How Do The Bulls Survive Without Coby White? | Giddey Running The Show & Lineup Questions

How Do The Bulls Survive Without Coby White? | Giddey Running The Show & Lineup Questions

The day we’ve been waiting for is here. The Chicago Bulls play basketball today when they take on the Detroit Pistons in their opening season game. What are some of the biggest questions rolling into the game, especially with injuries to Kobe White and Zack Collins? We’ll talk about it all and more right after this. [Music] What’s going on, Bulls fans? Welcome to another episode of Chicago Bulls Central, your number one spot for everything Chicago Bulls related. I’m the host Hayes, but more importantly, you guys can follow the channel at Bull Central Pod on every social media platform we happen to be on. With that said, let’s go and get into this content for the day, y’all. And uh I want to talk today about the biggest questions going into opening night for the Chicago Bulls. Some of these are going to be pretty straightforward. Some of these we’re going to get a little bit into depth with. First off, the Chicago Bulls, for those that don’t know, play the first basketball game today. I don’t know where you’ve been cuz how how you a member of Chicago Bulls Central if you don’t even know that the Bulls play basketball today. But the Chicago Bulls do take on the Detroit Pistons today and this is going to be a game that is going to be tough mainly because of how the Pistons and they’re ceing defensively and a player like Assur Thompson who is on this roster is going to definitely make fits for the Chicago Bulls out on the perimeter and so it’s going to be up to Mus Bzelis. It’s going to be up to Josh Giddy to keep the offensive pressure up especially with Ashure not having to worry about guarding Kobe White. So it’s going to be important to make him have to guard one player. Now, the projected starting lineup for the Detroit Pistons is Kade Cunningham, Duncan Robinson, Ashur Thompson, Tobias Harris, and Jaylen Duran. That is the projected starting lineup for them, according to ESPN. The Chicago Bulls projected starting lineup. We don’t exactly know with the injury to Kobe White if if uh Billy Donovan is going to go more Dumu um or Kevin Herder in that starting lineup. But here’s for what it’s worth, the starting lineups up here um if you’re on the YouTube side. And so the questions that I have coming into this game first off is that is how do the Bulls deal with the absence of Kobe White? Yes, they play the entire preseason without Kobe White, but we know that preseason basketball is a lot different than regular season basketball. The rotations are different. You’re going a lot deeper into your bench and teams aren’t necessarily playing their starters after a period of time and therefore like yeah, you had to weather the storm but it was under complete different circumstance. Now you’re playing a full regular season NBA game with regular season minutes and rotations. So I’m interested to see who uh you know who steps up in that and how they deal with that absence. So that that’s that’s a big thing. There’s a big scoring load that is now missing for the Chicago Bulls team because Kobe White not being there. Kobe’s 20 points per game were major to this team and even more that he scored down the stretch of this game. And we just don’t have another scorer like Kobe White on this team. Of course, we have IO that can score. Iowa was a scorer, especially I think he averaged 20 points per game his last year in college. You got Kevin Hurder who was a shooter who can stretch the floor of course, right? But that’s really it. Even with Trey Jones scoring like he he’s more of a point guard that can score than a scoring point guard. So that’s you have there. Then you also have the Jaylen Smith thing which we’ll talk about here in a second. But specifically the absence of Kobe White. Do they do it as a team? Does Modus Baleis step just into that role? That’s one of the questions of course on who’s that starting five. Is it going to be IO? Is it gonna be Coro? Is it going to be Herder? It’s gonna be a combination of two of those three players unless Billy Donovan does do something outside the box and start a Patrick Williams or Dalon Terry. Um, which I doubt, but you know, those are still options that are on the board, too. Next up, uh, Josh Giddy running the entire show to end the season last year. Josh Giddy and Kobe White had about the same percentage of the Chicago Bulls overall offense. It was a little over 30% for both of them, right? I think they accounted for almost 68% of the Bulls offense with the points that they scored and the points they generated off assist. So now with Kobe White not being in there, right, a lot of things on offense are going to go through Josh Giddy, especially in that starting lineup. You don’t have another ball dominant player like a like a Kobe White out there. And Kobe and Josh Giddy really figured out their chemistry towards the end of that season. That was one of the biggest questions coming into the season is how does that balance now pick up from where it left off? Now, because of Kobe missing the first six games, that that conversation shifts to how do they balance, you know, it out to, hey, how much now is Josh Giddy going