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Caleb Wilson

Wilson put up consistent production through his 4 Summer League games, though never again reaching the heights of his debut. Finished with 23.5 points on 50% shooting (42% from three), 7.3 rebounds, 1.3 steals, 2.5 blocks.

In his final game versus the SummerLakers, Wilson overall played, per John Hollinger, “kinda brutal”. Yet Wilson was still able to generate a three-and-dunk combo highlight:

Here is our old friend Ricky at old site SBNation on Wilson’s change in shot profile.

A study by Owen Phillips showed that three-point rate (percentage of field goal attempts from three) is the “stickiest” stat of summer league — the one that carries over the best to the regular season. Well, Wilson moved his three-point rate from 9.1% at UNC to 47.1% for the Summer Bulls.

As Ricky emphasizes, it’s exciting to see this kind of dramatic improvement so quickly as it potentially indicates how eager and driven Wilson is to improve as a player. It’s something Wilson certainly talks about as very important to him, and very cool to see it on the court in the initiation of his Bulls career.

Another area of improvement for Wilson, as Ricky relays, is his playmaking. The assist-to-turnover ratio went backwards in SummerLeague versus college.

As Will Gottlieb of CHGO concurs, this Summer League was a resounding success for Wilson:

Caleb's highlights per 36 might lead the league. Super productive. Shot is a real weapon.

But he's got a ton of work to do: attention to detail, patience, consistency, strength, handle all need to improve.

He's already good, and still has a lot of room left to grow

Dailyn Swain

Here’s a the Dailyn Swain highlight of Thursday’s game:

Unfortunately that was pretty much it for Swain, his lone field goal and across 4 games he shot 4-31 from the field. Swain was moved off the ball more as the SL went on, but that relative lack of responsibility hasn’t helped.

Bust?!?! No, not yet, but being bad in Summer League is worse than being good. Would it have helped Swain if the Bulls deployed a ‘pure’ point guard on his squad? Maybe, but only helped him look good in these games this year. I can see the argument that for his long-term development he should be tasked with more responsibility, not less.

Noa Essengue

Speaking of responsibilities, it looks like while Swain is given opportunity to fail, Noa Essengue has already lost trust from the new administration that did not draft him. Essengue went from starting, to off the bench in the second half, to being the 8th man playing 11 minutes (and committing 7 fouls in that time!) on Thursday.

Was that deserved? Hollinger thinks there’s some bias working against him.

hasn't been amazing but there's also some Not Our Guy syndrome happening.

One can squint and see positives in the minutes he was on the floor, but it appears that Tiago Splitter, who was the one directly benching him in that second game and remained in Vegas even though no longer head coach of the SummerBulls, doesn’t like the cut of Essengue’s jib. I’m speculating a bit, but it is likely a combination of subjective body language and objective body-on-the-ground that has Splitter believing Essengue is simply not physically ready for the NBA.

Looking like the GLeague for Noa Essengue in his second season, which is not too negative a position given his significant injury and significantly young age (he’s younger than both Swain and Wilson).

I don’t have an opinion on Jaylin Sellers and Tobe Awaka, the two 2-way contracts on the roster. I’d just like to remind everyone that if Sellers is looking productive in Summer League and (likely) on the GLeague roster, he’s helped by being 3 and a half years older than Essengue.

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This week, Jamal Collier of ESPN1 posted one of these for the Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley era. It’s not the most explosive version of this kind of story, but it does reveal some interesting characteristics of this failed regime that only got worse in the past 5 years.

There isn’t a single detail that needs to be quoted, it’s more of a general pattern: AKME got more insular and defensive as mistakes piled up. This description of behavior was reported by Joe Cowley (so, caveats there…) after the 2024-25 season when player development head Peter Patton was fired. In Collier’s piece it seems to have started as early as in the build up to AKME’s first draft in 2020, where “multiple people in the scouting and analytics departments pushed” for Tyrese Haliburton over Patrick Williams.

I think Collier makes an important point here, after passing along that these same staffers also “liked” Williams quite a bit in draft prep:

Draft day mistakes happen, even in the best organizations, but staffers were more concerned by how long it took for Karnisovas and Eversley to come to terms with this misfire.

Poor evaluation skills and being too slow to react to those evaluations: that was the AKME way.

But this article seems to push the thesis that there was a different, more consequential issue: they weren’t collaborative enough.

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Keep in mind why this is the throughline of the article: the sources want to separate themselves from what was a complete organizational failure2, and some quoted still work for the Bulls. Some undoubtedly postdate AND predate AKME.

This is all a red flag to me. In AKME’s position, to succeed not just in staying employed but winning games, it’s more important to be correct than collaborative. And remember the situation they were coming into, an absolute wreckage brought on by the prior ten years of GarPax rule. I think both executives actually deserve some credit for taking personal responsibility in the wake of ownership clearly foisting franchise lifers onto them. AKME did things their way, and didn’t blame ownership ‘direction’, as their avoiding a rebuild was as much an AKME and Billy Donovan philosophy as it was for anyone above them.

Obviously, “their way” turned out to be stupid and terrible, but what accomplishments do these GarPax remnants have to suggest their way is better?

This post-mortem isn’t merely piling on a closed chapter of the Bulls, it’s informative to speculate on Bryson Graham’s ability to succeed.

The general sentiment when it comes to the newly-hired head man is that he is valuing staffers’ input and it’s producing a better “vibe”. However, this specific change is not making me feel good!

Some longtime Bulls executives, sidelined under Karnisovas, have been more active in internal team operations, sources told ESPN. That includes Paxson, who is now a senior adviser, and Brian Hagen, who has been with the organization since 2012 and was an assistant GM under Paxson and former general manager Gar Forman.

Collier mentions the external search firm that produced a list of VP candidates, but it was the extremely internal John Paxson who was part of the interview process. Paxson was also reportedly part of the coaching search, a nugget of information which gave me the creeps, especially when compounded by how many GarPax+AKME staffers were being retained3 and called “very good and talented” by Graham in his introductory press conference.

While it’s unfortunate that Graham isn’t as autonomous as he should be, he is at least saying the right things regarding this criticism of AKME:

“I’m not trying to come in and overcorrect. I’m just leading in the way that I believe is the proper way to lead. As you make decisions, you might convince your group when it gets down to the nitty-gritty. But earlier in the process, you just want to take in, and you want to hear from [everyone], and you want everyone focused on trying to give their absolute best to help make the right decision. And then ultimately I’ll take that information, process it and do what I need to.”

When mentioning Graham immediately upholding Bulls tradition when it comes to second round picks, one anonymous league source said "I just think that there's a certain way that they operate, and I don't see the fundamental core of that changing."

That may be indeed the case. But Graham may still perform better than AKME, because “player and team evaluation” is a way more important characteristic than “makes John Paxson feel valued”. Fluffing the self-admittedly-out-of-touch consigliere is what can earn you the Bulls job, but it’s not what will help you succeed at it.

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Included in that highlight package is one from the defensive end, a chasedown block that looked so good you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking he threw the errant behind-the-back pass on purpose to set it up.

