Chicago Bulls: 3 ways Zach LaVine is changing people’s opinion of him

The Chicago Bulls are a young team, but offensive star Zach LaVine looks to have finally found a place that will appreciate his game.

So much of how a player is judged, especially early in their career, is which organization drafts them. A famous example of this over the last decade is that of DeMarcus Cousins, who toiled away on a poor Sacramento Kings team that nobody watched or cared about for far too long.

He put up monster numbers and was an All-Star, and at his peak, there was probably a top 20 player in the league. Yet most of that is forgotten because the Kings were a franchise with no clear direction, and the efforts of Cousins were chalked up to a superstar unable to lift everybody else out of the doldrums.

Zach LaVine is another such player who has suffered in the same way. He spent years with the Minnesota Timberwolves, being overshadowed on underachieving squads by Karl Anthony-Towns and Andrew Wiggins. Unlike Wiggins however, LaVine is now on his second team, the Chicago Bulls, and it has given him a new lease of life.

There is nothing like a change of scenery, and coach and system, to make us completely re-evaluate how we see a player. If LaVine were still with the Timberwolves for example, would his continued ability to be an elite player offensively actually be viewed more favorably around Anthony-Towns and Anthony Edwards?

In Chicago, and next to a different supporting cast, that is what LaVine has looked to do so far this season. Talk of a first All-Star appearance, in the actual game this time, doesn’t seem out of reach at this moment either. This begs the question, is LaVine now changing people’s perception of him?