Tag: Coby White

Coby White falling in Most Improved Player race in recent rankings

In a recent Most Improved Player award rankings, Chicago Bulls guard Coby White dropped into second place.

As the Chicago Bulls have played their way to a middle-of-the-pack record for another season, fans have been begging the front office to rebuild. Yet for the third straight year, the Bulls decided to stand pat and do nothing at the trade deadline, leaving fans to root for the same guys for another straight year. Luckily, Coby White has given them something extra to be excited about.

White has emerged as a legitimate star this season for the Bulls, something fans have been yearning for since he was drafted. With Zach LaVine injured, he’s had a chance to take on a larger role, and he’s been in the Most Improved Player conversation.

However, in Grant Hughes of Bleacher Report’s recent rankings, White fell to second in the MIP race, giving way to Oklahoma City Thunder wing Jalen Williams.

“White’s strides are real. He looks like a legitimate starter who can impact the game on both ends, which wasn’t the case a year ago,” Hughes wrote. “But much like the leap from 50 wins to 60 wins is tougher in a team context than the climb from 40 to 50, we need to acknowledge that Williams’ jump is at a higher elevation than White’s.”

White has a real shot to win the award, but there are some other guys who could overtake him if he continues to slump.

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Billy Donovan credits Coby White’s energy in Bulls win over Pacers

After the Chicago Bulls’ win over the Indiana Pacers, Billy Donovan credited Coby White’s constant energy.

The Chicago Bulls absolutely obliterated the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night, winning by a score of 125-99. It was a blowout win for the vast majority of the game, and Chicago’s defense was the big story. They became the first team to hold the Pacers to under 100 points this season.

Offensively, DeMar DeRozan led the way with 27 points, and Nikola Vucevic posted a double-double. Coby White, on the other hand, struggled to find his footing. His recent struggles continued as he had another relatively inefficient night against the Pacers. But that didn’t stop him from making an impact on the game.

After the contest, head coach Billy Donovan praised White’s energy and attentiveness throughout the game in spite of his struggles. (H/t Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune)

“He didn’t have a great shooting night at all, but he was into the game,” Donovan said. “He was into it on the bench, he was into it in huddles. He did a phenomenal job. It brought a lot of life to our team.”

White finished the night with 18 points on 8-of-21 shooting from the field and 2-of-5 shooting from behind the three-point line.

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Could one of the Bulls’ young guards be up for some full-season awards?

Not all has been lost with Chicago’s 2023-24 season.

This Chicago Bulls season has been almost anything but what fans of the team hoped they would be getting, even before it started. Point guard Lonzo Ball started the Bulls’ 2023-24 campaign on the bench, and before the NBA’s 2024 trade deadline (or perhaps because of it), fellow Chicago starting guard Zach LaVine joined him as out for the season injured.

But wait, there’s more! Not only did the team’s front office stand pat at the deadline for the this season running, but starting forward Patrick Williams went down injured for the rest of the season as well. The small silver lining for Bulls fans is the growth of reserve guards Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu, made possible in part by those injuries.

Could one of Chicago’s young guards be up for some full-season awards as a result?

The host of the “Chicago Bulls Central” podcast, Haize, weighed in on the possibility on a recent episode of his show. Check it out above!

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Coby White discusses underlying Bulls defensive problem

Coby White recently spoke about an underlying problem of the Chicago Bulls’ defense.

For the past few years, the Chicago Bulls’ offense has been pretty one-dimensional. They’ve been a mid-range-heavy team thanks, in part, to the play of DeMar DeRozan. However, last season, they managed to earn a place as the fifth-best defense in the league. This year, they rank 20th, and since the All-Star break, the Bulls are the fifth-worst defense in the league.

As of now, the Bulls are almost certainly going to play the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the Play-In Tournament. Since that’s the case, they’ll need to lock in on defense. That said, Coby White doesn’t see their entire defense as the issue but rather a niche part of their defense.

He recently noted that while the Bulls have been playing good first-shot defense, it’s been their inability to close out possessions that’s giving them problems. (H/t Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune)

“Our first-shot defense has been good,” White said. “It’s just the offensive rebounds, which lead to the kick-out 3s and wide-open 3s and defensive breakdowns. We’ve just got to limit them to one shot.”

Chicago needs to do a better job at ending possessions with a rebound.

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Coby White has high praise for Celtics after tough Bulls loss

After the Chicago Bulls’ loss to the Boston Celtics, Coby White had some high praise for the East’s top seed.

The Chicago Bulls overcame a 5-14 start to the season and are now in place to have a spot in the Play-In Tournament. Unless there is a massive shift, they will be playing the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the Play-In, but the rest of the season should be used to generate a rhythm and maintain their spot as the nine seed in the East.

They took on the Boston Celtics on Saturday night, who are in a much different place than the Bulls. Boston has maintained their place atop the Eastern Conference for almost the entire season, and if the Milwaukee Bucks lose on Sunday night, they will have clinched the one seed in March.

After the Bulls’ loss on Saturday night, Coby White praised the Celtics’ ability to win games regardless of who is available to play in a video posted to Twitter by Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune. (H/t Noa Dalzell of CelticsBlog)

“It don’t really matter who plays for them,” White said. “They play really well. They stick to their identity. They’ve been having dudes in and out of the line-up for three weeks and they win games.”