Should we be concerned that almost none of Wilson’s attempts, let alone buckets, were in the paint?

No! Though it would dampen any Hall of Fame trajectory to figure some of these heaves were flukey. But why would you want to do that? Maybe Wilson is already looking like the biggest star the Bulls have had since Jimmy Butler.

I gave this Summer League game the kind of attention it deserved, a half-casual watch. I think it is worth noting that their opponent in the Grizzlies played several non-rookies1 plus the guy picked ahead of Wilson in Cameron Boozer.

The Bulls, meanwhile, were very inexperienced surrounding Wilson, including no established point guard. Dailyn Swain, more of a wing prospect not tasked with ballhandling much in college, was - as directed by Tiago Splitter - the lead playmaker for the SummerBulls.

Swain struggled personally and with offense-organizing duties, though he improved a bit in the 2nd half as described by on-the-ground Will Gottlieb of CHGO:

[Swain] looking overtaxed as the primary ball handler but was much more under control playing out of a closeout situation

And here’s a non-playmaking highlight:

As for functionally-a-rookie Noa Essengue, I was not happy he was wearing a baggy T-Shirt under his jersey. As for better analysis, I’ll leave it to Ricky:

As for some of the even-fringier members of the team, undrafted 2-way contract signee Jaylin Sellers earned consternation over his ballhogging (and shooting 4 of 13 didn’t help). I didn’t notice the other 2-way player Tobe Awaka and see in the box score that he had 6 fouls, with 6 combined attempts+rebounds+blocks.

The SummerBulls play again on Monday.

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Heading into his first transaction cycle as a lead decisionmaker, Bryson Graham undoubtedly entered a really bad situation. But a silver lining was that the roster was a fairly open canvas:

• only a couple multi-year contracts and several expiring (and value-neutral) ones

• nobody, save maybe Matas Buzelis, worth special consideration as a locked-in long-term foundational piece

• 2 first round picks this year, owning all going forward

• 2 second round picks and a +5 surplus going forward

• a potentially league-leading >$50M in cap space

And what Graham has come out of that with is:

• 4 prospects (2 drafted, 2 not) headlined by Caleb Wilson

• 3 short-term contracts to veterans in Norman Powell, Nic Claxton, and Zach Collins

• 2 future second-round pick swaps

Of course, there is a chance for more future value in trades later this month. And they still possess the “Room Exception” ($9.3M) even if no longer owning cap space. Because the Bulls re-signed Zach Collins with some of that space, he can be traded immediately, but I can’t know if that was the Bulls incentive. And every day that goes by into the 2nd-5th tiers of free agency and you see better (or at least more reliable) backup centers earning less and it looks like the Bulls genuinely want Collins on the team next year.

Similarly, with more significance, on the Powell and Claxton contracts: that these players were targeted so early means they were not mere ‘salary slots’, and to get praise for the moves Graham needs to be correct in thinking those players will be better than others in fostering the young players’ development, simultaneously gaining value.

If talking assessing praise versus finger-wags on this entire offseason, I’ll subjectively grade this a C-.

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This will move up an entire letter grade (I’m sure Graham is reading this, feeling assured) if the Dailyn Swain selection hits, as that was an instance where Graham’s purported strengths give him an advantage and Swain is more important as a potential long-term fixture.

Given that the Bulls did the very Bulls thing and hired someone new to the position, we don’t know much regarding Graham’s aforementioned ‘strengths’, but we’ve been told that he is a scouting and player development guy. Perhaps that extends to pro scouting with these veteran targets. I am genuinely heartened that the 2-Way roster spots are being treated with more consideration. Tiago Splitter is a major decision that could very well be another hit.

Hopefully all that, and Caleb Wilson being a star lucking into Graham’s lap, makes up for what looks to be an early deficiency in GM’ing: transactions

That the only, at least for now, long-term assets gained this offseason was those 2nd round pick swaps is more like a D to F grade. A team in a rebuild, armed with that much cap space and (what should be, anyway) ownership financial support, should be netting a lot more assets.

The league-wide trade market looks to be telling us that there aren’t high-value assets attached to salary dumps. But there are still some major dominoes to fall, at top of mind the LeBron James’s destination and Denver Nuggets impending luxury tax bill. That’s one of my major demerits of Graham’s strategy this offseason, in that he didn’t simply wait, especially after his post-draft equivocating over roster flexibility. This effectively-punting-to-next-season use of cap space is certainly better than misusing it, but should have been a backup plan after more fruitful paths dried up.

The other demerit is that it’s a reductive rationale to say these kinds of transactions are only worth it if you get a first round pick. Even if Graham has indicated he intends on carrying on Bulls tradition of not using them to draft players, 2nds are extremely useful transactional currency.

I’ll emphasize that taking on a bunch of dead money for 2nd round picks is not great business. It’s unlikely to produce much of anything too valuable in itself, but it generates value that can compound with other minor value to do something more significant in terms of getting the Bulls to title contention - which hopefully ownership realizes (they’re not great at business themselves) will make them a lot more money than whatever they save on payroll this year.

Instead, Graham’s actions on the margins look to be more about pleasing ownership1 short-term over that holy grail of a title:

• Keep payroll low by not waiving players with guaranteed contracts

• Targeting undrafted free agents and selling the 2nd round picks for cash

• Retain a bunch of front office and coaching staff from the prior regime(s)

• Overpay a Mark Bartelstein client2

The good part about failing on the margins like this is that it’s ultimately still the margins. Graham can do a good job overall, and improve3 overall even if still lagging behind in this facet.

Ultimately it’s disappointing that while Graham looks competent so far, he didn’t hit the ground running as some wunderkind. And I think it’s fair to feel this way even though it’s expected, as the Bulls aren’t going to make their own luck when it comes to hires.

It’s a one year deal, plus a team option for 2027-28, with a starting salary likely around $23M, the remainder of cap space the Bulls (after re-signing Zach Collins, which I’ll get to later).

The Bulls, coming into the offseason with the league’s largest hoard of cap space, now only have the room exception ($9.4M) available to outright acquire players. Being very far under the tax, they can also can take back more salary in a trade of an outgoing player.

Between those shrinking options, and new Bulls lead decisionmaker Bryson Graham’s public insistence on counting roster spots towards players who don’t need to be retained (meaning 1 spot remains), we can infer that the Bulls are nearly done with their offseason already.

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We have seen after recent CBA changes that ‘signing free agents from other teams’ is one of the least-used implementations of cap space. The league moved up free agency to early evening instead of midnight, but the relative scarcity of available players (most better ones either restricted or extended) has lessened the hype. Gone are the days where Cristiano Felicio re-signed a minute after midnight.

Powell is a great fit on the court next season for what the Bulls need around their young building blocks: high volume, pull-up shooting from someone who commands a lot of possession usage but isn’t a ballhog. This skillset isn’t needed so much to make the Bulls record better, but to help facilitate the development of this group of extremely young big men by providing spacing. To a lesser extent, Powell also has a solid locker room reputation and that can’t hurt what is a young (and likely very bad) team with a relatively-inexperienced Head Coach.

