Chicago Bulls: Should Coby White become a starter going forward?

Chicago Bulls’ point guard Coby White’s flashy game passes the eye test, but is he good enough to become a viable starting point guard?

Before the COVID-19 outbreak brought the 2019-20 NBA season to a halt in March, the Chicago Bulls gave us a glimpse of what rookie point guard Coby White could do in the starting lineup.

The early returns were promising: the former North Carolina Tar Heel dropped a team-high 20 points with five rebounds and five assists in a 108-103 victory against the Cleveland Cavaliers on March 10, with the Bulls outscoring Cleveland by nine points when he was on the floor.

Obviously, this performance comes with the caveats that this was only one game and it came against another bad team that features one of the worst defensive backcourts in the league, but making NBA doormats look like the inept buffoons they are is exactly what good players should do on a regular basis.

Shouldn’t they blow past players who fall over as though someone forgot to leave out a “Wet Floor” sign?

And feast on obvious mismatches?

So, is this performance enough evidence to prove that White belongs in the starting lineup whenever the season resumes (if it resumes)? Well, it’s not that simple.

One good game — one that wasn’t even one of his best of the season, if you go by Game Score — doesn’t obfuscate the blunt truth: White hasn’t been good this year. Among 199 qualified players, White ranks 158th with an 11.6 Player Efficiency Rating (PER).

If win shares per 48 minutes (WS/48) are more of your jam, I regret to inform you that it doesn’t think highly of Coby White either: he ranks 187th with an abhorrent .025 tally (.100 is the league average, by the way). And, if you want to get technical about it, Chicago improves when the seventh overall pick in the 2019 draft is on the bench; with White out of the lineup, the Bulls’ net rating jumps up by 2.7 points per 100 possessions.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to like about White’s game as an offensive catalyst and off-ball threat. Here’s White flashing some of his shiftiness while changing direction on presumptive Rookie of the Year Ja Morant:

He can also make opponents pay for keying in on him too strongly, as he did on this dime to Kris Dunn against a scrambled Memphis Grizzlies defense:

Or when he came off of double screens to find Denzel Valentine in the corner:

White also possesses a rapid-fire release, which he uses on spot-up attempts:

And as the finishing move following his lightning-quick stepback:

That said, these flashes of brilliance have often come with some concerns. Offensively, White’s propensity for pull-ups and floaters in lieu of traditional layups and trips to the foul line (203rd of 267 qualified players in free throw attempt rate) inhibits whatever value he has as a playmaker (116th among 259 guards in assist rate) and a scorer.

And let’s not get started on his defense. Both Box Plus/Minus (BPM) and FiveThirtyEight’s RAPTOR metric rate him as one of the league’s most anemic defenders, and the points per possession (PPP) he allows in isolation (1.05; 27th percentile), on spot-ups (1.21; 10th percentile), and off-ball screens (1.09; 27th percentile) back those assessments up.

To be fair, White slowed down ball screens at an elite level — 0.68 PPP allowed, which put him in the 92nd percentile, albeit in a small sample size — but his slight build makes these sorts of plays difficult for him:

For his many, many flaws, Bulls head coach Jim Boylen deserves the tiniest possible amount of credit for hiding White away from the ball to mask some of his shortcomings, if this was even his doing. But do you think that the team would have that luxury if he cracked the starting five, especially playing alongside Zach LaVine, who’s just as awful on defense, if not worse, as he is?

Given everything we’ve learned about and what we’ve seen from White this season on offense and defense, giving White starters’ minutes seems absurd. But is it any more preposterous than anything else this team has done over the last few years?

Making such a change would be a risk, for sure, but even with all of those warning signs, making White the starter going forward still feels like the right choice, especially with Dunn — who doesn’t possess the offensive upside White does but is a far superior defender — set to hit restricted free agency in the summer.

Will he continue to struggle for stretches due to his shot-chucking tendencies? Absolutely. Is there a chance that he and LaVine can’t mesh as a backcourt duo? Very much so. But with a new Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations coming in and plenty of uncertainty regarding how the Bulls will look in the near future, the time is now to see what they have in a young guard who, much like this team, still has plenty of room to grow.