Bulls rookie Caleb Wilson doesn’t just dabble in some light reading about Stoicism.
No, he is all in, discussing it at length Tuesday and going into depth about the ancient Greek and Roman school of thought that focuses on happiness and resilience by, Wilson said, ‘‘controlling what you can control and making sure that in every situation I’m kind of above it. I’m not going to let little things deter me because I know I have a higher purpose.’’
This is really a 20-year-old NBA rookie? It is.
So is Dailyn Swain. And a few months ago, the Bulls’ two first-round picks — Wilson at No. 4 and Swain at No. 15 — couldn’t have been in different. While Wilson was the talk of the Summer League in Las Vegas, Swain was letting ‘‘Sin City’’ swallow him up.
Swain’s four Summer League outings were atrocious. He was carrying his dismal play from one game to the next. Vegas had him in its grips and wasn’t going to let go.
He left the Summer League after shooting 4-for-31 (12.9%) from the field, including 0-for-7 from three-point range, and turning the ball over far too often.
But Wilson didn’t let his new teammate sulk.
‘‘Dailyn looks way better,’’ Wilson said after the Bulls’ first official practice of training camp. ‘‘We were here [right after Las Vegas]. We’ve been here the whole summer. We’ve been grinding here. Seeing him every day, seeing him working on the things he needs to work on. Me, too, working on the things I need to work on.’’
One rookie pushing the other — to eye-opening results.
‘‘It’s night and day,’’ coach Tiago Splitter said of where Swain is now compared to the Summer League. ‘‘It’s not even close. He was not himself in the Summer League, and I think we all understand that. He’s been great. He’s going through the little steps that he’s got to do and doing a good job.
‘‘He’s producing for us. He’s getting into the paint. I think he lacked confidence in the Summer League, but right now he’s a different player. He’s being aggressive, being himself, being the player he was in college.
‘‘If you check his history, everywhere he’s gone, he’s taken some time to get adjusted to a level, to the team he played on. It happened in college. We talked to his coaches, and he’s just going to take some time to adapt. Once he’s acclimated and confident, he’s a different player, and that’s what we expect.”
That’s also what the Bulls have been getting from Swain through the open gyms the last few weeks.
‘‘Just learning from it, taking what I could get from it,’’ Swain said when he was asked about not allowing his Summer League play to define him. ‘‘It’s been easy to flip the page.’’
With a little help from his fellow rookie.
‘‘It shows what kind of kid Caleb is,’’ Swain said. ‘‘Everyone can speak to that. He’s a great kid on the court and off the court. We had no prior relationship; we met on draft night. And through the Summer League, we built a really strong bond. We go get food every day. And not just him but [two-way rookies] Tobe [Awaka] and [Jaylin] Sellers. All of them have done a good job with that. They weren’t going to let me dwell on it.’’
Does that mean Swain has shown enough to be penciled into a rotation spot? No, Splitter isn’t anywhere near making that sort of commitment yet. But Swain does have his confidence back, and he has a plan.
‘‘I want to impact the game on defense, guard the best player,’’ Swain said. ‘‘The offense will come, but the main thing is being a stopper.’’
And to control what you can control.