Bulls guard Coby White isn’t sneaking up on anybody anymore, and he doesn’t need his coach to remind him of that.
White has been seeing it every game recently, with the Heat using Jimmy Butler to defend him last week and opposing defenses running blitzes and double-teams at him much more frequently.
But White already is adjusting to the greater attention. That’s why coach Billy Donovan is excited. White no longer is playing checkers, he’s playing chess, and he’s seeing the board two moves ahead.
‘‘He’s been guarded by a lot of different really good defenders, but I think the one thing that Coby has been able to do — besides the scoring piece — is he’s been able to play for his teammates, getting into the paint, doing other things and maybe figuring out how he’s being guarded, how the game is going and where he can kind of inject himself,’’ Donovan said.
‘‘When a guy like Coby has played consistently for a period of time at the level he’s played at, there are going to be teams that are going to try and stop him and do different things to him.’’
White’s scoring is almost double what he averaged last season, but what really has taken off is his understanding of what affects winning. He’s not only scoring at a high clip, but his rebounds, assists and steals are also up.
That’s why Donovan isn’t overly worried about how teams are adjusting to him.
‘‘I really respect the way in two games — the San Antonio game [Thursday] and the [game Dec. 16 against the Heat] — he was 0-for-4 and came back and responded [with 22 points].
‘‘The game is long. You’ve gotta stay with it, and he’s already proven that if he doesn’t have a big-scoring first half, he’s more than capable of scoring in the second half.
‘‘It’s just a matter of him making the right plays, and I think he’s tried to do that.’’
White’s mentality works in his favor. He rarely talks about or looks to promote himself. In many of his media sessions lately, he has been excited about what his teammates are doing.
‘‘I just go out there and try and hoop,’’ White said. ‘‘Whatever that adds up to or consists of after the game, I might check the stat line, and that will be that. It’s, ‘Did we win and how did we play?’ That’s what matters.’’
The ‘O’ in Torrey
Forward Torrey Craig’s plantar fasciitis puts a dent in the Bulls’ defense and three-point shooting, but where it might affect them the most is in offensive rebounding.
Craig was averaging 1.9 offensive rebounds in about 21 minutes a game. Offensive rebounding was one of the things the Bulls focused on in the offseason and training camp, and Craig was delivering.
‘‘Torrey is great at it,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘I don’t know if you have him out of the rotation if there’s necessarily one person that can make up for what he does do. Even the game in Miami [last week], I think he only played 13 minutes and still had two offensive rebounds.
‘‘We still have to have a mentality to keep going to the backboard and continue to rebound with the guys we’re sending.’’
Surprise number
Which player has the Bulls’ second-best plus/minus so far this season? It’s guard Dalen Terry, who entered the game Saturday at plus-17. Forward Patrick Williams was No. 1 at plus-55.
