2. Has Coby White officially turned the corner?
This might be the biggest question mark overall for any individual Bulls player heading into the offseason. Has the 6-foot-5 former North Carolina Tar Heels rookie point guard Coby White officially turned a corner, or is he still going to show a lot of inconsistencies in the second year of his NBA career?
White played in all 65 games so far this season for the Bulls. In those 65 games, he’s averaged 13.2 points per game, 3.5 rebounds, 2.7 assists, and 0.8 steals, while shooting 39.4 percent from the field, 35.4 percent from beyond the arc, and 79.1 percent from the charity stripe. He caught fire in February and the first half of March prior to the hiatus too. White received the Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month honors for February.
However, there’s multiple advanced stats that don’t prove that White performed all that well over the entire course of his rookie season so far with the Bulls. He posted a box plus/minus rating of -2.8, value over replacement player rating of -0.3, .026 win shares per 48 minutes, and a 50.6 true shooting percentage.
Given that White was scorching hot offensively for the Bulls, and ever-improving defensively, in the last month before the novel coronavirus pandemic placed the season on hiatus, there’s ample reason to believe that White did turn a corner.
But the problem is that we’ll just have to wait and see if White is ready to turn the page in his next step of development to become a quality starting point guard. Maybe he’ll get to play in a few more games with the Bulls for his rookie season before it’s all said and done and the fans will get more clarity on the matter.