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Leonard Miller might be the surprise of the season for the Chicago Bulls. Can he make this last?

· Yahoo Sports

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Leonard Miller would be lying if he said this wasn’t a surprise.

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The forward is never at a loss for confidence. He’s not the type to second guess himself. In his brief time in the Chicago Bulls locker room, he has become known as a straight shooter. Still, Miller is realistic about the facts.

Before the trade deadline, Miller had played a grand total of 179 minutes on an NBA court over nearly three seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Since joining the Bulls on Feb. 7, Miller has played roughly 378 minutes over 19 games — including his seventh start with the Bulls on Saturday in a 125-124 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies — and averaged 9.6 points and five rebounds in that span.

Miller, 22, always believed he deserved this amount of playing time. He never questioned his ability to perform on an NBA court. But after years of waiting and waiting — sometimes patiently, sometimes not — it has been a challenge for Miller to adapt his new role as a much-needed contributor for a bare-bones Bulls roster.

“This has never happened for me before,” Miller told the Tribune. “But I just knew — like, I wanted to carve out a role with this group. So it’s new, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like anything crazy. This is what I’m born to do.”

Miller was only one of seven players to join the Bulls at the trade deadline in a convoluted series of deals that stripped the roster of its main core. It would be easy for any player to get lost in that fray. But the forward had an immediate advocate when he arrived in Chicago — forward Matas Buzelis.

The pair first met as prospects in the Nike Hoop Summit circuit, then became closer through G League Ignite. That familiar face was a welcome relief for Miller. And in the initial days after the upheaval of the trade deadline, Buzelis repeated the same message to coaching staff and teammates and media alike: We’re going to need Lenny.

Miller knew Buzelis for his warmth as a teammate and friend. Still, this outpouring of support had a buoying effect on a young player trying to stop his head from spinning amid the first trade of his career.

“He doesn’t have to do that for me,” Miller said.

Although it lasted only four short seasons, the Ignite program has been a unique bonding force for young players across the league such as Buzelis and Miller. The general consensus is that Ignite was a flawed concept at its core. Buzelis felt the team’s youngest players suffered from a lack of structure and veteran guidance. His team won only two games during the 2023-24 season. The league shuttered the franchise that same year.

But Miller doesn’t want to hear it. The Ignite fulfilled his primary goal: become a professional basketball player.

Parts of the process were hard. Even messy. But to Miller, that was just an authentic introduction to the NBA. He needed to learn how to play against more experienced competition, how to prepare himself for practices and games like a professional. Even if his team didn’t win games, Miller felt the Ignite program prepared him as a young man without the “barriers” that a college environment might have created.

“It was just a bunch of positives,” Miller said. “There was nothing but green flags. I don’t know what everybody else has to say about it, but I just know my experience was amazing.”

Getting to the pros was only the first step. Once Miller made it — he was a second-round pick in the 2023 draft — he learned how difficult it was to carve out an identity on a crowded roster of Timberwolves players eager to make deep runs in the Western Conference playoffs.

At first, Miller felt he could learn simply by watching and waiting. But as years went by, he began to question whether his opportunity would ever be presented. This was a shared experience with fellow traded teammate Rob Dillingham, who similarly languished on the Timberwolves bench throughout his first two seasons in Minneapolis. Both players carried a chip on their shoulder to Chicago, where they hope to prove their ability to provide more than minutes in garbage time.

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“Anybody that’s not really getting a chance to get out there and compete in meaningful minutes over the course of multiple years — you’re going to feel like you’re being held back,” Miller said. “But nonetheless I’m still putting in the work so that when I did get a chance — even though I was being held back — I was still working on the things I could implement when I did get a chance.”

Coach Billy Donovan sees plenty of potential in Miller. He’s lengthy and physical. His body provides versatility. He can finish on the fast break. He sinks 3-pointers at a decent 33% clip. He screens well enough to shoulder pick-and-roll responsibilities. His urgency on the offensive boards was a crucial factor in beating out Patrick Williams for the starting forward role.

But Miller also has earned his recent influx of minutes out of immediate necessity. The Bulls traded most of their size away at the deadline. Centers Jalen Smith and Zach Collins are shut down for the season. That means Donovan is opting to play Miller through noticeable inadequacies in his game — particularly on the defensive end, where he still struggles to analyze and adapt to different schemes and coverages.

“When you do talk to him, he can get it corrected,” Donovan said. “It’s something he’ll improve upon, but I think the mental part of it is going to be the most important thing for him to continue to grow through.”

This growth will be a deciding factor for Miller this summer. The Bulls will have a team option to retain the forward on the final year of his four-year, $8.3 million contract. It’s a friendly deal for the Bulls — and even more friendly for Miller, who is still looking for a team to take a chance on him for meaningful playing time.

But for Miller, the element of surprise has run out. Now, the forward must prove that his late-season performance is more than just a fluke — or a product of necessity — to improve his footing on a roster.

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