Chicago Bulls: Zach LaVine’s 5 best games of the season

4. Nov. 23 vs. Charlotte Hornets

If you don’t watch a ton of Bulls games — and no one would blame you if you didn’t — and you only viewed LaVine through the lens of a box score or the occasional highlight reel, your mind would probably conjure up an image of a player who dribbles a bunch and eats up most of the shot clock trying to whip up some offense.

Given that LaVine ranks ninth in the league in usage rate and shoots pull-ups 37.8 percent of the time, those presumptions wouldn’t be too far off, but they belie how versatile the wing’s offensive repertoire is. Of the 20 attempts LaVine averages per game, a little more than half come after two dribbles, so he knows how to mine some scoring out of many situations.

Against the Charlotte Hornets on Nov. 23, LaVine flashed some of his off-ball prowess. Finishing with a season-high 49 points while making 13 of 17 3-pointers, he inflicted most of his damage on off-ball screens and as the beneficiary of drive-and-kicks.

Here’s LaVine keeping the floor spaced early in the game, with Tomas Satoransky feeding him when he recognizes that Charlotte’s defense is out of position:

A few plays later, a penetrating Dunn catches three Hornets ball watching, so he kicks it out to LaVine in the same spot:

This got LaVine into a groove once the time came for him to score off the dribble:

He was felling himself so much, he even tried this Stephen Curry-esque 3:

All of this built to LaVine’s 27-point fourth-quarter outburst, which included this game-winner as time expired, much to the Hornets’ announcers’ dismay: