With Zach LaVine locked in, the focus turns towards the future

Zach LaVine went into free agency hoping to experience the opportunity to its fullest. He wanted to feel the respect he has earned and have that translated into dollar signs.

The front office preached continuity and LaVine wanted optionality.

Something had to give.

“I went into offseason with an open mind. I laid out my goals just like I always have,” LaVine told reporters in his first availability since he signed his max deal.

Did he even meet with any other teams? No.

“Once I was able to meet with Marc and AK, and they came to me with everything that I wanted.”

“There was no other reason for me to go outside and look at any other teams,” LaVine said. “I think that would have been, for me, disrespectful on my end because they gave me everything that I asked for. Everything on the table that I looked at had Chicago as all the pros. I did my due diligence on my own time as well, and looked at things, made a decision for me and my family, but my heart was in Chicago.’’

Goal number one of the offseason was to retain LaVine and the Bulls brass was able to swiftly check that off the list. Now we turn our focus towards the future.

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Despite the lackluster free agent additions of Goran Dragic and Andre Drummond, the Bulls are all-in on internal development and growth via cohesion and health.

LaVine had his “run-of-the-mill” knee scope and is on the mend. Lonzo Ball is making progress according to Billy Donovan’s in-game interview over the weekend. He wishes that progress was coming along more quickly. So do we.

The Bulls are counting on Patrick Williams developing into a productive power forward. He doesn’t need to be an All-Star right away, but he needs to be a reliable offensive weapon who defends other team’s best wings.

Dalen Terry will also have to follow in Ayo Dosunmu’s footsteps and kickstart his development to play a depth role for the Bulls.

Nikola Vucevic will need to have a bounce-back year shooting the basketball. A 37.4 percent three-point shooter between 2019 and 2021, Vucevic dropped all the way down to 31.4 percent last season. He was unfairly maligned for his defense and the rest of his offensive game was solid. But for the Bulls to be a dangerous offense, his shooting will need to bounce back.

DeMar DeRozan will need to build on his career-best season for the Bulls to be remotely close to their peak level last season.

But at the end of the day, all of this comes back to LaVine. At age 27, the $215 million man must continue to expand his game and become an even better version of himself. He still has areas to improve his game (defensively, as a decision-maker and playmaker).

“The word ‘continuity,’ you guys are saying, but familiarity is what I use, and getting chemistry on the court, that doesn’t just happen one or two years,” LaVine said. “All the good teams and teams that make deep playoff runs each and every year know each other and have been together for a while, so I think that’s definitely something you can establish and grow from.”

It would have been nice to see the Bulls make some splashier moves in free agency and truly raise the ceiling for how much this team can achieve. But there is hope in developing this way. The key was retaining LaVine. And now the pressure is on to be able to make that next step.

“I understood how good we were in the first half of the year, but we’ve got to put two halves together and really go after it,” LaVine said. “I’m excited for the competition.”