It’s very possibly the case that the Bulls, with this Powell signing, will have made the most significant free agency move in the league1.

That’s not too high of a distinction, of course. And this Powell signing, in isolation, is fine. But I’m a bit disappointed in how this with the other moves are now forming the larger context of how Bryson Graham is using his initial offseason to position his team for a long-term run at title contention.

As I said earlier, being in a rebuild is not advocating for a complete youth movement, instead you have a core of important players that you can help grow by acquiring competency around their skills and limitations. With loads of cap space and picks and being extremely (so extremely) far from relevance let alone title contention, Graham and the Bulls should be opportunistically in asset accumulation mode. While I praised lottery reform in part due to its killing galaxy-brain takes like ‘it’s good to purposefully sign sabotaging players because losing games is an important goal’, it should not change the overall motivation of a rebuilding team: to be young and have future assets2.

It’s not over, but in his first offseason Graham has been solid, but certainly not impressed me as some whiz-kid like he did to Michael Reinsdorf in the interview process. It would’ve been impressive if Graham found a way to target trade cast-offs and more modest value signings to help satisfy these somewhat-competing goals of player development through competent veterans and future assets. There are likely some major moves still to come where contending teams will look to move money and they may be desperate.

Instead, in acquiring Powell, Nic Claxton, and the truly-pointless-to-outright-bad re-signing of Zach Collins, the Bulls look to have struck early to pay market rate and gain zero assets. I’m sure it’s part of Graham’s plan to bank on the possibility of trading them for assets later3, but you’re taking a risk that they play to a level that adds value to their contract that you just set. And at their age and injury history, all three carry that risk.

Offseason isn’t over, and it’s a very long way to Graham’s first trade deadline. Plus there is a can-kicking element here where he very likely could have cap space next summer as well. But so far his first offseason has been kind of underwhelming. That degree of ‘whelm’ is dwarfed in praise if Caleb Wilson is a superstar, but given the team’s ownership limitations it is key for the front office to not only be capable4 but great. And this is not great.

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But I feel a need to nitpick on this early shortcoming of the second round transactions to pick up the slack for a largely disinterested and deferential (or, more simply, in a honeymoon period) coverage of the team.

As I said at the time, the selling of picks for cash is literally indefensible, so Graham is inherently on his back foot and looking a bit foolish in the attempt. To his credit, he isn’t running and hiding, addressing the second round in the introductory press conference of his first round picks, plus interviews with The Score and AM1000.

Graham’s explanation - for trading #38, there’s literally nothing justifiable to say regarding outright sale of #56 - has been consistent:

1. The board dried up, with the pool of players available in the 2nd round (even at an early selection) winnowed due to NIL money keeping some players in school

2. There are only so many roster spots, and he doesn’t want to commit one to a prospect he doesn’t like when it can be used later this summer in free agency and trades

#1 is an odd thing for a purported draft guru to admit, especially at the 38th overall selection. I guess we’ll see in the coming years if there was a prospect selected there that Graham should’ve identified. Altogether, as Will Gottlieb at CHGO rationalized last week, maybe Graham’s point with the early second round is revelatory in a way not exposing Graham executing some evil ownership directive, but that he simply received poor trade value. I held out criticism of that early-round trade until waiting to see if Kam Jones - a second-year player selected at #38 the year prior by Indiana - was a prospect target, but Jones wasn’t even mentioned and not part of the informal roster count. That means Jones is likely going to be cut while his salary is only half-guaranteed ($1.1M), and the tax-constrained Pacers’ motivation was to get another team to add that to their cap (the cash sent in the trade likely covered Jones’s salary). So that financial favor, plus the #38 pick, only netted Graham two future second round pick swaps and no additional picks. Bad value! Actually, take away the exclamation point, it’s just a second rounder after all.

Graham’s second point, about the roster, is more misleading. And, weirdly, per Bulls executives tradition. I feel PTSD symptoms having to explain this nearly every year: while every team has to cut down to 15 roster spots (plus 3 two-ways) when the regular season begins, in the offseason the roster limit goes all the way up to 20.

To the media’s (the ones asking the questions) credit, I’m glad they followed up at all on the trades and won’t consternate over why they didn’t push back on roster count, though I do wish they would at least mention it. And PR is always going to play the role of credulous stenographer. But I am a bit surprised and annoyed that fan coverage - part of how this very blog fits into the ecosystem1 - just bought this unquestioned:

“Yesterday, that logic felt a little harder to buy because they had just acquired Jones. Today, it makes a lot more sense if he isn’t part of the long-term plan.” - Bleacher Nation

“Refreshing Explanation…There is more work to be done for Graham to make this roster his own, and he needs the flexibility to do that adequately.” - Bulls on SI

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Here is the current Bulls roster - with some assumptions from last week’s transactions that aren’t official until July 6th in the new league year:

That’s 12 spots. The maximum of 20, minus 12, is 8 open spots!

The real reason Graham is framing the roster count this way is due to, what else, the cap and payroll expense.

If part of Graham’s plan this offseason is to leverage some cap flexibility towards obtaining assets attached to ‘bad money’, those players that are acquired will count on the cap…but don’t have to stay on the roster. And the team could cut - and potentially stretch given their risk calculation - relatively dead weight contracts of Williams and Dillingham. Heck, you could trade some of these other veterans (Isaac Okoro being the most superfluous) to open up a roster spot and maybe even get something in return.

Stretching this out further, if you don’t value 2nd rounders to the point you’ll trade for minimal future value or outright sell them, why not use them to open up a roster spot? As if no team would take Dillingham (1 year, $8M) if you attached a second rounder or two?

That question isn’t meant to be rhetorical, because there is an answer that perhaps is obvious but certainly wasn’t addressed by Graham, the media, or fan coverage: that hypothetical transaction - or a different one waiving a guaranteed deal to sign someone else - would cost cash. And Bulls ownership is not interested (considering, even) in losing cash, especially if the alternative is gaining cash.

I was going to wait on posting this but there has been such a flurry of moves since the draft, including trades of players (aka roster spots) using cap space and trade exceptions, that maybe the Bulls will change their roster count very soon. It won’t change that, at this time, the talk of roster spots doesn’t really hold water. But maybe that relatively minor transgression will be lost in an avalanche of acquisitions and excitement over this roster build. Fine by me! In that case, I will quickly forgive but never forget.

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“The roster we (have) is in a developmental stage right now. I think everyone here knows we are not where we want to be, but we’ve got four picks in this draft. We own all of our picks going forward. We’ve got a ton of second-round picks.”

If you recall, Graham laughed at that last part knowing that it was the final parting gift of his predecessor, the final sad result of him hanging on to his players for too long and not operating well within the NBA transactional market.

And made funnier (to fans, anyway) because another trait of the AKME era in their franchise-ruination speedrun was a total disregard of 2nd round picks, including their final draft in 2025 where they traded down in the 2nd round and gained nothing but cash for it.

