Chicago Bulls: 3 goals for Zach LaVine in 2018-19

3. Be a better playmaker

In his young career, LaVine is best known for his high flying dunking ability. His All-Star Weekend Dunk Contest performances are unforgettable. What LaVine is not known for, is his ability to make his teammates better.

While LaVine’s athleticism has returned following his injury, we’ve yet to see LaVine live up to his potential as a playmaker.

For his career, LaVine has a career assist average of 3.2 assists per game. He has never averaged more than 3.6 assists per game in his career, and that was as a 19-year-old rookie. In fact, LaVine’s assist average has gone down each season of his career.

Last season’s sample size is small, yet it’s not far off his career averages.

For example, in 2017-18, LaVine’s assist percentage was 18.8 percent. This is the percentage of LaVine’s teammates’ made field goals he assisted on.

To put this number in perspective, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder led the league with a 46.3 percent average, according to cleaningtheglass.com.

This stat is somewhat subjective, as the more a player has the ball in his hands, the more opportunities he may have to assist.

However, when considering the assist to usage ratio which more accurately measures how good of a passer a player is, LaVine’s ratio was 0.62. This number fell behind players like Chandler Parsons, Justise Winslow and Luke Kennard.

In short, with Jabari Parker and Lauri Markkanen as teammates, LaVine is going to have to be better at setting up his teammates for easy scores.

As a shooting guard, his job is first to score points, but as a slash-to-the-rim type player, his ability to kick out for open shots would be huge for this offense.