using their stats from the 2018-19 season.

• Player A: 25.6 points, 5.0 rebounds, 5.5 assists, 47.5% FG, 35.1% 3FG, 80.8% FT, 58.1 true shooting percentage
• Player B: 23.7 points, 4.7 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 46.7% FG, 37.4% 3FG, 83.2% FT, 57.4 true shooting percentage

I’m guessing most of you would say Player A looks like the better player, and you’d be correct. Player A is Bradley Beal and Player B is Zach LaVine. I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you that LaVine is a better player than Beal. That would be ridiculous and false. But based purely on those stats, it’s way closer than you’d think, right?

Beal is widely regarded as one of the best guards in the league. LaVine? He’s an afterthought, even though he’s roughly two years younger than Beal. Not only are their stats comparable, but they both spent last year on losing teams. Beal was more reliable in his role than LaVine was, though. Brad played all 82 games this past season (and all 82 games the season before that), while LaVine only played 63 games this past season (24 the season before that).

Again, none of this is supposed to suggest that LaVine is better than Beal, but maybe he should be mentioned in the same breath.

If LaVine and Beal are somewhat comparable, and Beal is properly rated, then isn’t that proof that Zach is underrated? Absolutely it is.

Verdict: Underrated