BOSTON — In the middle of a lukewarm Massachusetts morning, Leonard Miller stood alone, toeing the 3-point arc in the corner of the court at TD Garden.
Five of his Chicago Bulls teammates were crowded on the other end of the arc, a rambunctious group of mostly rookies, shouldering and shoving each other and dishing out smack talk to veteran Isaac Okoro as he sat on the bench.
Half a court away, Miller absorbed the quiet. His hands hovered waist high, eyes watching the downturning arcs of his teammates’ shots, waiting for a pass that never came.
Eventually, assistant coach Taj Gibson noticed Miller in the corner.
“Hey, come on, guys,” Gibson shouted, waving an arm at the rest of the player development staff in an effort to wrangle a single rebound for Miller’s next shot. “Lenny’s all by himself.”
It took a moment. Miller waited peacefully. When the pass finally came, he launched his shot. The ball sank a little too early, glancing off the front of the rim to a muttered “Damn it” from Miller.
Another pause. This time, the pass arrived quicker. Miller sank one, then two, then three from the corner. The fourth dipped low again, kissing that same spot on the front of the rim, earning the same groaned complaint. Miller started again, focused on his own in the corner.
Miller is the least predictable variable in the complicated equation of formulating the Bulls’ new future. He’s a former second-round pick who went the G League route out of high school rather than playing in college. He totaled only 84 minutes over his first two NBA seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
But now Miller, 22, is a fixture in the Bulls rotation, a 6-foot-10 sixth man who can fill any position — and any need — the team throws at him. He’s averaging 9.8 points and 5.5 rebounds in 21.3 minutes per game this season.
The Bulls don’t like to compare Miller to anyone else. His coaches and teammates describe him the same way: unique, unorthodox, unlike any other player. But at his core, Miller is a simple player. He gets to his spots. He hustles up the court like he’s being chased. He applies a focused pressure on defense.
“I take pride in being my own player,” Miller told the Tribune. “I take that as a compliment.”
Miller is confusing. He doesn’t move the way opponents expect, cutting off-ball with a decisiveness that often catches defenders a step behind. His jump shot hitches at the top, his wrist cracking backward and cranking through an extra motion for an added half-second to create a lopsided form that shouldn’t work.
“Shouldn’t,” of course, is the telltale word here. A lot of things shouldn’t work about Miller — yet he’s one of the most consistent players in the 10-man rotation.
Coach Tiago Splitter values the way Miller diverges from other young players. He praises the fourth-year forward for his ability to invoke “randomness” in his style of play, an innate ability to find space and create minor disruptions that lead to better looks at the basket.
This is an aspect of Miller’s game he feels was established long before he reached the NBA.
“It’s just how I can make plays with my natural God-given talents,” he said. “That’s where that comes from — how you can utilize me on that end as a weapon. It’s always been in my game because I’m a pretty creative player. I don’t have to work on it. It just comes from being a natural hooper.”
The Bulls want to smooth down plenty of Miller’s rough edges. He doesn’t turn 23 until next month, the sixth-youngest player on a youthful roster focused on building for the long haul. The jump shot is just one example, a clear focal point for the player development staff, which wants to smooth out Miller’s action to create more consistency with his finish.
But Splitter doesn’t want any of that development to take away from Miller’s preexisting strengths.
“At the end of the day, you’ve just got to make shots,” Splitter said. “It doesn’t matter how it looks.”
Miller had to be prodded Monday morning to catch the bus back to the team hotel. As Matas Buzelis shouted his standard warnings about the impending departure — “Last bus, can’t stay, gotta go!” — Miller stayed glued to a seat next to LD Williams, a player development coach who stuck with the Bulls after the front-office turnover in the offseason.
The pair hunched over a laptop, studying the intricacies of Miller’s approach to shutting off the baseline on defense. After a long study of multiple clips, Williams urged Miller to his feet, balancing the laptop in the palm of one hand while demonstrating where the forward should place his hands at each stage of an offensive player’s drive and counter. Each pointer prompted a new question, Miller leaning close to the screen for nearly 20 minutes of extra preparation.
Miller is perhaps most unique as an offensive player — but it’s his defensive versatility that will truly anchor him in the Bulls rotation. On any given night, he can be asked to guard centers or small forwards, playing up and down despite his relatively wiry frame at 6-10, 220 pounds. In Monday’s loss to the Celtics, he often found himself sprinting the circumference of the 3-point arc as he switched again and again and again before leaping to contest a corner 3.
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This is the part of the game that Miller wants to ground himself within. Offense comes naturally — and it’s fun. But defense?
“It’s not even close,” Miller said. “Offense, within the flow, that comes naturally. Defense, that’s a lot of controllable stuff.”
Despite the appreciation he’s receiving in Chicago, Miller easily could have slipped through the cracks in the NBA. He barely played in Minnesota and came to Chicago as a throw-in piece in a flurry of offloading at the trade deadline. In a league that chews up and spits out players on rookie contracts — e.g. Rob Dillingham, who hasn’t found a new team after being traded to the Charlotte Hornets and subsequently waived — Miller could have been yet another casualty.
Splitter noted that the Timberwolves were on a vastly different timeline from the Bulls, attempting to accelerate a high-powered roster centered on Anthony Edwards to the franchise’s first Western Conference championship — and, perhaps, first NBA title. Teams focused on hardware don’t have the luxury of time afforded to rebuilding teams such as the Bulls, who care more about playing through their young players than racking up wins this season.
On and off the court, Miller approaches his job with an earnestness born out of clawing for every minute off the bench. When backup center Zach Collins reached the final stage of his ramp-up process after a preseason injury, Miller took extra time to make sure his teammate — who might end up sapping some of Miller’s playing time — understood the intricacies of play installs that Collins missed.
That effort earned automatic praise from Collins: “He wants to win and he wants to help his teammates. He’s the whole package.”
This is the signature of a player who values the weight of every minute spent on the court. Miller has the potential to climb even higher in the Bulls rotation. As a team focused on its long-term future, the Bulls offer a player like Miller a rare source of stability. But first he knows he needs to ace the test every night this season.
“My approach stays the same,” Miller said. “You’ve got to attack this game with a level of professionalism. The same consistency is going to get you good results.
“So don’t change the approach at all, and whatever comes from getting more activity as the season goes on, you’ve got to stay level-headed and stay the course.”