The Graham era has gotten off to a decent start, and the early moves - plus a natural desire of fans to want this to go well - had vibes reaching a new high after their first round selections.

So it was pretty demoralizing (actually, at first it was anger) to see Graham’s 2nd round selections, in that he didn’t make any.

The 38th pick in this draft1 was traded to the Indiana Pacers for 2nd-year combo guard Kam Jones, plus two future 2nd round pick swaps in 2028 and 2030.

If Jones turns out to be a useful contributor this season and going forward, as much or moreso than any player available to them at this spot, then Graham will deserve credit for using what should be his most honed skill as a new-to-the-head-job executive. Or they’ll inconspicuously waive him - he’s signed for 3 more seasons but a lot of it is non-guaranteed, including half ($1.1M) of this year’s salary - and figure so many other additions will happen we’ll forget about this dud.

I’m skeptical of Graham’s desire to acquire and keep Jones, given Jones’s age (will turn 25 in February). Ricky O’Donnell provided a bit more:

Kam Jones was one of my three sleepers in the 2025 draft … then he did nothing as a rookie. This is a good read on his first year in Indiana

There’s also reason to be curious as to why Indiana is already moving on from Jones when they’re trying to contend this coming season. It’s possible that the Pacers wanted him off the roster without having to pay that guarantee (they’re very close to the luxury tax), in which case shouldn’t the Bulls be receiving more compensation?

As far as what the rest of the compensation actually was: The 2nd round pick swaps, while maybe a bit more valuable with new lottery rules, still seem unlikely to get you higher than the #38 selection you just got rid of. That said, it is technically something of transactional value.

That reminds me, because of something that has zero transactional value: The Bulls also achieved cash in this Indiana trade.

And earlier in the night, before the 2nd round even began, Graham traded the #56 overall selection2 to the Lakers FOR JUST CASH CONSIDERATIONS.

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This is, of course, literally indefensible. Mere cash gains nothing cap-wise, not even adding to some general yearly pool of cash to be used outgoing in a trade later. And even if the cash was pledged towards building out the organization - remember, Michael Reinsdorf with Graham’s acknowledgement said they learned their lesson and would now spend what was required - that money doesn’t have to come from a team-building asset.

It’s not that the Bulls had to take a player with that pick (they quickly signed 2 undrafted players to two-way slots), it’s that even late seconds should get you something of value, even something so miniscule as a future 2nd round pick swap. Kick the can down the road, get anything tangible that you could potentially use later as a final throw in, something we see happen all the time and most glaringly this very night with Isaiah (aka “beef”) (aka “better than Nic Claxton”) Stewart being dumped by the Pistons to the Grizzlies.

Seeing the Cash Considerations trade felt simply unbelievable. Or extremely believable, if you’re cynical to the point where you were assuming at some point soon Bulls ownership would flex their cheapness no matter who was nominally in charge.

Even I was not that cynical! Sure, the last two administrations would always do moves that, as John Paxson3 once said, “build equity with ownership”. But that’s still a small sample size, right?

Alas, Graham’s brazenly-early homage to Bulls empty suits past confirms that he was hired by the Bulls for many reasons, but in part because he doesn’t have the stature to push back on this. An executive with any cachet would have been able to convince ownership that they know how to win more than they do, and 1) these relatively meager savings are counter - no matter in how relatively meager of degree - to the opportunity to make ungodly sums of money with a contending Chicago Bulls team and 2) not only should The Freaking Chicago Bulls not need to get back cash in a trade they should be using their inherent advantages to spend outgoing cash on trades (and uncapped cash on front office and player development and computer monitors…).

This was our concern, dude, and for me that concern was raised a bit in his otherwise-completely-fine press conferences when his "The Reinsdorfs will financially support my vision” T-shirt has me asking a lot of questions already answered by his shirt.

Like I said, literally indefensible4. But not unforgiveable. The past two regimes had way way more, and more important, deficiencies than this cheap move. If Graham is good at a lot of other, and more important, aspects of the job then he can succeed even with these Reinsdorfian limitations.

Perhaps that’s not cynical enough, but like I said I think all Bulls fans want this to go well, to have a team and organization worth rooting for again. While the Cash Considerations meme makes me laugh, it comes with a sigh.

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Due to this consensus opinion, there really isn’t any assessment required on the pick itself. And due to the current state of the roster (bottom-3 talent base in the league?), fit and timeline doesn’t matter either.

Let’s instead get into learning about the player Caleb Wilson is, and how he individually projects to be in the NBA. That’s a way more exciting discussion, especially in this case because Wilson is an extremely tantalizing prospect:

I mean…this, altogether…this rocks. For an analytical profile that’s written down, I recommend Will Gottlieb at CHGO.

A superlative athleticism + size combination with a great motor. And Wilson’s weaknesses do not indicate a player that is unskilled, just that he may be deficient in certain skills (shooting, which of course is very important but not crippling to be subpar at this age) but showed proficiency in other skills including the nebulous trait of ‘feel’ aka ‘basketball IQ’ aka ‘we shouldn’t invoke comparisons to Tyrus Thomas’.

And if you want to learn a lot about Wilson as a person and how some of those more subjective traits will help him reach his professional potential, I highly recommend old friend of the blog Ricky O’Donnell’s massive profile of Wilson at SBNation. As old sportswriters and fans say in a way I find creepy: “seems like a good kid”!

This pick was a no-brainer for Bryson Graham’s first draft. For this to be graded in retrospect as a success, Wilson needs to become a star. And if he does, a lot more important good things will happen beyond ‘2026 draft grade’.

With the Bulls second selection in the first round, they drafted Dailyn Swain. Similar to Wilson in a several-inches-shorter package (and a bit older and more experienced, turning 21 in a couple weeks), Swain looks to be another big-time athlete with outside shooting concerns though possessing a knack for scoring inside:

Here’s Gottlieb’s written profile on Swain.

After the first round, Graham met with the media2. He didn’t reveal anything that was too unique, and in fact was somewhat in line with what Arturas Karnisovas would say about the draft:

1. take the best player available regardless of fit

2. the players selected are big and athletic for their position and can provide defensive impact and leadership

3. outside shooting is a skill that can be developed

I don’t think any of this is controversial. It’s key to remember the Bulls are going to be pretty awful next season, so you don’t need to spend your first round picks on a particular need or how they complement a particular player. For Wilson, you’re hoping for the big piece to build around regardless of what’s already here. And for Swain at #15, even if he doesn’t fit exactly right with Wilson (don’t care how he fits with Josh Giddey or anyone else), as long as he’s a rotation-level talent that’s good work.

It was never Karnisovas’s stated philosophies regarding the draft that was in question, is was his execution. Patrick Williams and Dalen Terry are comparable profiles (Wilson obviously has far higher upside than anybody AK had the opportunity to select) but they never improved and even regressed as pros.

And part of the issue with that development failure (the main issue being the players themselves and thus the scouting ‘miss’) was something that hopefully Graham differs from AK on: Graham, at least so far in public, acknowledges his team is not good and not even close to being good. What a welcome change a non-delusional front office will be for Wilson and Swain’s development, and the building of this roster as a whole.