to do, right? Is he going to have to do more shooting or do we have enough offense from, you know, Modis and and and I sumu and Kevin Herder when he’s in the game and other guys stepping up offensively to where Josh Giddy can kind of focus more of of being a facilitator rather than a scorer. Right now, we’ve seen it before. Josh Giddy gets in the rhythm scoring and and get into that getting downhill and attacking smaller guards and those type of things. He gets in a really good rhythm, right? Even his shooting can get in a really good rhythm when he does those type of things. So, you know, not to say that that it’s necessarily not going to be the best for the Bulls if he does, but I’m just interested to see that balance of it. And Giddy’s going to have the ball a lot in his hands and you know, we’ll see what he does with that. And, you know, it could some of that could go to Modis, which you know, that brings us to the next topic. Does Modis Buzzelis follow up his big season preseason play? Right. Over 17 points per game on high efficiency for Modis Bzelis. Very high efficiency for Modis. Right. Um over 50% from the field, almost 40% from three-point range. Now I, as I said earlier, preseason basketball is a lot different than regular season basketball. A lot different, right? And uh you know, seeing Modis do the things that he did is are great, right? But, you know, there’s a case for, hey, is it going to be as strong or could it be stronger? There are a lot of times in the in the preseason, he w he wasn’t playing late in games. He wasn’t playing in the fourth quarter, right? Things like that. So, while he was able to put up those 17 points per game in in preseason basketball, with some of that alleviating, what does it what does it look like then with uh, you know, him him getting more time and more reps out there for Modis Bales? You know, the basketball world has really talked about Modis over this off seasonason. Uh, and that’s really good to see from Modis because I think, you know, it it the Bulls haven’t really had a player that that nationally has been talked about the way that Modis has probably since Larry, right? Somebody said since Derek, and I think people forget just how good Li Markin’s rookie year was and how people because of the trade of Jimmy Butler were talking a lot about Larry Markin in that rookie year. But regardless of how you look at that, um, Modis Buzzelis had three games of scoring 19 points, one game of scoring 20 points, and only one game of scoring 11 points in in the preseason, right? On high efficiency, he was over well over 50% in every one of those games. But the second game of preseason, he was over 40% from three in every single preseason game except for one, and that was the game against the Milwaukee Bucks. Right. The question that I have for Mis as well, though, is not just stepping up as an offensive player, we also need to see more rebounds. Now, the block shots, great. Now, we know he had the the game of having five uh, you know, block shots in that game, and that’s all really important. Um, but you want to see how he’s going to help protect the rim. He’s really our only thing as close to a rim protector that we have on this team. Now, we have other players that can that like if Zack Collins is healthy, he’s solid as far as in paint defense. Even Nicolus’s in paint on ball defense when he’s not in pick and roll is pretty solid, but it’s not a rim protector, right? Of course, no Essay theoretically could bring some of that too, but we don’t think Billy Donovan’s gonna play him a lot. So, it really is a lot on Modis and seeing what he does in this game. Modis has been very good at I’m going to do whatever I’m called upon to do in this game. That’s what I’m going to do. And you know that that’s that’s great. And Modis has the right mindset and mentality about that because he just wants to be a great basketball player. If it means offensively, if it means defensively, whatever he has to do, miners will probably be one of the first ones to tell you, I want to be able to do whatever they need. Whether you need me to score 20, great. You need me to go lock somebody up, I’m going to try my damnest. Now, does that mean he’s going to get cooked sometimes? Yeah. But he’s going to try his damnedest. Right. So, you know, the the this could be the first game of the breakout season for Modis Buzzelis. Now, I am someone and I’ve been very consistent this off seasonason to saying, “Hey, let’s temper our expectations on how much Modis can do or Modis will do. he can do anything but will do in year two. It’s a lot to put on a player in year two. But between Modis’s talk, his preseason play, the hype around that, like the hype is too crazy now. You can’t you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Misella’s hype is real. And the only thing that’s going to stop it is bad play on on the basketball court, right? So, let’s see how Mus is doing. And he’s going to have an important uh role today. Whether he’s guarding Assur Thompson, whether he’s guarding Tobias Harris, whether he’s guarding Ron Holland the third, who can get in there a as as a as a forward sometimes too, like, and that’s his guy, that’s a guy he was on on on a team with, right, as far as before they came into the NBA. Those