The draft strategy for the Chicago Bulls this year should be similar to last offseason in the sense of filling positional need and getting best player left.
In the 2020 NBA Draft, the Chicago Bulls have the opportunity to really get things right and straighten out the rebuild heading into its fourth year. Since the Bulls lucked out in the draft lottery and were able to nab the fourth overall pick in the first round, they have some extra ammunition to improve this roster during the offseason.
The fact that there’s no clear pecking order in this draft, like there was at the top of the board last year with Zion Williamson and Ja Morant, makes for a difficult planning process for the Bulls. We don’t even know if teams that are picking ahead of the Bulls, like the Golden State Warriors and Charlotte Hornets, are going to keep or trade at their current spots.
Nonetheless, it is important to know which players the Bulls feel have the chance to be special from this draft class.
On this list of potential draft targets for the Bulls, I do want to make it clear that the main factor is how quickly they can help out the rotation to move this rebuild forward as a whole. It would be best if the Bulls can knock out two birds with one stone by getting the best player left on the board while also picking for positional need.
That’s largely what the Bulls did last year by selecting the former North Carolina Tar Heels point guard Coby White with the seventh overall pick in the first round of the draft. White took a while to pan out during his rookie season, but patience is key with volume scoring first-year guards like him.
White has the potential to be pretty special if he keeps improving at the pace he did down the stretch during the 2019-20 campaign, or anything close to it.
The two biggest needs to fill in this draft to move the rebuild forward are on the wing positionally, and just finding a true star to build around (or a supporting piece that can help launch the path of another rising star).
Here’s a look into three draft targets that could really help turnaround the rebuild for the Bulls heading into the 2020-21 season.
3) Chicago Bulls draft targets that can turnaround the rebuild: Anthony Edwards
Maybe the best overall player in this draft class that is coming out of the college ranks is the 6-foot-5 and 225 pound former top ranked recruit in the nation and Georgia Bulldogs freshman shooting guard Anthony Edwards. There’s little to no chance that Edwards makes it out of the top three. But if he does, or the Bulls want to trade up, it would be nice to see the added depth at the two-guard or on the wing.
It seems like so long ago that NBA fans, and college hoops fans alike, were watching Edwards and wondering when he was going to take the Georgia basketball program to new heights. But that point of the season never really arrived. And before we know it, the 2019-20 college hoops season came to a premature end in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Edwards played in 32 games during the shortened 2019-20 college hoops season with Georgia (starting in all of them). He averaged 19.1 points per game, 5.2 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 1.3 steals, and 0.6 blocks. Edwards shot 40.2 percent from the field, 29.4 percent from beyond the arc, and 77.2 percent from the free-throw line.
Just think if Edwards can improve on his off-ball defending and consistent in shooting from three-point land, he will fulfill his potential and become a true star guard in the NBA. If he’s able to stay on that development path in the first couple of years in his NBA career, then it shouldn’t take too much patience for him to reach elite levels either.
2) Chicago Bulls draft targets that can turnaround the rebuild: Isaac Okoro
Landing a true stud wing with a high floor in the NBA Draft sounds like a great move on the surface for the Bulls, given their current depth situation at this spot in the rotation. The Bulls don’t have much at the small forward position beyond veteran wing Otto Porter Jr. And OPJ has rarely stayed healthy on a consistent basis over the course of the last two years.
OPJ only played in 29 games since landing with the Bulls at the 2019 trade deadline. That’s a lot to miss considering he’s by far the highest-paid player on the Bulls current cap sheet.
And behind OPJ, third-year former Boise State Broncos wing Chandler Hutchison tends to be next up. Hutch hasn’t really lived up to the hype as a supposed NBA ready wing that was an upperclassmen coming out of college, as a first round pick in the 2018 NBA Draft.
So where do the Bulls look in this draft class to add to their wing depth?
An option that a lot of Bulls fans will look to in the lottery will be the former Auburn Tigers standout freshman two-way wing/small forward Isaac Okoro. Similar to that of Edwards, Okoro is a sizable and athletically gifted 6-foot-6 and 225 pound small forward. But Edwards and Okoro do have very different skill sets.
Okoro isn’t the greatest outside shooter, but he can be lethal from inside the two-point arc. And he’s a very good defender on and off-ball. Okoro had a very stellar 2.5 defensive box plus/minus rating, 3.1 block percentage, 13.1 assist percentage, and a steal percentage just south of 2.0, during his true freshman campaign at Auburn. He’s a versatile wing that would provide a lot of value right out of the gates for the Bulls.
1) Chicago Bulls draft targets that can turnaround the rebuild: LaMelo Ball
The holy grail for a lot of teams at the top of this draft lottery in terms of prospects in this class is the 6-foot-7 and 185 pound 19-year-old lengthy point guard LaMelo Ball. This former short-lived member of the Illawarra Hawks in the NBL in Australia only played in a dozen games overseas before he had to come back to the states due to a lower-body injury.
LaMelo should be recovered by now, and it will be interesting to see how he interviews and works out across the board during the 2020 NBA Draft Combine process in the next few weeks. The Bulls should be following closely what he’s able to do at the combine. Since there’s an actual chance that he could fall far enough down draft boards to land with the Bulls, they should pay attention as close as possible to what he brings to the table for the rebuild.
There are clear strengths and weaknesses in LaMelo’s game. He’s definitely a top tier playmaker and scorer while driving the lane. He’s going to be a great facilitator and playmaker in the NBA. But the real question as far as his offensive skill set goes is how his game will play out in terms of outside shooting and shot creation from beyond 6-10 feet from the rim.
LaMelo would be an interesting fit for the Bulls alongside the likes of White and shooting guard Zach LaVine. In all likelihood, the Bulls drafting Ball would mean that one of those two sees the door out of Chicago in the next couple of years. Ball would be the type of point guard that the Bulls should hand a starting role to immediately as long as he shows out in camp.