White, Bulls blown out in home opener
Rookie White on making the quick decisions: ‘I just go out there and hoop’
Coby White hadn’t yet realized how his first regular-season game at the United Center lined up with the debut of a fellow Tar Heel — years before he was even born.
It was 35 years to the day Saturday that Michael Jordan played his first game for the Bulls in front of 13,913.
“Not till this morning,” White said before the Bulls played the defending-champion Raptors. “I (saw) it on social media this morning.”
And there was no magical meeting of past and present Wednesday during the season opener in Charlotte, N.C., either.
“I didn’t even know he was there,” he said.
White might be unassuming when it comes to such things, but the rookie is keenly aware of what’s working for him on the court and precisely how he’s doing it.
“I think it’s instinct,” said White, who entered the game to cheers Saturday with 4 minutes, 59 seconds left in the first quarter. “I just take what the defense gives me. If I feel like there’s a good shot for me or a good shot for my teammate, it’s just instinct. That’s how I always played.
“I just play off reaction. I don’t really have something in my head like I know I’m going to do this. Nah, I just go out there and hoop.”
White, the Bulls’ first-round pick this year at No. 7, scored 17 points in the opener against Jordan’s Hornets and 25 on Friday against the Grizzlies. He shot 63% from the field Friday and made 4 of 8 3-point attempts in the Bulls’ 110-102, come-frombehind victory.
While White said he goes off game flow, coach Jim Boylen said he has seen signs of a rookie making choices beyond his years with the ball in his hands.
“I thought he made a couple really good decisions last night, when to give it up, when to drive it,” Boylen said. “He did not take as many 2s. The step-back, midclock two. He drove the ball or shot his 3 ball, and he was very efficient.”
Earlier this year, when White paid a surprise visit to a group of elementary school students, he told the kids a few times how coaches drilled shooting 3s, particularly corner 3s, into his head. No unnecessary, long-range 2s.
Part of that’s coaching. Boylen brought up White’s ability not only to use screens but set them effectively as a marker of his progress.
“The thing that I like is he came up to me during a free throw and said, ‘Hey, let me set the screen on this one because I think they’re sticking to me,’ ” Boylen said of a screen White set for Zach LaVine. “I don’t know, guys. That doesn’t happen with a 20-year-old or 19-year-old kid at our level, where you’re thinking not about yourself but how you can help the team in that moment or that situation with what he’s been doing in the game. That’s big-time.’’
White, who has been setting up plays for LaVine since preseason, recalled his thinking during the pivotal moment of the Bulls’ win Friday.
“I just feel like it was down to the end of the game, me and Zach both had it going, and it would be hard for them to guard us both if I was in the ball screen and I was ghosting it, they would have had to make a split-(second) decision,” White said.
“When we did it, they kind of got confused, and Zach hits a wide-open 3 off of it. That was just me thinking, just putting a suggestion out there, and coach let me do it. Coach puts his trust in his players.”
White has been quick to acknowledge rookie mistakes as well, and he’s not entertaining any such talk about being an early candidate for rookie of the year.
“Nah, man, I just go out there and hoop,” he said. “Like I always say, as long as I go out there and play hard, everything will take care of itself. At the end of the year, if I’m in that discussion, then I’m in that discussion. If I’m not I’m not.
“I just know that at the end of the day, as a team I just want to accomplish our goal and that’s to make the playoffs.”