Caleb Wilson is a rookie who just had the best quarter of his young career, and that's wonderful. It doesn't make him the Chicago Bulls' closer, and anyone telling you Friday settled that question watched a different game than the one that finished 132-125.
Start with what the coronation crowd keeps skipping: Wilson wasn't even the leading scorer. Norman Powell was. Powell put up 25, dropped 19 in the first half, and hung 12 on Milwaukee in the second quarter. That's the entire reason there was a close game left for Wilson to be clutch in. Chicago trailed by 15 after one quarter. If Powell doesn't go nuclear early, Wilson's big third quarter happens in a 20-point loss and nobody's typing his name in capital letters.
Give Wilson his due, because he earned a chunk of it. He scored 12 of his 21 in the third on 5-of-7 shooting with a pair of threes. He threw down the slam that put Chicago up 108-104 to open the fourth. He went 4-for-4 at the line when it mattered, then got the steal that effectively ended it. Thirty-three minutes, 21 points, six boards, two blocks. That's a real performance from a real prospect. Keep it in that lane.
Rating
RatingTre Jones scored the game's actual final points, from the free-throw line, not Wilson. Leonard Miller scored 19 off the bench, basically matching Wilson's output, on a night Tiago Splitter's reserves outscored Milwaukee's bench 59-35. The hero of this game has at least three names, and the quietest one might be the whole bench.
Which brings us to the coach, who's getting handed a medal for a bench-heavy, tightened rotation that happened to click. Fine, it clicked. The group of Jones, Buddy Hield, Isaac Okoro, Miller and Noa Essengue won Splitter the night. Nobody chanting his name wants to sit with the real question: is that a plan, or a plan that worked once? Leaning that hard on reserves is great when they drop 59 and a problem the night they don't. Ride the hot hands in Game 2, call it a validated closing philosophy, and you're talking yourself into something that falls apart in November.
RTGThis is still the Bulls, remember. Two nights earlier they got buried by Toronto in the biggest season-opening loss in franchise history. A team that gets run off the floor in Game 1 and comes back to win Game 2 has found out it has a pulse. That's real after a 43-point embarrassment, but it's a long way from a settled rotation.
Wilson might become exactly the player the excited crowd is describing. He has the tools and he just showed the nerve. Let him do it more than once, against more than the 0-2 Bucks, before anyone hands him the ball with the game on the line and calls it destiny.
