Championship teams in the NBA almost universally have a player who fits the “lengthy wing” archetype. The Celtics had both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the Nuggets had Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon, the Warriors had (All-Star starter) Andrew Wiggins, the Bucks had Khris Middleton, and on, and on, and on. <\/p>\n
The Chicago Bulls are trying to get in on the fun of having athletic wings, evidenced by their recent draft strategy, which included picking Matas Buzelis \u2014 6-foot-10, and Noa Essengue \u2014 also 6-foot-10 \u2014 in the past two lotteries. Whether or not this strategy will pay off, I have no idea, but these kind of picks are almost always worth the hail mary \u2014 because when a team does hit, they end up with Franz Wagner. When it doesn’t hit, of course, they end up with Ousmane Dieng, but you’ll never strike gold without mining a little bit.<\/p>\n
Early returns on Buzelis are promising, as you, dear reader, likely know. He averaged over 13 points per game in February and beyond and shot above league-average from 3-point range as a rookie. That’s about all you can ask for. If Buzelis continues this upward trajectory, and Essengue looks playable more than half the time he’s on the court, then the Bulls could have something with this duo.<\/p>\n
In Bulls’ fans daydreams, they see Buzelis becoming a jumbo point guard and scorer who can make things happen for himself, while Noa Essengue becomes the quarterback of the defense and a knockdown 3-point shooter. <\/p>\n
Bulls are looking for their wing (or wings) of the future<\/p>\n
The current Bulls roster isn’t close to contending for a championship, so drafting the same archetype of player in back-to-back drafts is totally fine, if you ask me. I know you didn’t ask me, but if you had, I would have also said that double-big wing lineups can win at a high level. Just look at the aforementioned Boston Celtics, or the Orlando Magic, who are potentially on their way to competing for a title this season. Historically, the Magic haven’t been the team that other developing teams try to model their rebuild after, but if the ceiling of the Buzelis \/ Essengue tandem is even close to that of the Wagner \/ Banchero tandem, then I’ll take back everything I said about the Eversley \/ Karnisovas tandem.<\/p>\n
If the Bulls have a chance, I think they should draft another big wing in next year’s draft! Just keep spamming the “draft big wings” button until someone really pops off. I know that sounds like a joke, but this is the most important archetype of player in the modern NBA, and rebuilds get much easier when they can be built around a guy who fits the mold. No one shoots 100% in the draft \u2014 hell, Buzelis and Essengue aren’t the first time the Bulls have tried to find a guy of this ilk; they drafted Patrick Williams, after all.<\/p>\n
The Bulls rebuild is frustrating, in large part because it still doesn’t feel like a full-on rebuild. And I’m not telling you to have faith in the front office’s decisions (if anything, I’d tell you to question all of them even more). But at the very least, the past two drafts have yielded the type of player who could be the centerpiece of a rebuild… if that rebuild ever really comes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Championship teams in the NBA almost universally have a player who fits the “lengthy wing” archetype. The Celtics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-142248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}