minutes from Modus Bzelis are going to be important on both sides of the ball. And you know, like I said, I mean, Modis is the next one up and and until further notice, that’s who Modis Buzzelis is. So, you know, we got to see what’s going to happen there. But, um, you know, we’re really watching how MA steps up, especially in the absence of Kobe White, is going to be major today because we’re going to need every single bit of of the offense. We’re going to need every bit of the defense. And if Ma steps up, as I’ve said this a lot of times, too, right? Ma stepping up and being a more consistent defender may have a bigger impact on this team than than scoring 18 points per game. Not to say that we don’t still need his scoring, but this team is so lacking of on ball defenders. Our our best on ball defenders are really IO and Isaac Aoro. Dalen Terry is really good on ball with guards. We don’t know how he’s going to be um you know in in how how much he’s going to be into the rotation, but Julian Phillips is also solidly on ball. I think Julian’s offball defense is really the thing that could stand out about him. But you know, so you need that. But those are guys that we don’t know for sure if they’re going to be in the rotation. So, you know, seeing Modis take that step defensively, I want to see him playing in the passing lanes, use that that that long wingspan that he has to get in there and get some stuff done, right? That’s what we want to see from Modest. But best believe most the basketball world that’s turning into this game that’s not a everyday diehard Chicago Bulls fan. A lot of them are going to be turn of course for Kate Cunningham and what he turned into as a star last year. There are a lot of people around the NBA that are going to be watching to see how Modus starts off this season. And if that if he wants that hype around being having the chance to win most improved player of the year, that run starts now. Those opportunities start now for Modis Bzelis. And we’ll see if he can get into that. Next up, will the real Nicolusvich please stand up? That’s going to be keep being my motto coming into this season because listen, we already know Vu is a net negative defensively. He’s just going to be a net negative defensively. It’s the way that the league runs things now with the switch heavy uh you know forcing switches that teams do putting teams in pick and roll. Those are all things that do not play well into the into the game of Nicola. So because of that you cannot be you cannot I repeat you cannot be a nothing on offense if you’re Nicolola. You just can’t. You’re not providing defense if you were not going to be providing consistent offense. And it doesn’t even have to be the 18 and a half and 11, right? Like, yeah, you’re 35 years old. If it’s 16 and 10, I I I’ll take that, too. But you we cannot have the Nicola Vousvich that scored in single digits every single preseason game but one. And like I said with Mis, it’s preseason basketball. V is a vet. He very well knows, hey, I need to make it through preseason. I don’t want to get hurt. We we’ll get into the into the regular season. He knows that. So, if that’s going to be the thing, I am not mad at that at all. Not even remotely. But, I will say this, right? V has to show it this game. One of the best things about Vuch last year, he was the most consistent bull despite the hate that some Bulls fans throw at him, all that type of stuff. He was the most consistent bull for the entirety of the season, right? And so you need that. And a lot of this is going to go to Josh Giddy being more on ball. Nicolus was Josh Giddy’s most assisted player last season, right? That’s who he threw the most assists to. The big man point guard dynamic is really important, especially for a player like Nicolus who, you know, can create his own shot in the post. But if you have a point guard that can help him create that, that puts him in the best situations. That’s why he had one of his most efficient seasons with the Chicago Bulls last season was with playing with Josh Giddy. So, I think that that’s going to be an important duo, especially now with missing Kobe White. And so, we need Vu to give us something. And Vu has to get back to the player like I said that yeah it’s a defensive liability but at least bring the consistency offensively. Vu ain’t doing that. I don’t know what the value of Nicolus is out there and so Vu has to prove that value. Again I’m not saying this to crap on Vu. I’m just saying it as a real thing. The preseason was bad for Vu. It was really bad for Nicolola. And if it was almost any other player, I’d be more concerned about it. But with Vu being a veteran, Vuch being basically one of the most consistent players in the NBA offensively as far as what he provides when he’s not when he keeps his big ass in the paint and doesn’t take as many threes, right? Um so that that dynamic is going to be really important for the Bulls to figure that out in this season and to get Nick Lavich to be effective and efficient, right? So that’s what we what we’re looking at too. Next up, who steps up off the bench with one of Kevin Hurder or Iodumu being in the starting lineup, it does weaken that bench some, right? and Zack Collins is already gone. So, the first question is, how does