Last night, former Tar Heel and current Chicago Bulls guard Coby White caught fire against the Los Angeles Lakers to the tune of 23 points, five rebounds and six assists. While this is more common than not for the Goldsboro native, the significance of this is the fact that he made five of his 10 three-point attempts, which was good enough to pass Kirk Hinrich in the race to score the most three-pointers in Chicago Bulls history.
Now that White holds the second-place spot in the franchise history books, the only player standing in his way is current Sacramento Kings guard Zach LaVine, who left the Bulls after draining 1,130. White is now less than 100 threes away from breaking the record, and while it feels inevitable that he will break it, there is a problem: the NBA trade deadline.
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The NBA trade deadline is February 5th at 3 PM ET, and there has been a lot of noise about White potentially being traded since he is on an expiring contract. Should the Bulls keep him until the end of the season, he will become an unrestricted free agent, meaning that he could decide to take his talents to another team after the season is over anyway. It’s a weird situation because whichever team that takes him would need to acquire him with the intent of signing him to his inevitably larger contract following the season, but by no means would that team be required to do so. The Bulls find themselves in a weird spot because at this point White has more or less become their franchise player, but he also isn’t an All-Star caliber player right now. So then, what is worth more? Losing one of your best scorers only to risk having a less productive player, or sticking it out only for White to throw them the peace sign this summer? It’s a really messy situation that Bulls VP of Basketball Operations Arturas Karnisovas has found himself in, but also for anybody that pays enough attention to this franchise…it’s not surprising to say the least.
Regardless, it has been a lot of fun seeing White grow as a player and become one of the better scorers in the NBA. Enduring the dysfunction that is the Chicago Bulls front office — and at one point the coaching staff — and managing to develop into such a good player is something that other Bulls draftees did not manage to pull off in the post-Jimmy Butler/Derrick Rose era. Regardless of whether or not he breaks LaVine’s record, his contributions in Chicago will not soon be forgotten.
