Bulls hoping Bitim can help fix a past mistake
Bulls management has made a long list of horrendous mistakes, especially since 2015.
Learning from those errors would at least be a step in the right direction. So on Wednesday against Cleveland, the Bulls unleashed Onuralp Bitim.
He's an athletic 6-6 shooting guard from Turkey who signed a two-way deal with the Bulls last summer. After getting his feet wet in the G-League, the Bulls converted him to an NBA contract with the hope he might help ease the mistake of letting former Bulls two-way player Max Strus walk away.
Bitim had played a few minutes of garbage time this season, but Wednesday was essentially his debut. He scored 10 points — just 1 less than Strus got for the Cavaliers — went 2-for-2 from 3-point range and played most of the two overtimes.
“I was dreaming of this moment for a really long time and I was really trying to be ready,” Bitim said after the game. “My teammates were helping me, my coaches. I knew the chance was going to come, you just never know when.”
Bitim attended high school in the United States at Huntington (W.V.) Prep, so the language is no barrier. He's relatively new to the team, but Bulls teammates felt they knew him pretty well going back to September, when he was in town working out at the Advocate Center.
“You can tell the IQ is there, the feel is there,” DeMar DeRozan said after the game. “He can shoot the heck out of the ball.”
DeRozan scored 35 points as the Bulls snapped a seven-game losing streak against the Cavs. The most amazing statistic from that game, though, was the Bulls' 74-39 rebounding advantage. Usually, it's Cleveland giving teams problems inside with Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.
The Bulls' pairing of Andre Drummond (17 points, 26 rebounds) and Nikola Vucevic (24 points, 13 boards) is unconventional but effective. After a period of mobile, outside-shooting big men becoming the NBA norm, maybe the Bulls have zagged when other teams zigged. Somehow, it's working.
“The math is very simple,” Drummond said. “You've got two guys that are very good at rebounding. One of them historically being the best to ever do it and the other one is right behind me. It makes it hard for teams. They have to make a decision, who are they going to try to block out, me or him?”
This lineup probably won't work in every circumstance. But heck, maybe it will. With Patrick Williams out for the year and Torrey Craig on the shelf, it will probably keep happening.
“You can't find me another Andre Drummond in the league,” DeRozan said. “He's from the old school of rebounding. You don't see that too often.”
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