Graham, like Karnisovas, came into this job for the first time with background as a player and then scout. The draft is where they can separate themselves in terms of player acquisition. Nobody knows anything, but you’re paid to rise above that. You earn a good draft grade by being in line with draft experts consensus. You succeed at drafting by seeing your team have good (or at least valuable) players a few years down the line.

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Second Round is tonight! Bulls have picks #38 and #56, but as we already saw late in the first round there will be a lot of trading up and down. Maybe they will sell one!

On late Monday night, reports surfaced (trade can’t be officially announced until new league year on July 6th) that the Bulls have acquired Nic Claxton from the Brooklyn Nets. In return they gave up…nothing. Well, not literally nothing, as for a 3-team trade to happen there is a ‘touch rule’ where all teams have to interact in some way, so the Bulls are sending Mo Gueye - and his non-guaranteed contract - to the Timberwolves1. I…honestly had no idea Gueye was on the roster, must’ve been signed that final week of this season in that scramble to have ambulatory bodies for those games.

It’s been jarring to my system to consider new and extreme differences in how I evaluate - or in this case make snap-judgements - Bulls transactions in context:

1. the announced lottery reform has successfully ended galaxy-brain thinking that suggested (and in many cases, devolved into annoying pleading) that ‘sabotage your roster to be terrible on the court this coming season’ was a smart team-building initiative and so it’d be actually bad if they got a good player

2. Arturas Karnisovas can’t hurt me anymore, and I don’t have to expend energy thinking what he’s thinking

So with that out of the way, how should we judge this trade in this new context of tanking-abolishment and new hire Bryson Graham?

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It’s a long-established good practice to not rely on signing free agents as best use of cap space. It’s rare that needle-moving players get to unrestricted free agency anymore2, and even more rare that restricted free agents of high caliber move teams. So what has been done, especially teams that are as far away from relevancy (let alone contention) as the Bulls are, is facilitate a financially-uneven trade using that cap space. And the asset used in exchange for ‘absorbing’ a salary into cap space depends on how ‘bad’ the money is.

Unlike Nikola Vucevic, Nic Claxton is a starting-caliber (if low-end) center on a reasonable contract ($23.3M/$21.1M). And also unlike Vuc, Claxton plays at both ends closer to the rim. Like Vuc, Claxton has been durable and is a capable passer.

Claxton had been with the Nets for his entire 7-year career3, and signed a contract extension before the 2025-26 season. Given how the Nets at the time were in the midst of egregiously tanking, plus Claxton’s age (he turned 27 this past April), it was initially speculated that this extension was meant to make Claxton tradeable. Unfortunately for the Nets, there never looked to be a point where Claxton would command positive value like a first round pick, so they held on to him through the trade deadline.

That he was available this summer for zero assets means that the Bulls valued Claxton’s contract as neutral. That’s probably correct, but for what it’s worth old pal Stephen Noh’s model projects Claxton as very overpaid, and there are some red flags raised the past couple of seasons:

Claxton was pretty good a few years ago, but he's been declining since. Biggest issue being that he gets pounded on the glass and his rim protection has fallen off.

Claxton has also dealt with back injuries that have impacted his availability and productivity. With athletic centers of his ilk, injury and age-related decline can come early, so perhaps that is part of the reason the Nets were willing to move off their homegrown product.

Again, it’s important to remember that this isn’t the same league and Bulls front office as last year. We knew AK was delusional about his own team’s standing, and ignorant of their lottery odds. Maybe Bryson Graham has these same faults (or others), but we don’t know it yet and certainly this Claxton acquisition isn’t going to indicate much.

The Bulls still have a lot of cap flexibility remaining, but this does use a significant portion:

And so when grading the move, it’s really about the opportunity cost of not using this $23M in cap space in a deal where the Bulls get a worse player (and worse contract) though acquire an asset for doing so4. Or trying to get a younger player with more upside like Jalen Duren or Walker Kessler. As mentioned, it’s rare that restricted free agents change teams, but maybe it screws with another team’s books and you don’t miss out much if this Claxton move is not available by then.

We’ll see if Claxton can be better than he was the last couple of seasons in this new, decidedly-not-the-Nets, environment. It very likely won’t be leading the Bulls to a lot of wins, but he could help in facilitating his much-younger teammates’ development, simply soak up innings as a veteran, or get you something in a subsequent trade to a more competitive team. The Nets - also with lots of cap flexibility this summer - gave up on that idea in this trade.

The draft is tonight! I figured on lottery night that their jumping up was the best case for a lazy blogger: I wasn’t compelled to try and judge who to take at #4 as it was pretty clear-cut that you simply take the guy that falls.

And to a lesser extent that kind of applies to #15 as well? There is going to be someone, maybe multiple someones, who were projected to go between #5 and #10 and they will slip. Even AK got this dynamic right when selecting Matas Buzelis. I’m sure Bryson Graham has too much self-belief to figure the draft is a crapshoot so he can just make a safe pick that pundits - and lazy bloggers - will grade well. So we can more appropriately judge that pick, or if the Bulls move up or down or acquire more selections, when the prospects actually play.

I’ll certainly read up on the players scouting reports after they are Bulls. It’s a real time-saver!

Like with the front office hires (including Graham himself), it’s not really sensible to provide preemptive judgement on this hire. Splitter has at least been in his position before, but only for one season and in a really unique and chaotic situation having to take over the Portland TrailBlazers early in the year.

And though Splitter did lead the Blazers into the playoffs (thanks for that!) the chaos only accelerated with new ownership coming in and all signs were that they were not going to retain and promote Splitter. Part of that may have been desire for a clean slate, but rumors abounded that the new owner had interesting ideas about how cheap they should be with coaching1.

In the time since my last check-in here, Graham hired a couple guys from New Orleans which draws scrutiny not so much that he is bringing in ‘his people’ but that they’re all coming from an unsuccessful organization. It’s only fair to give Graham credit then to hiring Splitter from outside of his circle who came up through the San Antonio Spurs - where he spent the most time in his playing career - coaching and front office tree.

Like all coaches, especially those for teams not in contention (like the Bulls for 15 years), I’m sure Splitter will say he wants to develop young players and play fast. He didn’t really do that in Portland, but as previously stated that was a weird situation I won’t hold against him.

Still to come is news on who is going to be on Splitter’s coaching staff. The Bulls like to have some holdovers and/or ownership spies so there has been no mass firings yet (including that of Billy Donovan’s son), with lead assistant Wes Unseld Jr. rumored to be a finalist in this head job but may stay - I assume there’s club control on his contract - even after losing out to Splitter.

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I’m going to start with front office, because I think at this ‘stage’1 of the franchise - the toilet - that is the most urgent need.

The current purely-headcount change in the front office is zero:

3 Out: Karnisovas (!!!!), Eversley (!!), Josh Malone

3 In: Graham, Stephen Mervis, Acie Law IV

Julia Poe at the Tribune is implying, due to their involvement of hiring Graham in the first place, that John Paxson, JJ Polk (previously worked with Graham in New Orleans), and Pat Connelly are staying.

