Chicago Bulls: 5 most overrated players in franchise history

Overrated players in Chicago Bulls’ history: Quintin Dailey

This was a difficult choice to make to fill the final spot on the list. But considering two of the main factors we used statistically to come up with this list, the former seventh overall pick of the Bulls in the first round of the 1982 NBA Draft, and 6-foot-3 shooting guard Quintin Dailey, is a clear choice to be one of the names here.

We used two key metrics to try and decide statistically both how valuable a player was to the Bulls at the time, and how efficiently he contributed on a broad basis. Two of the main considerations here involved comparing win shares and win shares per 48 minutes by season to usage rate, and the on-off net rating for the player.

Now, net rating isn’t fully available across all of the game that Dailey played in during the early-to-mid 1980s with the Bulls. But there is enough data to say that he was one of the less effective guards with the team during that time.

To compare win shares per 48 minutes to usage rate, we divided the usage percentage by the number of win shares per 48 minutes and then multiplied it by .10 to bring it down to a number more manageable compared to other advanced metrics. Generically, the lower the number here the better, which would signify more win shares by concentration of usage in each game that season.

Daily’s number of win shares per 48 minutes concentrated by usage sat around 44.9. For good measure, Jordan’s number from his rookie season was 13.99, which is much lower than most other high usage players. The average for a Bulls guard that played in at least 30 games in one season from 1980-1985 was around 24.2.

Now that we’ve explained that process to arrive at win shares per 48 minutes concentrated by usage rate, we can dive in on the rest of the reasoning for Dailey on this list.

Dailey was the Bulls’ first-round draft pick two years prior to when the franchise selected the all-time great shooting guard Michael Jordan out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That was a tough situation for Dailey to run into, but he never really lived up to his billing with the Bulls anyway.

Brought in to be a primary initiator and go-to scorer for the Bulls during the rebuilding phase of the early 1980s. He never really was effective as a primary initiator, as he was very hot-and-cold as a scorer, wasn’t a good defender, and often put up bloated stat sheets when it didn’t matter to winning efforts for the Bulls.

Nonetheless, Dailey is still looked at as one of the more potent scorers throughout the early-to-mid 1980s, despite the lack of winning and efficient production.