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Here are some facts about Nikola Mirotic:

Fact: Nikola Mirotic has done wonders for the Chicago Bulls’ offense this season.

Fact: Nikola Mirotic has not shot well at all this season (41% from the field, 30.6% from three), despite his reputation as a shooter.

Conclusion: Shooting is not the only important quality in a successful stretch four, as Niko’s quickness and ballhandling ability make him a significant threat regardless.

Still with me? Good. Let’s try another.

Fact: Doug McDermott has struggled this season while playing strictly as a wing.

Fact: Doug McDermott has not shot well at all this season (40% from the field, 31.7% from three), despite his reputation as a shooter.

Fact: Doug McDermott checks many of the same boxes Mirotic does on the stretch four checklist: Size, quickness, intelligence, ballhandling and shooting.

Conclusion: Doug McDermott should be emulating Nikola Mirotic more than Mike Dunleavy.

This screenshot, taken from a game in February, just before Derrick Rose had surgery, shows exactly how powerful Mirotic’s floor-spacing is:

Tony Snell has just entered the ball into the post and made a cut down the middle of the floor. Nikola is spotted up on the opposite wing with Dunleavy in the opposite corner. In that precise moment, Jared Dudley, helping on Snell’s cut in the lane, realizes he left Mirotic open in much the same way you suddenly realize that you left the oven on. Both he and OJ Mayo (Dunleavy’s man) start scrambling toward Mirotic, leaving Snell wide open under the basket for a layup. Here’s an overhead view:

Here’s the thing: teams respect McDermott’s shooting, even as he’s hoisted up bricks all year, just as they respect Mirotic’s shooting, even as he hoists up bricks. But Doug isn’t really quick enough to beat wings off the dribble and his defense on wings isn’t great either. Put him against bigs, however, and the equation changes. He can absolutely beat big men off the dribble from the perimeter, especially if they’re already running at him to contest a shot. And we know that pulling a big man out to the perimeter is much more valuable than pulling a wing out there, even if nothing else about the situation changes. Witness the difference between Niko playing alongside two other bigs and Niko playing with just one.

So. We pretty much know that expecting Doug McDermott to contribute meaningfully this year is a lost cause. But the Bulls are pretty well committed to him down the road, and with Joakim Noah’s contract expring after next season, Pau Gasol getting older, and Taj Gibson’s long-term Bulls future uncertain for a variety of reasons, the Bulls would be well-served to train Doug as Mirotic Lite for the future.

Imagine it: 48 minutes with a stretch four always on the floor. What a world that would be.

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For the second time in four seasons, the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers met to play on Christmas Day and once again there were major story lines underlying the action. On this day in 2011, the two teams kicked off the NBA season after a long, seemingly endless lockout. This year, the game marked the first time Pau Gasol and Carlos Boozer would face off against their old teams- the Lakers and Bulls, respectively. The game was to also serve as a game between two superstars who have finally made their returns to the court after various injuries (though, this story didn’t come to fully come to fruition as Kobe Bryant sat out the game).

Unfortunately despite all of the underlying plot narratives the game, unsurprisingly, fell flat due to the glaring difference in abilities between the two teams. Behind Gasol’s 23 points, Jimmy Butler’s 21 points, and Derrick Rose’s 20 points, the Bulls trounced the Lakers 113-93. The game was marked characteristic up and down play by Chicago, due in part because the team would play down to their opponent’s level after building a lead. When engaged Chicago fired on all cylinders and were seemingly unstoppable. Otherwise they looked uninterested and ready to pick-up the egg nog Joakim Noah had asked the crowd to put down before tip-off.

Due to difference in both teams’ abilities and their current trajectories, all the story lines weren’t exactly enthralling. While fun for Bulls fans to see Gasol continue to play at a level former-Bulls Carlos Boozer would occasionally deliver, without fierce competition his first game against the Lakers fell flat. Boozer’s fight against Chicago was only interesting because it was difficult to determine whether the crowd was chanting “boo” or “Booze.” Or even when trying to figure out…

Are Chicago fans saying “boo-urns” or “boo-zer”?

— Pro Hoops History (@ProHoopsHistory) December 26, 2014

The Bulls will have the day off before hosting the New Orleans Pelicans on December 27th. Both Derrick Rose and Chicago will hope to keep their incredible level of play (when engaged) going forward.

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Tony Snell’s development hasn’t exactly mirrored Jimmy Butler’s so far. The D-League might help Snell, but let’s not pretend the Bulls would actually send him there.

It was fully 16 and a half months ago that I called for the Chicago Bulls to get themselves their own NBA D-League team. It was August 2013, still two months before Derrick Rose would return after tearing his ACL and about three and a half months before he would tear his meniscus in Portland. At the time, I bemoaned the lack of development of a Bulls’ first round pick who had seen sporadic minutes in his rookie season and seemed like he would benefit from a stint in the D-League in his second season.

16 and a half months later, here we are again.

Tony Snell has not been good this season. He was not good last season and he’s somehow been worse so far this season. He’s barely been able to get on the floor outside of garbage time and he can’t put the ball in the basket when he does. I do not deny this.

I do, however, believe that the current state of the Bulls is holding him back.

Tom Thibodeau wants to win every game. That’s not entirely a bad thing, since it has led him to win a lot more games than he’s lost since taking over the Bulls in 2010. But there are some drawbacks, namely playing his starters too many minutes (well documented) and not allowing younger players to play through their mistakes.

Tony Snell (like Marquis Teague before him, and James Johnson before him, and so on) is not going to help Thibs win games playing like he is. But he’s also not going to get any better if Thibs doesn’t let him on the court. (Same goes for Doug McDermott, though he’d probably be fine if he could just hit a few shots here and there.) This is the classic conundrum faced by any good team. Insofar as the Bulls are concerned, their options seem to be either play Snell (or whoever) more and live with whatever his shortcomings are or staple him to the bench. But that willfully ignores the option of sending him to the D-League.

Now, there are a couple of caveats: First, the Bulls share the Fort Wayne Mad Ants with 12 other NBA teams, because 13 NBA teams are too dumb to take full advantage of the D-League as a resource. This makes it hard to get excited about sending your players down to develop, because a young guy who’s struggling to grasp what’s expected of him under Thibs probably won’t immediately adjust to a new coach and a new system and new teammates. Not to mention that you’d have to reintegrate him upon his return. That’s a problem.

Second, the Bulls have actually used the D-League in the past, so I’m being a little unfair by saying they’re ignoring it entirely. It’s just that they use it as an absolute last resort — Johnson and Teague both played briefly for the Iowa Energy, the Bulls’ former affiliate, and both were traded not long thereafter — and can’t be bothered to invest the resources to build their own affiliate. Is a D-League team a moneymaking venture? No. Is it as sexy as spending $130 million combined on David Robertson, Zach Duke, Adam LaRoche and Melky Cabrera? No. Will it pay off in the long run? I believe it will, yes.

The Bulls couldn’t be bothered to invest in Marquis Teague’s development, and therefore traded him for Toko Shengelia, who never got off the bench for the Bulls before he was waived so the Bulls could sign three other guys who never played before being waived. They couldn’t be bothered to invest in Erik Murphy, their 2013 second rounder, and waived him after not playing him ever. Would those two have developed into anything if the Bulls had a D-League team? Maybe, maybe not. But we’ll never know, and they sure as hell didn’t develop into anything under the status quo.

There are some players who can develop basically on their own. Witness Jimmy Butler. But expecting every player to figure it out like that is silly, and the Bulls should know better. By refusing to properly develop young talent, they’re just hurting their future teams.

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