Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 at 11:55 am  |  15 responses

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Mock: Iman Shumpert, No. 30

Perfect fit for Bulls basketball.

by Bryan Crawford

If the last player picked in any professional draft is nicknamed, “Mr. Irrelevant,” then the last pick of the first round of the NBA Draft should be called “Mr. Damn Near Irrelevant.” Especially in the case of the Chicago Bulls. Historically, whenever Chicago has picked this late in the draft, whoever they chose seemed to fade into NBA obscurity faster than David Stern called their name.

Mark Randall, Byron Houston, Travis Knight, Keith Booth and Corey Benjamin were all taken by the Bulls at the bottom of the first round between 1991 and 1998. And all are candidates for a “Where Are They Now?” episode.

However, in this years draft and with the NBA being what it is today, the last pick in the First Round has a much better shot of sticking with Chicago, especially a player who hails from the area.

With the 30th pick in the SLAMonline Mock Draft, the Chicago Bulls select…

Iman Shumpert from Georgia Tech.

Scoring. It was the Chicago Bulls’ Achilles heel during the postseason. Aside from Derrick Rose, there wasn’t another player on the roster who could create their own shot or even display some semblance of offensive reliability. You might be able to get away with that during the regular season, but the Playoffs are something different entirely.

Iman Shumpert solves that problem from the giddy up.

As a 6-6, 220 pound combo-guard, Shumpert has great size to go along with the ability to take his man off the dribble and get to the basket. He’s sort of like a poor man’s Joe Johnson whom the Bulls coveted in free agency last summer. Obviously that’s saying a lot for a kid who hasn’t even “officially” made it into the NBA and hasn’t shown yet that he can cut it, but his skillset and style of play are similar to that of the Atlanta Hawks star

Shumpert has split time at the point guard and off-guard positions since he was in HS at Oak Park- River Forest, and during his time in the ACC at Georgia Tech. So while he hasn’t really mastered to the finer points of either position, he’s still comfortable (and effective) with or without the ball in his hands and he can make plays and score from either position. His jumper is decent, but he has a tendency to fall in love with it (especially from mid-range) and his shot selection isn’t exactly the greatest, but all of these habits are correctable and in a system like Tom Thibodeau’s, they will most definitely be corrected.

But on defense is where Iman Shumpert really shines.

He actually takes extreme pride in locking down his man one-on-one. His quick feet and lateral movement are second to none in this draft and he has even quicker hands to get deflections and even outright steals on that end of the floor. His energy and effort on D will be the very thing that gets him in Thibs’s good graces and he would make an excellent practice opponent for Derrick Rose.

This late in the draft, it’s hard to find a player that you love, but if Iman Shumpert is available and Chicago takes him, then the Bulls will absolutely love the player that they get.