National Basketball Association

Chicago Bulls 15th Man: J.J. Avila

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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The Chicago Bulls have just four preseason games left before kicking off the regular season. With 18 players still on the training camp roster, the team is going to be making cuts. One of the players on the bubble is J.J. Avila, so let’s look at where he stands and what’s next.

You might not recognize the name J.J. Avila. That’s understandable. He’s not a household name among NBA fans and his training camp contract is his only stint with Chicago.

So far, Avila has made it on the court in just one game for a total of 3.5 minutes. Impressively, he’s racked up two assists in that limited time on the court for the Bulls. For scope, Spencer Dinwiddie has had a 20-plus minute game this preseason where he also registered just two assists.

Avila is interesting because he has taken a different path to Chicago than either Thomas Walkup or D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera, each of which were profiled yesterday. Both Walkup and Smith-Rivera were playing college ball just six or seven months ago. Avila spent 2015-16 playing in Belgium for the Stella Artois Leuven Bears.

Prior to his time in Belguim, Avila was with Navy and Colorado State in college.

Not only did he take a different path to the NBA, by spending a season in Europe, he also has a particularly difficult road to making this roster. As a 6-foot-8 power forward, Avila finds himself buried behind the most important position battle at training camp in Chicago.

He’s currently behind Taj Gibson, Nikola Mirotic and Bobby Portis. Ever a difficult position for a fringe NBA player to be dropped into, it’s all the worse when all of the players ahead of you are either well-established or important to the future plans of the organization.

Heading into the final cluster of preseason games, Avila probably sees himself in a particularly unsatisfying position. Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg has said that it will be sometime next week, after the remaining preseason games, that he makes a decision on the starting power forward slot.