As I think about the chances of the 2015-16 Bulls making any sort of serious noise on the NBA scene, I'm afraid that my thoughts always fall on Mirotic. If he can make the transition from interesting Euro rookie to a top-10 PF, the Bulls might just be more than playoff fodder for Lebron's Cavs. If not, the boost is going to have to come from McDermott (I'm hopeful, but not optimistic) or not at all. Thoughts?
We had a thread at the end of the season about which player is most likely to break out next season. I think the general consensus, me included, was that it was McDermott, followed by Mirotic and Snell. My thought at the time was that Mirtoic's playoff performance showed that he still needed to grow into his body before he would be a consistent force. I think we may have been overreacting at the time to his poor performance in the playoffs. I think we can reasonably be optimistic about Mirotic's chances for becoming a pretty darn good player this upcoming season. He killed it for an entire month offensively, and I think he could become a good defender and rebounder, if perhaps, never a rim protector. Young bigs usually get better; much better. That's exciting. An improved Mirotic completely changes the team dynamic and offensive spacing. As to the second of your post -- that internal improvement has to come for Mirotic or McDermott or not at all -- I don't agree. I think we've been pretty bad about predicting where internal improvements will come from. Nobody around here thought Butler was going to kill it like he did last season. Internal improvements can come from anywhere. It could be Snell, it could be Gibson or Noah, or unfortunately nobody. We don't know what this upcoming season will bring.
I agree that Mirotic's ascendance is the most likely spot of internal improvement. It's not clear at all that Doug or Snell have high ceilings as NBA players. However, I think there's an underestimated chance that we see significant improvement from Noah, Rose, and (surprise)......Jimmy Butler.
It is a must if we are to come out of the east. Fred has to find a way to help him step up to the next level. We need other things to happen as well. We have discussed them in other threads.
I think I agree with you, but there were times last season where I had to turn my head away. He's obviously offensively skilled, but he's also a hard worker. While I don't completely agree with those who say that defense is nothing but "want-to," it is a pre-requisite and Mirotic has this. I also sense that he has a good BBIQ. However, I don't like him defensively on the wing...not enough quick-twitch for a lot of wing match-ups. I loves me some Taj Gibson, but it seems to me that one of these guys has to take precedence over the other at PF this season. My best case is that Hoiberg is able to get Gibson some time at center with Mirotic getting 30+ at PF.
