3. Poor fit with Jim Boylen
Let’s face it, is anyone a good fit with Bulls head coach Jim Boylen besides the vice president of basketball operations John Paxson?
The Bulls didn’t really see any major pieces of the young core take a true step forward in the season that is currently placed on pause. Markkanen definitely didn’t take a step forward, and the improvement of center Wendell Carter Jr. and shooting guard Zach LaVine was marginal. Young definitely took a step back this season.
Boylen managed to try and reshape Young’s game in a style that hadn’t worked in the past, and definitely different from what was working before. Young took the most three-point attempts per game in his lengthy NBA career to date for much of the season. At this point, only an early season in his career with the Philadelphia 76ers saw Young attempt more than 3.5 three-pointers per game (3.7 in 2013-14).
Young isn’t a natural three-point shooter. He can thrive while working down in the paint and is still efficient doing so. In 64 games played prior to the hiatus, Young averaged 10.3 points per game, 4.9 rebounds, 1.8 assists, and 1.8 steals, while shooting 44.8 percent from the field, 35.6 percent from beyond the arc, and 58.3 percent from the charity stripe.
Trying to run more of a “modern game” with Young as a stretch big didn’t work. The Bulls coaching staff and management really botched this plan since Young is still an efficient forward on both ends of the floor with the way he played the game prior to this season. Just because the total number of three-pointers shot in the NBA season-by-season goes up in the modern age doesn’t mean that the Bulls have to make Young in particular take more of them.