The Bulls have a chance to win this season. With LaVine, Markkanen, Porter, Young, Tomas Satoransky and Wendell Carter Jr., they have pieces that could form a playoff team. For the past two seasons, they’ve been mostly irrelevant. “We don’t want to be in a position to where we’re playing meaningless games,” LaVine said. “I haven’t played in a meaningful game in five years in my career. So I think it’s getting to the point where you really want to start looking past self things and moving toward wanting to win basketball games. It’s not fun to go home in April.“
Zach LaVine Rumors
All NBA Players
Position: G
Born: 03/10/95
Height: 6-5 / 1.96
Weight:180 lbs. / 81.6 kg.
Salary: $19,500,000
Born: 03/10/95
Height: 6-5 / 1.96
Weight:180 lbs. / 81.6 kg.
Salary: $19,500,000
Bourguet: Going back to working in the gym, is there anything specific that you’ve been working on this summer? LaVine: I mean, each year when you go into the offseason, you pick apart what you did good and what you did bad. A lot of people try to focus on the bad and I try to focus on the good, because once you become that elite player and work on those skill-sets that you’re already good at, that’s how I feel like you progress even more. But then you do also work on your deficits as well, so I took all those into consideration. I feel like the biggest thing for me was I have to stay healthy, obviously. If you’re on the court, you’re more of an asset to your team, you can help them win. I had some injury trouble with my ACL tear that one year so I have to keep my legs strong. Other than that, just trying to stay healthy and continue to do the things I was doing out there last year.
Bourguet: Last one, heading into a new season and coming off a breakout year, what’s one aspect of your game that you feel like people are sleeping on a little bit? LaVine: Probably my playmaking ability. I feel like everybody knows I can score and put up big numbers, but I feel like I’m able to create plays off of breaking down the defense for others. I gotta work on my turnovers, I try to make some risky passes where you get a little bit of tunnel vision and can make some turnovers, but I feel like those aggressive plays sometimes help your team out. Always, the league leader in assists have a lot of turnovers. As long as they’re aggressive, those are okay, but with my playmaking, I feel like I can take another jump this year. I have the ball in my hand a lot. I want to be able to play off the ball and get some easy points as well, but I’ve definitely been focused on my playmaking and being able to draw that double-team or create a line where I can get to the hole when I need to and then kick it out or drop it off to get easier looks for my teammates.
Boylen wasted little time relegating Parker to the bench. Privately, the organization was also concerned that Parker was poisoning the water, especially relating to Zach LaVine, so he was moved by February in the trade for Otto Porter. After the mopey forward was gone, the thought was his short time with the organization was in the rearview mirror. Parker, though, had other ideas. Considering he’s still an unsigned free agent, a glance in the mirror could do him some good.
In September, LaVine paid $3.25 million for the mansion, which sits on a double lot on a cul-de-sac. It’s not clear why LaVine wants to sell the mansion so soon after buying it.
