Chicago Bulls: 3 team MVP’s from the 2019-20 season so far

2. Wendell Carter Jr., Center

Although most of his production flew under the radar of late thanks to an ankle sprain suffered back in January against Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks, second-year center Wendell Carter Jr. had a decent run. WCJ was making some pretty significant progress in a number of areas of his game before going down with that ankle sprain.

If the season were to end for the Chicago Bulls at the point where they finished up the regular season on March 11, then WCJ would actually have played more games during his rookie season. Carter Jr. now has 87 total games played over the course of his two year NBA career, with 43 of them coming in 2019-20.

Carter Jr. averaged 11.3 points per game, 9.4 rebounds, 1.2 assists, 0.8 steals, and 0.8 blocks, while shooting 53.4 percent from the field, 20.7 percent from beyond the arc, and 73.7 percent from the charity stripe. The fact that Carter Jr. got more three-point attempts this season did dip his field goal percentage a bit, but it was nice to see the development in his offensive arsenal.

The efficiency of Carter Jr.’s game did improve a bit, but the increasing complexity and confusion of what Boylen was asking his big men to do made it difficult for him at times. He had a better true shooting percentage this season of 59.0, but he took a step back in his box plus/minus rating. Carter Jr. had a box plus/minus rating of -1.6 last season and -2.4 this year.