Jaylen Smith do in a backup role? We’ve seen a lot of different versions of Jaylen Smith here in his time in Chicago, right? And I and again, I don’t say this to knock anybody. I want every player on my team to do well. And we’ve seen the efficient Jaylen Smith games. We’ve seen some very bad stretches of Jaylen Smith basketball as well where he can’t shoot and he still falls in love with the three. Very similar to what we see from Nicola sometimes. But now that Jaylen is in the rotation, he doesn’t have to worry about fighting for minutes. All he has to do is worry about losing minutes if he doesn’t play well. And it’s you look at the preseason for Jaylen, it was a lot of mixed bag stuff there for him as well, right? He had one game of 15 points and five rebounds. That was in the last game against the Minnesota uh Timberwolves. Other than that, he didn’t really shoot the ball all that well, right? Terrible from three. Only made two three-pointers the entirety of preseason. And I think he took like 15 of them, right? That’s off the top of my head. That may not be the exact number. Um, and so you need a Jaylen Smith that to me, not to say that I’m going to go to Jaylen and say, I need you to play Zack Collins, but I’m going to go to Jaylen and say, listen, if if you have the wide open three, take it. And that’s just a message for everyone. If you have a wide open three, take the three. Right? If the defense is slapping on collapsing on Josh Giddy, you’re the trail man or you pick and pop, take the open shot. No problem about that. Other than that, though, I want you in the paint, too. I want you being active, going after every single rebound offensively and defensively. Jaylen, crash the boards, right? And and that’s that’s what I want to see. And try to live off putbacks. Try to live off diving to the rim and letting our guards find you. That’s what I want to see from Jaylen, especially because Jaylen is a more mobile big, right? And so, you know, you get into that that transition offense is going to be right there for you. So, that’s what I want to see from Jaylen. How does he step up in Zack Collins absence? because those Jaylen Smith minutes are going to be important minutes for the Chicago Bulls this season. Then Trey, like Trey is one of the most consistent people. Like I know what Trey is going to do. I don’t necessarily know what the statistical output’s going to be, but I tell you Trey’s going to attack. He’s going to rebound well for his size. He’s going to make smart passes and he’s not really going to turn the ball over. Like that’s what Trey Jones is going to do. There’s going to be some times where where where Trey catches a scoring bug. And that’s great for the Bulls when he’s able to do that, right? Because it provides another one. Like I said earlier, Trey is a is a point guard that can score. He’s not a scoring point guard, right? So people that kind of make it seem like he because he shoots the ball efficiently, right? He’s going to shoot the ball 48 to 52%. Like he’s going to be efficient in the shots that he does take because he is smarter about the smarts that the shots that he takes. But if you’re looking for him to step into a void and providing a big scoring punch, that’s not really what he’s going to do consistently. There going to be some games where he gives that, but it’s not really what he’s going to do consistently, right? But I’m looking for Trey more so to organize that bench. We don’t have an offensive weapon coming off the bench now, especially if I in the starting lineup. If he is on the bench, then we have a bit of a scoring punch coming off the bench. But, um, you don’t have a lot of guys that can create their own shots. So, whether you’re looking at Jaylen or Jaylen Terry or Julian Phillips or even Patrick Williams, right? Trey Jones has an important job of helping get those guys in position, manipulating that defense to get them there, and then we’ll see what we can do. So, that’s a big question coming into this one as well is how how is Trey going to perform, but like I said, Trey’s pretty consistent as far as as far as just him playing basketball the right way. The statistical output can vary sometimes, right? And then with either Kevin Herder or IO Dumo in the starting lineup, who’s going to bring the scoring off the bench? If IO is coming off the bench, I feel a little bit more a little bit more um confident in the scoring coming off the bench because what we’ve seen in IO putting the ball on the floor, the quick first step to get to the rim, putting pressure on defenses. Um you know, he’s also going to be one of those players that start the fast break because he’s a solid rebounder and he does playing passing lanes. So all those things are going to be there for Io Dumu. if I was in the starting lineup and Kevin Hurder’s coming off the bench because Kevin Herder is more of a shooter than a scorer and that can always be streaky. I’m a little bit more worried about that, right? A little bit more concerned about how that looks for this uh Chicago Bulls team because like I like I keep pointing out before Kevin Herder came here, he was shooting 30% from three, right? And when you have a reputation as a shooter, that’s a bad number. Uh that’s a very bad number. He was coming off his two worst