Zach LaVine Is Out Here Looking Like He May Finally Crack An All Star Team Next Season
It’s been a big summer for Zach LaVine coming off the best season of his young career where he played in 63 games and put up a very respectable 23.7/4.7/4.5 on 46/37% splits with just under 2.0 3PM a night. A couple seasons removed from his ACL injury, LaVine is really starting to come into his own as a legit #1 scoring option on a young but intriguing Bulls team. Back in June we saw him and his Dad get right to work in what looked like a pretty grueling workout
but this video above is really the first we’ve seen from him in any sort of open run setting. Safe to say he is very much the walking bucket we saw last year, in fact I’d argue he’s looking even better. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it couldn’t matter less to me who the competition is in these open runs, every fanbase deserves to get excited about their best players looking awesome. It’s late August and we’re rapidly approaching training camp, so let Bulls fans have this. They’re in a rebuilding phase and honestly if healthy should be much better than the 22 win team we saw last year. That shit was to tank for Zion which didn’t work, but Coby White is their point guard of the future and is certainly no joke. Another year of development from Baby Dirk, Otto Porter Jr looked decent in his time in CHI last year, Thad Young was a good depth piece and we’ll finally get to see what Wendell Carter Jr is all about. There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic as a Bulls fan.
But of course, it all really comes down to LaVine. While his offensive game is elite, Bulls fans know that already. I’m sure they’d be just as hyped to see LaVine doing defensive drills or something because that’s the most obvious weakness in his game. Scoring 30 a night is great, but it’s meaningless if you’re giving up 30 right back. If his defense can make the same leap his offense certainly has, it wouldn’t shock me if the hometown kid got an All Star nod in CHI this year. He did finish 7th in backcourt voting last year just for reference and I could see him jumping Oladipo (hurt) and Kyle Lowry. That may sound crazy, but I’m buying healthy Zach LaVine stock. Dude is a problem.