Why Lonzo Ball turned out to be fool's gold for the Bulls
When the Bulls acquired Lonzo Ball in August 2021, Chicago hoped he would be a magic elixir for everything that had ailed the team, but he's really only fool's gold.
At the time, the team believed his point-of-attack defense and ability to navigate through screens created the perfect fit in the drop coverage coach Billy Donovan wanted to use with his centers.
In their first season together, Ball and fellow guard Alex Caruso forced numerous turnovers that led to easy transition scores. Ball's improved three-point shot (career-best 42.3% in '21-22) helped open driving lanes for Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan.
From a coaching standpoint, Ball's presence finally allowed Donovan to deploy his offensive system.
But the announcement in March that Ball would undergo yet another surgery on his ailing left knee, sidelining him indefinitely, has all but erased dreams that he could be a catalyst for the team's turnaround. In August, per ESPN, Ball said he also would miss the 2023-24 season after missing all last season.
Perhaps the brief presence of Ball — who played in only 35 games his first season in Chicago — simply was a mirage for the front office, coaches, players and fans.
As much as the Bulls and their fans may stew about what could have been, we must focus on the facts. Thirty-five games is not enough of a sample size to conclude that anything the Bulls showed during the 2021-22 season, when they finished 46-36, was sustainable.
In the games Ball played, Chicago went 22-13 during the stretch of the season in which players are either playing themselves into game shape or waiting for mid-December to start ramping up their games.
Per StatMuse, the Bulls had a solid defensive rating of 106.3 when Ball and Caruso shared the floor in 2021-22. The problem was they only played 26 games together.
To put that number into context, through 33 games under Jim Boylen in 2019, the Bulls defensive rating was 99.8.
The Bulls enjoyed a top-rated offense with a healthy Ball, but interestingly enough Chicago center Nikola Vucevic's offensive efficiency dropped considerably throughout that same season.
In 2021-22, Ball had the lowest assist total average of his career (5.1 per game) while his Player Efficiency Rating slipped almost one full point, from 15.23 to 14.49 over the previous season.
There is limited data to suggest that Ball, a career 36.4% three-point shooter, would continue the upward trajectory he showed from distance earlier in his career. And there is substantially less data to project how Ball's presence would have impacted Patrick Williams' potential growth as the season continued.
It was always a bettor's gamble for the Bulls (40-42 in 2022-23) to go all-in on a player like Ball, given his injury history. As any experienced bettor would tell you, if you obsess over failed gambles, you just might have a problem.
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