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Who is the Chicago Bulls’ most impactful player? If you ask that question to most Bulls fans, you’ll likely hear a ton of DeMar DeRozan or Zach LaVine answers. You may even hear some say Lonzo Ball based on his impact on defense and his ability to shoot the three and create in transition.
Very few, if any, would tell you Nikola Vucevic. According to one statistic called the LEBRON metric, inspired by the Los Angeles Lakers all-time great and future Hall-of-Famer, Vooch is the man.
While James is the inspiration for the metric, it is still an acronym that stands for Luck-adjusted player Estimate using a Box prior Regularized ON-off. The metric was created by the minds at B-Ball Index, and it seeks to measure the statistical impact of a player on both ends of the floor per 100 possessions. Vucevic had the highest rating of all Bulls players.
How Nikola Vucevic Led the Bulls in the LEBRON Metric
How does the stat work? Here’s how B-Ball Index breaks down the original metric:
Put simply, LEBRON evaluates a player’s contributions using the box score (weighted using boxPIPM’s weightings stabilized using Offensive Archetypes) and advanced on/off calculations (using Luck-Adjusted RAPM methodology) for a holistic evaluation of player impact per 100 possessions on-court. LEBRON is broken up between LEBRON (overall impact), O-LEBRON (offensive impact), and D-LEBRON (defensive impact). It is a measure of impact, not talent, and like with our talent grades has an age growth curve where we expect players to get better (more rapidly when younger) over time and then drop over time (more rapidly the older they get) later in their career.
Some may wonder how Vucevic, a player who struggled mightily with his shooting (lowest three-point percentage since 2017-18) and most aspects of his defense last year, could be tops for the Bulls. The simple explanation is defensive rebounding. Vucevic averaged a robust 9.1 defensive rebounds per game in 2021-22. He yanked down 9.9 per 36 minutes and 13.4 per 100 possessions. He also registered a 30.7% defensive rebounding percentage. All those numbers were far and away tops on the Bulls, and he ranked in the top 15 across the NBA in each category.
Vucevic isn’t actually the Bulls’ best player, all things considered, and the metric doesn’t claim that the player who is ranked No.1 is his team’s best, but from a purely statistical standpoint, Vucevic’s masterful defensive rebounding places him atop this list.
Quite frankly, apart from the metric, Vucevic’s ability to clean the glass on the defensive end was his game’s most consistent and valuable aspect. It was one of the few saving graces for Vucevic during what was otherwise a disappointing season for him in 2021-22.
There is excellent value to the LEBRON metric in totality, but like all advanced statistics, a deeper look at the action is required to understand the full picture.
Bulls Notes and Quotes
- Zach LaVine is Everywhere These Days
How do you know when a player is graduating in star level? One indication is their levels of visibility and exposure. It seems LaVine is popping up on various ads and all over social media.
Most recently, Mitchell & Ness posted an image of the Bulls star leaving their shop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
This is what happens when you make back-to-back All-Star games, help the Bulls return to the postseason for the first time since 2016-17, and help the United States win Olympic gold. Next stop, a playoff series victory? The Windy City has its collective fingers crossed.
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