Antonio Blakeney only knows how to play one way: the chucker way. He was one of the G-League’s premiere chuckers last season, and he continued that trend (to a slightly lesser degree) whenever he got the call up the NBA. As everyone knows, the pendulum in recent times has swung away from iso-chucking madness and towards ball movement. But is the continued presence of Blakeney and other young chuckers like him a sign that the pendulum is re-swinging back to the style of the glory days of the mid 00’s?
Evidence fragment one: Blakeney was shooting a whole bunch of questionable shots but didn’t get benched for it.
Evidence fragment two: So was Zach LaVine
Evidence fragment three: And Jabari Parker
That’s a lot of evidence fragments, but I’m not convinced quite yet. It’s very, very possible that the Bulls are simply tanking and valuing individual performances over team success. If team success sometimes randomly appears because of the individual performances, that’s fine, but it’s not the real goal.