Like the hire of Graham, we have no way of assessing the quality of his new underlings so I will not even attempt it. But in terms of quantity, this is underwhelming so far2. In his opening press conference, Graham mostly hit the right notes and certainly came across as more capable than his predecessor. But one statement was likely innocuous but is triggering if you know The Bulls:

There are very very good people, and talented people, in the building already.

There was no follow up question of “how did you determine that?”. And while at the time it could’ve been rationalized as Graham not wanting to trash anybody before more quietly firing them later, there hasn’t been many firings in the time since, and all talk of expanding and spending on the front office has also been next to nothing.

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I think would have been a fair question to ask why the certainty in judgement of executives, because in that same press conference Graham said he didn’t have any idea of his coaching search yet because it was so early.

The coaching search has seemingly overtaken the front office one. Bleacher Nation has aggregated the ‘fairly extensive’ reported list of candidates:

• Oklahoma City Thunder assistant coach Dave Bliss3

• Cleveland Cavaliers associate head coach Johnnie Bryant

• Former New Orleans Pelicans interim head coach James Borrego

• Minnesota Timberwolves assistant coach Micah Nori

• Atlanta Hawks assistant coach Ryan Schmidt

• Charlotte Hornets assistant coach Lamar Skeeter

• Interim Portland Trail Blazers head coach Tiago Splitter

• Former Golden State Warriors assistant coach Jerry Stackhouse

• San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Sean Sweeney

• Bulls assistant coach Wes Unseld Jr.

I have followed these reports but find myself not really caring. The Bulls are in such a deep hole - and assessing coaches is such an inexact science - that I can’t really tell who would be the ‘right’ hire.

I do think the desired attribute of a coaching candidate is that he shares a vision with Graham. Lottery reform should uncomplicate the incentives in building/development versus winning, and I expect Graham’s hire to agree with him on the Bulls’ course of action in this first year of their latest rebuild. I don’t think conflicting priorities was a problem with Karnisovas and Billy Donovan, the problem there was that their shared vision was stupid.

Unlike with the front office hire, I don’t have a coaching candidate preference of experience and accomplishment. It can be a first time guy, or a retread, I won’t judge what they did in previous stops as they likely had different goals set out by their bosses. I’ll wait to judge, with Graham and the next head coach, on what they set their goals at going forward.

Like with the obtaining of Portland’s lotto-protected selection a couple weeks ago, it was nice as a Bulls fan to head into this lottery without the burden of preemptive annoyance of good things happening to AKME.

I’m far from a draft expert, but the consensus with this class is that the number 4 selection brings a silver lining in that you can’t screw it up. So definitely different than 2020, when newly-hired Arturas Karnisovas also received some lottery luck and that #4 overall selection. This year, there is a clear top four players in the first tier, just take the one who is left.

This status isn’t a positive, I’m sure new Bulls head honcho Bryson Graham, who IS purportedly a draft expert, relishes the challenge of proactively making a great pick and not just who falls to him.

I didn’t have a recap of Graham’s press conference, which is ultimately a good indicator in that he didn’t say anything weird or disqualifying forcing me to whine about it. And the actual moves will matter far more than whatever team-building philosophies he espoused. But it did seem like he was being honest in saying that he knew this team he inherited is extremely far away.

That’s a key difference from AKME, who either never understood where they were, or purposefully lied and acted like a team closer to contention. After last year’s lottery, I ranked ‘young cores’ and the Bulls were far lower than what they thought/behaved they were. That ranking set the arbitrary age cutoff at 26, so Coby White was leaving that designation even if he wasn’t traded.

Again, not a draft expert, but it appears that any of AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer, and Caleb Wilson will vault to very best core piece on the team, and push them up these subjective rankings1 in a way that’s much clearer than arguing Matas Buzelis versus Keyonte George or, to a lesser extent, Josh Giddey versus Dyson Daniels.

For what it’s worth, our pal Ricky’s post-lottery mock draft has Wilson going to the Bulls.

For Graham, there is a lot of catch-up work in making sure he sets fire to every scouting report left over from Karnisovas or Eversley (or, really, any of their underlings) and getting his own process applied to his new team. Maybe that’s wasted effort when in practicality it looks like he’s just taking who is left of the top-4. But Graham can still prove those drafting Bona fides with that #15 pick.

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Graham was one of the reported finalists, but all subsequent reporting was leaning towards Matt Lloyd as Lloyd has previously worked with the Bulls and under John Paxson, who was (again, reportedly) influential in this executive search.

As I said last week, I don’t really care to interrogate Graham’s experience. He’s a first timer in the lead chair1, like Lloyd and several other finalists, and like Arturas Karnisovas was in 2020.

I would’ve preferred an established hire, like the Dallas Mavericks made earlier in the day with former title-winning Raptors executive Masai Ujiri. But it was known extremely early that the Six-Time World Champions nostalgia brand Chicago franchise was not going that route.

Of note, and credit to Bleacher Nation for connecting the dots here, is that Graham was likely someone that Michael Reinsdorf’s mentioned search firm has recommended, as they have done their recent placements with former Pelicans and Hawks executives.

This could work out, but we have no reason to assume it will!

Graham is only 39 years old2, a Texas native who played collegiately at Texas A&M and after college went into the New Orleans Pelicans front office where he stayed for 15 years, working his way up to a GM title, and then was poached by the Atlanta Hawks before last season. In those 15 years in New Orleans, Graham worked under several administrations but likely most relevant was his time under David Griffin3.

[thus you’ll likely read ‘credit’ given to Graham in player drafting and development when it was Griffin making the ultimate calls. If that’s so impressive, why not just hire Griffin?]

What I’m most intrigued by is who else Graham is going to bring with him to his front office staff. And if he needs to fire people to hire others, as there are several holdovers from the AKME4, GarPax, and…shit, even Jerry Krause eras, and though I don’t know their ambitions to actually work for a living, they still have building keycards and are accounted for in the budget.

There’s also the major move of hiring a head coach, and deciding which assistants from the departed Billy Donovan’s staff will remain.

A big “we’ll see” to all of this! As Bulls fans, we don’t have much experience with these kind of changes at the top. With Arturas Karnisovas I learned a couple lessons:

1. Don’t assume “highly regarded” means anything

2. Trust my gut if the guy stumbles out of the gate with an uninspired press performance and long-dithering evaluations, like how AK handled his first couple months being ‘diligent’ with Jim Boylen.

I will also try not to be cynical with this news. The process may be bad, and the Bulls may be hopelessly cheap, but that doesn’t mean they can’t nail this hire.

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So it is not surprising that the rumored names making the in-person interview round are mostly cheap first timers, and that Matt Lloyd is currently a rumored frontrunner because of his career ties to Paxson.

