Feeling Giddey: Guard stating his case as Bulls’ primary rebuilding block
Zach LaVine's departure from the Bulls was bound to benefit someone on the team.
Coby White seemed like the natural choice to take a step forward, since that's what happened last year when LaVine left with an injury.
Instead, it's been Josh Giddey hitting the escalator. With his usage rate rising, Giddey has averaged 24.3 points, 12.0 rebounds and 8 assists since the all-star break.
“The break was much needed for me personally,” Giddey said after Wednesday's 122-117 loss to the Clippers. “I was in Cabo on the beach. It was a great five days to get away. I didn't touch a basketball, I didn't think about basketball. I just got away from the game and when I came back, I felt refreshed and ready to go.”
Giddey delivered another stat-stuffer against the Clippers, finishing with 21 points, 12 assists and 8 rebounds. The Bulls actually set a franchise record for most 3-pointers made in a season with 942, and it's only Game No. 59.
With both Nikola Vucevic (calf strain) and Jalen Smith (concussion) sidelined, Zach Collins got plenty of run in this game, piling up 21 points and a career-high 17 rebounds.
“(Giddey) has been on a heck of a run lately,” Collins said. “We're all beneficiaries of that for sure. He’s drawing a lot of attention the way he puts pressure on the rim, the way he's shooting the ball right now.”
As the Bulls try to figure out what they've got moving forward, Giddey and rookie Matas Buzelis are starting to look like the two main rebuilding blocks.
The Bulls are piling up players who can both score and create. Giddey is one, White has always done better as the lead guard, Lonzo Ball came up as a traditional point guard, though his style has changed. Buzelis also fits into the group as sort of a taller, more athletic, less polished version of Giddey.
“It's an easy team to fit in with personnel-wise,” Giddey said. “Locker room-wise, it's a great group of guys. We're all kind of buying into the way we want to play, both sides of the ball.”
Long-range shooting has obviously been a huge change for the Australia native. Heading into this season, he was a career 31% shooter from behind the 3-point line. Since Jan. 1, he's hitting 44.2% of his 3-point attempts, which would rank top-10 in the NBA if he could keep it up.
In the last five games, Giddey has hit an incredible 17 of 22 attempts from 3-point range, good for 77%. Giddey had some hot-shooting stretches the past two years in Oklahoma City and couldn't sustain it. Maybe this year is different, since he just scored 20 points in four consecutive games for the first time in the NBA.
Bulls vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas might try to remake the roster this summer. The Bulls almost certainly need to go big with their first-round draft pick. With an abundance of guards, he might consider moving White or Ayo Dosunmu, especially if the Bulls could land any sort of defensive presence in return.
As it stands, the Bulls are 13 games below .500, but they are still in 10th place in the East, which would send them back to the play-in tournament, and they've had three narrow losses since the break. On Wednesday, White had a good look at a 3-pointer for the tie but missed with 38 seconds left.
“I think we've showed we can compete with anybody,” Giddey said. “It's just a matter of figuring out how to close these games out.”
Rolling Meadows High School graduate Cam Christie, a second-round draft pick of the Clippers, was on a G-League assignment and not with the team Wednesday in Chicago.