Chicago Bulls: Grading Coby White’s rookie season

With the 2019-20 NBA season currently postponed, let’s take a moment to review Chicago Bulls guard Coby White’s rookie season.

When the Chicago Bulls drafted North Carolina point guard Coby White with the seventh overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, it appeared as though he was in line for a starting gig. Kris Dunn’s lack of offensive development had disappointed Bulls Nation during the previous season, and Chicago had zero other starting-caliber point guards on their roster.

Then, on July 1, the Bulls acquired Tomas Satoransky in a sign-and-trade deal with the Washington Wizards. All of a sudden, the starting point guard situation was a bit murky. All signs pointed toward the Bulls believing White was the point guard of the future, but starting a rookie at that position is always tough for a team desperately trying to make a playoff push.

We know how this story unfolded. Sato got the starting gig and White was launched into a Jamal Crawford style bench role. Pretty much all he did was shoot.

That role provided Coby with a number of highs and lows throughout the majority of the season. In a November matchup with the New York Knicks, he exploded for 27 points in as many minutes and knocked down seven threes in the final quarter, leading the Bulls to a much-needed victory. But then, about a month later, he had a four-game stretch where he failed to score more than three points in any game and shot an abysmal 4-for-26 from the field.

Inconsistency was the story of Coby White’s rookie season until mid-February when everything started to click for The Rook.

In a four-day, three-game span, White averaged 33.7 points per game on absurd .573/.581/.929 shooting splits. That three-game outburst set everything in motion for White, who never looked back and continued to torch the NBA for the next six games before the league got postponed.

In the Bulls’ last game before the league-wide shutdown, White finally got the starting nod over Satoransky, and he didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t the perfect game, but Coby put up 20/5/5 and led the Bulls to a nice win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Yes, he turned the ball over nine times (yikes), but that’s the kind of thing you can expect from a 20-year-old kid starting in his first NBA game. It happens.

It’s immensely disappointing that we didn’t get to see White develop more as the starting point guard before the NBA postponed its season, but I suppose that’s what next year is for.

Overall during his rookie season, White always competed hard, showed potential on the defensive side of the ball, flashed his blazing speed, made some mistakes with the ball in his hands, knocked down a lot of shots and improved his handle. It wasn’t the perfect rookie season, but it was a pretty good one nonetheless.

Right now, Coby has Bulls fans semi-excited about the future, which is quite an accomplishment considering where the Bulls are at as a franchise. He’s incredibly fun to watch, he’s a great kid, and he has fantastic hair. What more do we need from the point guard of the future?

Grade: B+