DuckIII wrote:Bulliever2020 wrote:It's definitely interesting to me that the general sentiment on our core was that we had 2 future allstars and a future MVP on our team yet I have never seen the Bulls mentioned as having one of the best young cores in the NBA.
It’s not the general sentiment. Lauri was ripped as a pick, but admittedly the fan base - me included - came to value him extremely highly by the end of his rookie year.
WCJ was panned his entire career and was lamented as a boring and unremarkable pick from day one. As the general sentiment. Of course he had some fans who like him a lot but it was a minority.
Most on this board thought and still think Coby is a bum who, even if he panned out, would be a role player.
And most people aren’t impressed by Williams either, though I am. I’ve been posting here for 20 years. I’ve never seen the fan base less enthused by Bulls lottery picks as I’ve seen these last 4 years.
I think some people recall the fanboy opinions and attribute them to a larger segment of the fan base than the reality of it.
I'm not talking about the initial reaction at the time they were drafted, I'm talking about what the general consensus was after having seen them play in a Bulls uniform.
It didn't take long into Lauri's rookie year for the narrative to change from him being a wasted pick in the mold of a Ryan Anderson stretch 4 to him being viewed as a legitimate prospect and versatile scorer. Between the end of the 2018-19 season to the beginning of the 2019-20 season a ton of people thought Lauri was a future superstar. Forget all-star, SUPERSTAR. And the majority of those who didn't view him as a superstar at least viewed him as a future all-star.
For Coby, that early season game in his rookie year where he hit all those 3s while his college coach was in attendance changed him from being viewed as another low ceiling pick to something much more than that. The hot streak he ended his rookie season on had a ton of people thinking he was not only our starting PG of the future, but a future all-star as well.
WCJ wasn't held to as high of expectations as those other two, but after his rookie year there was plenty of people who thought he was well on his way to meeting those Horford comps. For the record, Horford made 5 all-star teams. They thought he was going to be our defensive anchor who could make plays and shoot 3s while scoring 15 PPG+.
These weren't just a small subset of individuals who felt this way, it was a sizeable portion of the fanbase. And at one point it was the consensus opinion, especially in regards to Lauri.