What´s the deal with Jevon?

[Tutupa]

Cowley: [Jevon Carter could go Man of Fire with the way his playing time has dried up the last month. Instead, he'll wait until the offseason and hopefully get some "clarity" with his standing.]

Ok, 2023 FA, here we go!

What should we prioritize? A PG, a PF, thoughness... We know Lonzo is not playing at all. We can bring a defensive PG to complement some offensive units and we have no much room left as Coby and Ayo took some time to sign.

The likes of Vincent and Schröder signed for more money. The likes of Westbrook, Joseph and Beverly signed with contenders.

So Jevon Carter becomes the top priority for the Bulls among all other options in the table. 6M per year is not too shabby (wasn´t bringing back DJJ for that money even considered?).

I liked the signing. I was advocating for Carter since he signed in Brooklyn a few years ago. Some of us even discussed if he was the starting PG in order to give Coby the keys of the bench scoring.

Training camp arrives and Billy says everything is open... Yeah, really... Coby kicks some *sses and gets the starting nod (thanks God).

Fast forward to April and Jevon has got 7 DNP in the last month or so...

So what´s the deal with Jevon?

Isn´t he even capable of getting 10mpg? Even with Coby dragging his corpse broken and beat playing 38mpg? Really?

He has averaged 15mpg in his career in better teams.

Is it because of his size? I mean, there is no secret with Jevon, he is a 28yo short journeyman, you know what you are getting with him. You either need him or not.

Don't Arturas and Billy boast of having good communication regarding roster and needs? You know beforehand if he is too short for your defensive schemes.

Billy recently talked about having 70M not playing. Well, he forgot to add extra 6M.

[MrSparkle]

Seemed like a misallocation of funds and focus… first pre-season game I saw of Jevon, confirmed that he wouldn’t be bringing Beverley’s defense and ball-handling… quite the opposite; got another defensive liability on the floor.

I guess Vuc, Pat and Demar don’t protect the paint lime Brook, Giannis and Middleton. Who woulda thought the defensive numbers were skewed?

He can actually shoot the 3P (not much else) and cover the perimeter, but you’d think a team with 4 guards (who could start) should be focusing on size.

[Lunartic]

He sucks, get rid of him

[Mirotek]

Jevon "pump fake, side step but can't create any space and then passes the ball up" Carter.

[Evil_Headband]

Defensively he can’t switch like the other guards. Also, the Bulls have plenty of ball handlers already.

[League Circles]

I was stupidly highly in favor of signing Jevon, even for up to the full MLE if necessary. That was very dumb on my part. Just goes to show, sometimes there simply isn't a solution to a problem for the MLE.

However, goes to show, we should have never entered the season with all 3 of Carter, Caruso and Ayo. Talk about redundancy and the inevitability that one of them would become a bad contract. I figure it would be Ayo instead, but now we have the problem regardless.

[TheSuzerain]

It was just really bizarre to use your MLE on Jevon Carter while simultaneously extending Coby and Ayo.

[kodo]

I'm not surprised he's not a help on defense, but I was disappointed in the 3P shooting.

I mentioned this in his signing thread, defensively, we're the opposite of Milwaukee where Carter got a good rep as a defender. Milwaukee when it was under Bud funneled the ball to their bigs Giannis + Lopez, and overplayed the ball at the 3P line. So opponents were chased off the 3P line, but had to score on Giannis/Lopez at the rim so the shot they were given were mids. But we're the opposite situation, our defense is inverted. We pull defenders away from the 3P line to help the center, which leads to wide open 3s which kill us even if the opponent is shooting badly because of the sheer # of them. 29th in 3P allowed 2 years in a row, except we're not tanking like Utah. So every time the ball gets past the PG it's a huge problem for us, so Jevon overplaying his man just leads to a bad situation. PGs that work well for us are POA defenders, Lonzo-Caruso-Ayo. Guys that don't get shaken off by screens, have a lot of length, and when they are not on the ball they can switch & defend wings/PFs. Jevon Carter is none of these things on D.

I thought we'd at least get a 40% 3P shooter, but he's been awful since a good start early in the season. He does take a fair # of pull ups which aren't the best shot, but he did the same in MIL. Not sure what's going on there, hopefully he just shoots normally next season I guess.

[MrSparkle]

It was just really bizarre to use your MLE on Jevon Carter while simultaneously extending Coby and Ayo.

TBF Jevon signed first, the latter two signed later. Suggested that the Bulls wholly believed Ayo or Coby would be signing some higher RFA offers, and would be walking (which in hindsight, would’ve maybe been even more damaging losing Coby to a 60/3 style deal and replacing him with 20/3 Jevon, despite the price difference… or watching Ayo leave for 30/3).

Who knows what AK’s bottom line numbers were, but regardless, another limp off-season with many suggestions that we got more of the brains behind trading Gobert for cash considerations, Mitchell for Trey Lyles, drafting Mudiay, and trading Nurkic for Plumlee than the good stuff (Jokic, Murray, Doug for Harris & Nurk).

[FriedRise]

It was a learning moment.