White finished the game with 11 points, five rebounds, and 10 assists while shooting 3-of-11 from the field and 1-of-4 from beyond the three-point arc.

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Are Ayo Dosunmu and Coby White the right duo for the Chicago Bulls to build around?

There is more than one way to build a contender.

In many corners of Chicago Bulls media, it seems all but decided that guards Ayo Dosunmu and Coby White are the players that the Bulls’ front office ought to be building around in the future. But are these two young players really good enough to be the focal point of a Chicago rebuild?

If the goal of the franchise is to get back to title contention, there is a legit argument to be made that these two guards simply are not good enough to get the Bulls into such rarefied air. But there is more than one way to build a contender, and having a player or two to trade for a superstar certainly is one of them.

To talk over what exactly the role of Dosunmu and White could be in a Bulls rebuild moving forward, the host of the “Chicago Bulls Central” podcast, Haize, took a closer look on a recent episode.

Take a look at the clip embedded above to hear what they had to say.

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Coby White speaks about interrupted rhythm after Bulls loss to Celtics

After the Chicago Bulls’ loss to the Boston Celtics, Coby White spoke about his rhythm.

The Chicago Bulls welcomed the Boston Celtics to town on Saturday night after a one-night trip to Texas for a date with the Houston Rockets. They lost that game in blowout fashion, as the red-hot Rockets stormed ahead after the firs quarter and didn’t look back. Unfortunately for Chicago, Boston took them down, too.

Coby White returned to action against the Rockets after a three-game absence. He missed some time with a hip injury after getting bodied by Pascal Siakam in Chicago’s win over the Indiana Pacers. White shot 5-of-13 against the Rockets, and against Boston, he shot 3-of-11 against the Celtics.

After the loss to Boston, White spoke about how missing time disrupts a player’s rhythm. (H/t Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times)

“At this point of the season when you miss a week, it feels like a lot longer than that,” White said. “So for me, I don’t want to force it. Just let the game come to me. I’m just trying to go out there and contribute any way I can right now.”

White has been crucial to the Bulls’ success this year, so they need him to get back to himself as soon as possible.

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Billy Donovan compares Bulls’ Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu to Joakim Noah

Dosunmu and White are the future of the Bulls organization moving forward — and for exactly the sort of reasons Donovan notes.

When the NBA team you play for happens to be coached by a man who won national titles at the NCAA level says you remind him of one of the key players who helped to make that possible, things are going well for you.

And, in the midst of the 2024 NCAA tourney, Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan went out of his way to say that Bulls guards Ayo Dosunmu and Coby White remind him of Florida Gators national champion big man Joakim Noah. For the younger basketball fans out there, that is very high praise indeed, even if Noah’s heyday was more than 15 years in the past.

But Dosunmu and White are the future of the Bulls organization moving forward — and for exactly the sort of reasons Donovan notes.

Speaking on a recent episode of their show, the hosts of the “CHGO Bulls” podcast took some time to let us know why this is the case. Check it out above!

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Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu have proven to be foundational for the Bulls

The questions of what to do next in terms of roster building still lingers, but the hardest part of a rebuild has been solved.

The Chicago Bulls have been in need of a rebuild for some time now, but the ball club appears to have lucked into the players they would have needed to find by stripping it down without trying.

And while you will find few NBA analysts who will tell you that this is a wise way to go about retooling a roster, so far, the rise of guards Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu has taken a lot of pressure off of the Bulls’ front office. The questions of what to do next in terms of roster building still lingers, but the hardest part of a rebuild has been solved by good luck as much as anything.

On a recent episode, the hosts of the “Locked On Bulls” podcast, Haize and Pat the Designer, sat down to talk us though all of the above in the video embedded below.

Check it out for yourself to hear what they had to say!

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Coby White has Paul George’s vote for Most Improved Player

Former UNC point guard Coby White is putting up career numbers with the Chicago Bulls this year. Could he be the NBA’s Most Improved Player?

When a basketball team loses its starting point guard, it loses the orchestrator of its offense.

Such was the case with the Chicago Bulls entering the 2022-2023 season, who lost Lonzo Ball to a knee surgery. Ball has since suffered complications, delaying his return to the court.

Luckily for Chicago, it has another budding star at point guard in Coby White, who spent his lone collegiate season at UNC in 2018-2019. White helped lead North Carolina to the Sweet 16 that season, when it lost in the Sweet 16 to Auburn, by averaging 16.1 points per game.

White hasn’t started a majority of the Bulls’ games in three years, but is making the most of his opportunities. He’s averaging a career-high 19.6 points per game, which ranks Top-50 in the NBA, while reaching double-digits in 60 of Chicago’s 62 games.

This type of play is gaining White national attention, including from future Hall-of-Famer Paul George.

To give you an idea of how good PG is, he’s a 9-time All-Star and 2-time All-Defensive First Team. He’s part of a loaded Los Angeles Clippers squad with James Harden and Kawhi Leonard, one that’s expected to contend for its first NBA title.

The Bulls (34-35) have been hovering around .500 most of the year, but White has them ninth in the Eastern Conference. This would normally put them outside of the playoffs, but introduction of the Play-In Tournament has Chicago 3.5 games ahead of the Atlanta Hawks for that final spot.

Unless White’s Bulls suffer an epic late-season collapse, he’ll lead them back to the playoffs for the first time in two years.

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