One of the highest-trafficked posts to BlogABull over the years was a fanpost1 extolling Lloyd’s role in Bulls drafts when he worked for the team as a scout from 2003-2012. Lloyd since worked for the Orlando Magic for ten seasons and now 2nd in command with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Lloyd’s draft record with those teams is spotty because every teams’ is. And it’s important to remember that we have zero evidence of what influence - we know he wasn’t the ultimate decider - Lloyd had on these drafts, or other player evaluations. Do you remember who else was an underling for a successful team given credit for draft picks in particular that had every media member - local and national - ascribe the ‘highly regarded’ label to? Arturas Karnisovas.

Maybe the Bulls should be instead poaching the guy making the final decisions for Lloyd’s Timberwolves and Karnisovas’s Nuggets, Tim Connelly2. But we know they don’t operate that way. The Miami Heat talk about winning titles, whereas our mid-market team talks ‘sustainable success’3. The only rumored finalist who has actually had the job before is Dennis Lindsey, who called the shots for the Utah Jazz from 2019 to 20214.

If the Bulls hire Lindsey, we can further scrutinize his record. If it’s Lloyd or another first-timer, there really is no point. I will not pre-judge one way or the other, and instead wait for words and actions. I was quickly suspicious of Karnisovas after his initial mumble-fest and the inaction of ‘evaluating’ Jim Boylen. It turned out Karnisovas was a bad hire. Not because of how the Bulls got to hiring him, but because of Karnisovas being literally the worst at the job.

Surely they have to hire someone more competent this time by default, right?

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This is a move that has been weeks in the making, and even the jettisoning of the failed front office plus full-throated backing of Donovan by ownership in the aftermath wasn’t enough to have Donovan stay.

It was reported by Joe Cowley of the Sun-Times that Donovan met with the ‘dorf family last Tuesday, and instead of the ‘quick decision’ that both sides claimed was surely happening it lingered for several days. Certainly any delay only gave further fuel to the idea that Donovan was leaving. Maybe the days spent since have been logistics, we don’t know how much of his contract is being paid out and the fate of his staff (including his son).

The ultimate decision to stay or go was appearing obvious. Though the ‘dorfs were backing Billy to the point of suggesting the new lead executive search criteria would include ‘liking Billy Donovan’, it was clear that while objectively Billy is a good coach he is not the right coach at this time for the franchise.

No matter who they hire - and there was a candidate list leaked and search firm established and reported on over the weekend - the Bulls are staring at a huge talent deficit. While they have FLEXIBILITY instead of good players, there was no quick fix conceivable to where Donovan knew that, regardless of ownership’s possible AKME-level delusion. Perhaps after an alternative path last trade deadline where Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu are still in the fold and potentially re-signed, there are enough good players to where it would perhaps take a big ballsy/desperate trade (Zion?) to get the organization in alignment with Donovan: where winning the game in front of you is top priority.

But instead they are nowhere near Donovan’s desired competitiveness level. And as we saw many times over his tenure, Donovan was not going to take it upon himself - nor should he have been expected to - to steer organizational direction.

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The team on the floor next year is looking to be very young - the Blazers pick conveyed so the Bulls now have #15, #381 and their top-10 lottery pick plus Noa Essengue from last year’s draft - and thus very bad. While Reinsdorf explicitly conveyed the organization’s distrust towards tanking, this strategy is more ethical losing. With multiple major injury returnees coming to the Bulls’ quartile of the conference next year, even a lotto win and poaching in restricted free agency wasn’t going to be enough to make the playoffs.

It’s very likely the next Bulls coach will be worse than Donovan. But in this scenario - and it’s so blatantly a rebuild that I would consider it a major red flag in any exec candidate who didn’t see it that way - that’s fine. He’ll probably be similar to several caretaker (caretanker?) bozos like Will Hardy of the Jazz or Brian Keefe of the Wizards. Now those are guys who were doing more purposefully-losing in-game tactics, but that isn’t required to do this Bulls coaching job well. Heck, we don’t even know how much losing will impact the draft slot next year.

Donovan had some developmental successes while Bulls coach, but he had a philosophy - shared, or maybe simply deferred to, by AKME - of not giving out entitlement minutes. The next Bulls coach will do what Donovan didn’t, and play the young guys without constraint.

We don’t know who the Bulls will hire as a lead executive, but it’s likely going to be a cheap first-timer. They’ll probably get the same caliber of a coach, possibly technically-second-timer Wes Unseld Jr., as he’s already under contract. Donovan’s hiring was necessary at the time because the Bulls went so-insanely-unqualified in their hire of his predecessor Jim Boylen that projecting any ‘stature’ was a huge step up. And Donovan certainly gave the Bulls that, going above and beyond to be a shield from media/fans for AKME and simultaneously indulging one of his own favorite pastimes: talking.

He also was a pretty good coach. Just pretty good, not great, and we’ll never know if his teams would be at a tactical disadvantage in a playoffs series because he so rarely got the team there. Given that it’ll be likely several years before they need that question answered, bring on the empty suit athletic wear to Bulls sidelines next year.

And it also means that if something substantially good happens, like the Bulls obtaining a second first-round pick from the Portland TrailBlazers if they make it out of the Play-In Tournament this week, I don’t have to think: 1) how will AK dead-enders spin the Lauri Markkanen trade as actually good now^ and 2) how will AK screw up the additional draft selection

^Moved up from footnote since it got so long: In retrospect it looks worse, but that trade was far from the worst offense in the AKME era. Certainly one of the first of many self-scouting misses, in that AK quickly gave up on Lauri and his ability to play alongside ‘All-Star’ Nikola Vucevic. But it was a couple years and teams before Markkanen broke out. This is one of several moves where the Bulls get some credit for not being the worst participant, in this case that’s the Blazers for sending out this protected first round pick, and a pretty good role player in Derrick Jones Jr., for Larry Nance Jr.. They obviously had similar mindset to AK making that Vuc trade in thinking their team was good enough to where the pick conveyance wouldn’t matter. In their defense they had Damian Lillard, not Zach LaVine.

Fret no longer! Sure, ownership may lean on the wrong people and repeat the same mistakes in their new hire. But I certainly don’t want them to fail, and with perhaps the worst collection of assets in the league (pending lottery results) getting another mid-round first is something nice for the new hire. Whereas I was pretty much thinking any good thing that maybe kept AKME employed was a long-term negative thing.

The Blazers have two chances to make the playoffs and therefore convey that selection1 to the Bulls. Familiarize yourself with your new favorite team.

Tonight they’re in Phoenix as a slight underdog against the Suns, whose poor performance against the ‘not tanking, too proud to suck any way but genuinely’ Bulls really tugged at Michael Reinsdorf’s hoops heartstrings but for more legitimate purposes has me dubious of their chances in this game.

If they lose tonight, get another chance on Friday versus the Clippers/Warriors winner.

Man…a couple days later, and it still feels great to type that! This was a universally-lauded decision to finally shitcan these bozos, and here are some of my favorite postmortems:

• Stephen Noh

• Kelly Dwyer

• Tom Ziller

• John Hollinger

The expected damage control from the disposed executives came via Jamal Collier of ESPN, who had sourced1 some AKME whining about the ‘constraints’ they were under from ownership, namely the franchise’s motivations - and that aligning with head coach Billy Donovan - of not wanting to tank for better chances in the draft lottery.

