Newcomer Craig trying to get Bulls talking
Bulls forward Torrey Craig grew up in Great Falls, S.C., a town of less than 2,000 people about 55 miles south of Charlotte. His high school was in the lowest level of competition in South Carolina.
There weren't many showcase camps or AAU tournaments in his life growing up.
"Yeah, I lived in the country, off of a dirt road," Craig said. "I had one basketball hoop on a light pole. That was definitely isolated."
He played in college at USC-Upstate, then went to Australia and New Zealand for three years before finally catching on with the Denver Nuggets in 2017 and making his NBA debut at 26.
Somewhere along the way, he went from shooting baskets by himself to becoming a great team player and communicator.
"The thing with him that we need is he does not stop talking," Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. "He's very positive on the bench and he's constantly communicating on the floor defensively. And he plays with a lot of motor and physicality."
Craig spent three years with the Nuggets, while the Nikola Jokic-Jamal Murray nucleus was first coming together. Then in 2020-21, he split his time between both NBA Finals participants, Milwaukee and Phoenix. After a brief stop in Indiana, Craig returned to the Suns and started a career-high 60 games last season.
Not only does Craig bring the sort of mental toughness and work ethic needed to reach the NBA after not being drafted, he also has knowledge gained from playing on contending teams.
"I felt like that was part of my decision coming to this team, to try to impact the younger players on the team," Craig said. "I knew they had a talented squad, so I just wanted to use my knowledge, what I learned from those good teams and bring it here and share with them. To get over the hump, you need those little things."
The 6-foot-7 forward seemed to be a good fit when he signed with the Bulls during the summer. Four preseason games have shown Craig might be even more valuable in practice.
He's a glue guy who does the little things to help a team win. He finished Tuesday's preseason game with 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks and a steal. He showed impressive hustle to block a fastbreak dunk attempt by Toronto's Gary Trent Jr. in the third quarter.
Where Patrick Williams has a tendency to get lost and turn passive when he's on the floor with the Bulls starters, Craig knows how to fit in with high-volume shooters. So he offers the Bulls a different look when they need it and he can help coach Williams on how it should be done.
"This is one of the quietest teams I've been on and that's expected from a young group," Craig said. "I just try to talk as much as I can and relay it to the young guys so they start talking, because that's when we're at our best.
"That's what I learned being on good teams, they communicate at a high level. It makes everything that much easier, especially playing defense and running sets on offense and directing traffic and things of that nature. I think the more vocal we get as a team, the better off we'll be."
Against Toronto, the Bulls looked sharp at times, incredibly sloppy at others. They piled up 23 turnovers and after the game, Donovan pointed to the 3-point total. He wants the Bulls shooting more 3s this year and they went 9 of 26 on Tuesday.
"We have too many shots we're passing up," Donovan said. "Not that we want to take 50 (3-pointers), but we had an opportunity, in my opinion, to take another 10.
"What we're doing is we're shot-faking and we're trying to drive the ball, but we're not even going to the rim, we're going to the elbow and stopping and trying to pass and we're ending up with a more difficult shot than you had prior to that."
The Bulls open the regular season Wednesday against Oklahoma City.
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