Your defense as a 6'0 guard isn't gonna be as effective on a team with DeMar, Vooch, and no PF compared to Jrue, Giannis, and Lopez. Your shooting will likely suffer too when all the defensive attention doesn't just load up on 1 superstar.

[ChettheJet]

Say all the negative things you like because a whole bunch of you have 48 hour tolerance for anybody in the organization, then if they have a good game you're a back slapper. I'll bet the Bucks wish they had him back instead of some of the more expensive guys they brought in.

I think he was insurance against Coby not becoming the ball handler he has and in case Ayo didn't make the tremendous strides he has and they lost Javonte. I thought he made sense except for him being 6 feet and for whatever reason the Bulls just gave up on the PF position. There's really no way to play Carter if Caruso, Ayo and Coby are out there, it almost comes down to Ayo being the 4.

What was surprising was Carter wasn't playing that much in the first half of the year and they held fast at the deadline. They couldn't find some team that could use steady PG and had somebody tall to send the Bulls. There's no way he returns next year, even if his salary is filler in a deal.

[kulaz3000]

Massively disappointed with his performance. The season before his offense was the best of his career, so I didn't expect him to match that, but at least be somewhat close. But the biggest disappointment has been his defense. He hustles, but he is just too small and is nothing more than an irritant than an actual stopper. Plus, our defensive scheme is to be able to switch, and with his size, he creates mismatches for us. I'm not surprised that he ultimately lost out on minutes.

I understood the signing, but still disappointed with the way things have turned out. But he is on a relatively cheap contract, I can't imagine it would be all that difficult to trade him outright, or include him as part of a bigger deal if need be. His contract could actually come in handy in the offseason. Wishful thinking perhaps though, considering our front offices track record.

[HearshotKDS]

I dont think hes a bad role player hes just not a good fit for what the Bulls need.

[greenwing]

I’m not sure what people were expecting. He’s a fifth guard. I said this when we signed him. He’s a nice piece to have for insurance and can occasionally be a backup at the 1 but there were several posters clamoring for him to be the starting point guard coming into this season.

I think the Bulls made the mistake of thinking that he was a younger Patrick Beverly that could run the offense and was a better shooter. Yes, he’s a better shooter but he’s not the floor general that Beverly is nor the defender. There’s no shame in that. But the Bulls would have been better off resigning Beverly to a minimum deal than taking a swing at Carter. Granted, Jevon doesn’t take up much cap space but I don’t see a role for him moving forward on this roster except as an insurance guard/mentor.

[Red8911]

I dont think hes a bad role player hes just not a good fit for what the Bulls need.

I agree he’s not a bad role player but he should be a good fit based on Bulls needs. Idk why he hasn’t been a consistent solid bench contributor. Billy hasn’t helped him, doesn’t seem to trust him and always gives him different amount of minutes whether it’s a 15, under 5 or DNP.

A lot of times he tries so hard to not make a mistake so he doesn’t get subbed out early.Doesn't seem comfortable out there. Whatever the case is he should be helping this team a lot more than he has.

Maybe not the starter we thought he was but at least give us a solid 20 min off the bench every night.

[HomoSapien]

It’d be huge to clear out his contract if possible, because it’ll make retaining Drummond more possible. We **** up by not keeping Beverly. He was a significantly better player and contributed to our turn around last season.

Carter isn’t as bad as he’s played for us, but BD got in his head and destroyed his confidence. He desperately needs a change of scenery.

[ShadyMoney]

What was the expectation? These FA’s haven’t really tipped the scale

[Bandit King]

Role player that belongs on the bench with limited action

[kodo]

It’d be huge to clear out his contract if possible, because it’ll make retaining Drummond more possible. We **** up by not keeping Beverly. He was a significantly better player and contributed to our turn around last season.

Carter isn’t as bad as he’s played for us, but BD got in his head and destroyed his confidence. He desperately needs a change of scenery.

The big pitch over the off-season was "playing with pace" and more 3s, Bev didn't fit that style. It was only after this failing early that we reverted back to the our same old slow paced style of basketball where Bev would have worked.

We've actually slowed down even more since the Beverley-Lavine Bulls, we were 19th last season we're 28th this season.

With the entire vision of the Bulls over the summer I can't blame them for not keeping Bev and assuming Coby would be the guy. If they said the plan would be the really just play the same as we always have (which we ended up doing), yeah they should have kept Pat (and Lavine). But there were plans of big changes for the Bulls this season...which all just fizzled out.

[League Circles]

I know it wasn't the full MLE, but it was over half of it, and I'm struggling to remember a worse Bulls MLE signing than Jevon...... EVER.

Here are the MLE guys I recall:

Scottie Pippen
Darius Songaila
Joe Smith
Andres Nocioni
Rip Hamilton
Hinrich
Dunleavy
Caruso?

I'm probably missing some guys and maybe wrong on some of these but Carter has been a huge disappointment. He now puts us in a bad position of having to choose between paying to dump his contract or keeping him and having to decide between giving him a role he doesn't deserve or benching him and seeing his value go well below zero and holding some of our 2025 cap space hostage.