Coby White was named Eastern Conference Player of the Month for March. He didn’t cool off on the first day of April.
White won Player of the Month after averaging 27.7 points as the Chicago Bulls went 9-6 in March. He scored 28 Tuesday night in a commanding 137-118 win over the Toronto Raptors, staying right on his average.
It’s the Bulls’ 10th win in their last 14 games and it guaranteed that Chicago will finish no worse than 10th in the Eastern Conference.
That wasn’t a certainty before White became both a prolific and an efficient scorer. Tuesday, he shot 10-for-16 from the field and 3-for-7 on three-pointers. Since the beginning of March, he’s making over half of his shots, and over 38% of his threes, but taking under 19 shots per game.
White’s emergence coupled with that efficiency has allowed Nikola Vucevic and Josh Giddey to score as well. He’s dominating as a scorer without dominating the ball, which has jump-started the Bulls’ offense.
Can the Bulls move up from the 10 seed? Getting to seventh or eighth might be impossible with less than two weeks to play, but finishing ahead of the Miami Heat is very possible. Chicago owns the tiebreaker, has the NBA’s second-easiest remaining schedule and plays the Heat on April 9, likely with play-in home-court advantage on the line.
Best of all, they’ll have White in that game. For the last month, that’s been one of the best advantages in the NBA.