season shooting uh before and you know before that he had a 40 uh% three-point shooting season taking almost se seven per game. Then he fell down to 36. Then he fell down to 30% uh in Sacramento before he was traded to the Bulls last season and then with us they went back up to 37%. But on the season last year people forget because he w was such a hot shooter for the Bulls. He only shot 34% less than 34% from three as for his whole season last year. So, if Kevin Herder can bring the shooting consistently, that helps balance it out, right? Especially playing off Trey Jones, that type of thing. If Patrick Williams also has his shooting going, you know, that that’s something that can help this team. And we only got two games of Kevin Herder in preseason. And in that, he shot uh he shot what less than 30% from three. So, it’s a little concerning there, but we know that shooters, they can catch a streak at any time. And we’ll see what Kevin Hurder can do in his time there, right? And then um outside of that, I’m also looking at does Dalen Terry, Julian Phillips, P. Will, or an outside chance of Noah Essen make an impact in this game. I don’t know what the minutes rotation is going to look like for those guys, but in their minutes, do they make an impact? That’s what I’m looking for for those guys, especially the players that you know, well, you don’t know for sure if they’re going to play above 15 minutes. What do you do in the minutes that you do play? Does it is is your is your impact felt out there? Is your presence felt out there? Right? That’s what I’m looking at for those guys. I know that sounds like a low bar, but I’m just trying to set it there first because we’ve had different times with all those guys not really making an impact. They were on the court, but you really didn’t feel it, right? And so, I want to see that. I want to see Dalan with his last year before going into restricted free agency make an impact. I want to see Julian Phillips be able to do the same thing, right? and Pee Will. You guys know I’m not high on Pee-Wee Will by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m not going to act like in the role that he’s going to have here that PW can’t do some things to help the Bulls because he absolutely can. And then lastly, Billy Donovan’s coaching. I can’t overlook that. Physicality and defense were were the buzzwords this um you know, this training camp period. How much of that follows into now what the Bulls do and how they balance themselves during the regular season? That’s a huge question there. And that’s what I’m looking at from this team as well is that, you know, do we see the improvement and the consistency from them physically and defensively, right? I don’t expect the Bulls to be a top 10 defense, but I want to see total effort with the team on defense. Team defense is what can get you there, right? And so that’s what I want to see from this Bulls team. Also from Billy Donovan, how does he balance the rotations in the lineup that that of course the starting lineup? We talked about that at the start of the show. But then as the es and flow of the game goes, do we see Billy Donovan get back to some things where he pulls a guy that’s getting hot, right? Do you ride the hot hand? Do you allow players to catch their rhythm? Those type of things. Do you pull players when they’re clearly hurting the team? Those are the type of things I’m looking at for for this game today. And we’ll see, right? And as always, especially with a team like the Detroit Pistons that are well coached and sound defensively, how does Billy Donovan make adjustments in this game? If he makes those solid adjustments, things are going to look really good for the Bulls. If he does not, it can get ugly. It can get very ugly for this team real quick. So, that’s the things that we’re looking for in this game. The Detroit Pistons are coming in. They’re looking for a 50- win season this year. They’re trying to be one of the top teams in the East. The Bulls are trying to prove that last season’s end wasn’t a fluke. This is a game of two rivals that have been that for their entire their their almost the entire existence of both their franchises and this is going to be a fun game. The game’s going down 7 pm Chicago time. We will be live for the game. So make sure you guys stay in tune with us for that. Um but you guys can follow us at Bull Central Pod. You send us any feedback, questions, comments, concerns, bulls central.com. And lastly, if you want to leave a text message and our voicemail for the mailbag, the number to do so, 773-270-2799. We are the number one spot for everything Chicago Bulls related. But that is thanks to you lovely and beautiful people. And like I like to end every episode on go Bulls. Love you guys. See you ready for y’all. Peace. This has been a presentation of the Break Media. [Music]

Haize breaks down how the Bulls can manage the absence of Coby White heading into the regular season. Can Josh Giddey handle the pressure of running the offense and still score enough? Will Matas Buzelis follow up his strong preseason? Plus, Haize dives into Billy Donovan’s rotations, Nikola Vučević’s inconsistency, and who can step up off the bench with Zach Collins out.

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