{"id":669620,"date":"2026-03-20T22:49:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T22:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/669620\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T22:49:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T22:49:21","slug":"bulls-notes-miller-smith-ball-okoro-donovan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/669620\/","title":{"rendered":"Bulls Notes: Miller, Smith, Ball, Okoro, Donovan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Third-year forward Leonard Miller<\/a> has been a bright spot for the Bulls over the past couple weeks, writes Michael Grange of Sportsnet.ca<\/a>. The 22-year-old Torontonian rarely received playing time in his two-and-a-half seasons in Minnesota, but he\u2019s getting an opportunity to showcase his abilities with Chicago.<\/p>\n

Over his last six games<\/a>, Miller is averaging 13.2 points and 7.2 rebounds in 29.8 minutes per contest, with a shooting line of .533\/.300\/.872. The Bulls acquired him in the Ayo Dosunmu<\/a> trade ahead of last month\u2019s deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, he\u2019s got a really good motor. He\u2019s good on the glass,\u201d said head coach Billy Donovan. \u201cI think, like any young player who did not really get a chance to play a lot early in his career \u2026 he\u2019s got to get better in terms of the game plan and discipline, knowing the league, knowing who he\u2019s guarding, those kinds of things.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think he shoots the ball fairly well. He can put it on the floor some. I think he can be a very, very promising guy for us. I think what he\u2019s done to this point in time, in a short period of time (of) getting the opportunity to play, he\u2019s taking full advantage of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bulls hold a $2.4MM team option on Miller for 2026\/27. If they decline the option, he would be a restricted free agent this summer.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more from Chicago:<\/p>\n

Big man Jalen Smith<\/a> was disappointed in the Bulls\u2019 effort following Wednesday\u2019s loss to Toronto, according to Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times<\/a>. \u201cWe had no fight,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThis is the third time we\u2019ve played them and we\u2019ve gotten punked. At the end of the day we just got to want it. We\u2019ve got to have that fight and we have to have that grit. I honestly couldn\u2019t tell you [why], it\u2019s basketball so every day isn\u2019t going to be perfect, but we\u2019ve got to figure out what else can we do to impact the game. It\u2019s just a mental game right now for us.\u201d
\nWith the Cavs visiting on Thursday, Donovan reflected on last summer\u2019s trade that sent Lonzo Ball<\/a> to Cleveland and Isaac Okoro<\/a> to Chicago, per Cowley<\/a>. Donovan has been pleased with Okoro\u2019s play and team-first attitude, but feels empathy for Ball, who is an unrestricted free agent after he was salary dumped to Utah and subsequently waived by the Jazz. \u201cI loved him as a player and a guy, and he was so cerebral,\u201d Donovan said of Ball, who missed nearly three calendar years with a knee injury. \u201cHe was so selfless, that\u2019s really one of the things I admired. To see him have to go through what he went through, to fight to get back, see what he\u2019s going through now, that\u2019s tough for me because it\u2019s almost like what could have been, how good could he have been?\u201c
\nDosunmu said on Tuesday that mid-range shots were \u201creally prohibited\u201d during his time with the Bulls, but Donovan pushed back on that notion, as Cowley writes in another story<\/a>. Donovan pointed out that DeMar DeRozan<\/a>, Zach LaVine<\/a> and Nikola Vucevic<\/a> all took a good amount of mid-range jumpers while Dosunmu was on the team. \u201cI think you have to play to players\u2019 strengths, so I\u2019m a believer in the first part of the shot clock you certainly want to try and get something downhill to the basket, and generally what happens is when the ball gets into the paint and the ball gets sprayed out that\u2019s when the threes are going to go up,\u201d Donovan said in part. \u201cMost of the time the mid-range stuff is coming off (isolation) situations. It\u2019s late clock, a guy is stuck with the ball, and at that time you\u2019ve got to manufacture and generate shots.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Third-year forward Leonard Miller has been a bright spot for the Bulls over the past couple weeks, writes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[4102,7,920,919,329,3824,3891,2291,14489,4442,6],"class_list":["post-669620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bulls","tag-ayo-dosunmu","tag-basketball","tag-bulls","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-chicagobulls","tag-isaac-okoro","tag-jalen-smith","tag-leonard-miller","tag-lonzo-ball","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116263948504167020","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}