That’s clearly a bullshit excuse coming from incompetents who were also voluminous bullshitters. But it does bring up the important point of ownership’s role.

And I am not fatalistic with that. As Dwyer put it:

Here's the part where I'm supposed to tell you this will never end, because Reinsdorf(s).

Chicago's problem is the owner, the owner's son, but that's the same problem with most NBA teams. Franchises can develop championships even under the meddlesome, which-team-did-you-scout-for, annoyance of an owner's grown-up kid.

I, of course, had low expectations for lil’ ‘dorf’s appearance: as the son of a billionaire, it was very likely going to get a bit weird.

And it did get weird, but only a bit! Most egregious was the part where he denied that AKME received contract extensions last summer even though it was confirmed by their in-house ‘reporter’ and double-confirmed after they scrubbed it from their team-owned sites. There was also some concerning opinions on the value of lost regular seasons like this one, with both player development2 and arena patrons’ placation seen as important factors.

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That’s not great, but my important takeaway is that while Michael Reinsdorf himself may seem in over his head and not a compelling leader3, that is fine as long as he knows to look for those qualities in his lead basketball hire.

In 2020 he was in this same position and hired a total dud. But I was encouraged by a few quotes that there were some lessons learned:

1. Using a search firm this time

2. No in-person restrictions from Covid like in 2020

3. Acknowledged an important quality is communication, both internally and externally to the fanbase, and he admitted that Arturas Karnisovas was awful at that

4. Acknowledged that he needs to be less hands-off when something seems blatantly wrong

But since this is a Reinsdorf, and these are The Bulls, there were some troubling indications that they’d repeat past mistakes.

1. John Paxson is still hanging around and Reinsdorf cited him as an influence (gag), and also still around is Gar Forman’s former bag man Brian Hagen. Holdovers from the AKME regime include the lesser Connelly brother and JJ Polk

2. The deference to the incumbent head coach, Billy Donovan

The biggest winner in this newly-opened power vacuum is Donovan, who Reinsdorf lauded repeatedly and deferred any future decisions to his employment to Donovan himself. Not only did Michael expect to see Donovan exert more influence on personnel decisions, but said he’d see it as a character flaw in any front office candidate if they didn’t want Donovan to coach.

This is not a best practice. Ideally, the organization would be an entirely clean slate, and you can get a bigger name in the conversation of potential hires by trusting them to decide if Donovan should remain coach.

But, again grading on an NBA Owner curve, this is better than when the team told a newly-hired Karnisovas that he had to ‘evaluate’ Jim Boylen for months4 . Donovan is a good coach, a capable talent evaluator, is genuinely well-respected throughout the league, and perhaps most importantly the Reinsdorf family will listen to him.

While Donovan clearly exhibits a win-now mentality that befits coaches more than executives, I don’t believe he is ignorant of long-term planning towards building a sustainable winner. I can very easily see a scenario where Donovan helps find an executive, and that executive says they need to go young (and therefore bad) for a couple seasons, and Donovan agrees that makes sense but doesn’t want to be coach then.

I don’t worry so much about Donovan (or Paxson) steering the Bulls incorrectly as much as I worry about self-imposed financial constraints. Throughout the few-and-long-tenured front office administrations, one constant has been the lack of prior experience and support staff, two things that cost money (with no spending cap). Donovan is already a well-paid coach, and despite lil’ ‘dorf’s lies they are paying the fired executives on their way out.

I’ve seen rumors of candidates but nothing seems that concrete yet. There are three ways this can go, in order of my preference:

1. They hire an established big-name executive, who will entertain retaining Donovan to where all parties are satisfied, but ultimately be able to get what he wants (whether that’s keeping Donovan as head coach or not)

2. They keep Donovan as coach, and hire a relatively novice executive with Donovan as a shadow president

3. Donovan ascends to the front office - reportedly not what he wants to do, now - and picks a GM under him and a cheap first-timer coach

4. Donovan quits, Bulls hire another cheap first-timer executive who gets a cheap first-timer coach

Again, it’d be great if Michael Reinsdorf was, for lack of a better phrase, “his own man”, and had the humility/wisdom to know he doesn’t know, and therefore best this time to give up executive power to a proven success instead of giving it to Billy Donovan.

But he’s Jerry Reindsorf’s son, and Jerry is ::checks:: still alive. So we’re stuck with him, not a unique situation in sports fandom.

I don’t believe Arturas Karnisovas was destined to fail because of ownership constraints. But maybe he was destined to fail because Michael Reinsdorf’s process to hire him. Hopefully that process changes this time around.

Both Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley have been fired.

I couldn’t help but mention this should’ve been done years ago. But I will give them credit: in the team’s statement from the owner’s son it’s mentioned how much they value the fans…and typically that’s all horseshit BUT in this case they actually did something that indicates they do care. Not that it should matter given their status in professional sports, but ownership is eating some money in terminating both AK and ME less than a year after they received secret contract extensions.

While shocking in the exact timing - I don’t even think it was leaked to Shams minutes before? - there had been some recent acceleration in speculation and rumor-ing that changes were finally going to happen. The latest debacle of a trade deadline, culminating in the release of Jaden Ivey last week, was apparently the final straw. I am perhaps most happy that this happened before the end of the season and we don’t have to hear from Karnisovas ever again.

No word yet on the future of other members of the front office - a lot of Bulls and Iowa State lifers still linger through multiple eras - or that of head coach Billy Donovan. It’s long been speculated that Donovan could stay and either help pick the front office or head upstairs himself. There was other news in the basketball world concerning Donovan as one of his rumored landing spots - the University of North Carolina - had just filled its open head coaching job.

I’m so very elated that the Bulls can start fresh. Of the awful things the AKME regime did over the past couple seasons in particular, they at least didn’t sell out the future. The cupboard is currently pretty bare, but very little ‘bad’ money has been committed, and the new boss will have a lot of cap space plus all of their own first round picks (with potentially one more coming from Portland) plus a freshly-stocked cache of second rounders.

Of course, given that this is The Bulls, there is reason to be skeptical that they will make a good hire. Judging by their history it’ll be some old time confidant of Reinsdorf or a new cheap hire. And some underlying limitations with ownership in how the team spends on payroll and in support staff (including front office!). But Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley were not merely cheap first timers who were OK-to-bad at their jobs and hamstrung by ownership. They were uniquely poor at nearly every aspect of running a basketball team, including the ability to communicate to fans what they were doing. Since coming aboard before the 2020-21 season, they have been the worst not-fired front office in the entire league.

That qualifier ends now. The Bulls no longer have the absolute worst. AKME is gone.

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Then Ivey’s mental deterioration became too prolific to ignore. Being away from the team’s road trip while rehabbing, Ivey’s consistent and escalating Instagram rants broke Reddit containment and received mainstream media attention. First from the Chicago Sun-Times’s Joe Cowley, who reported that the Bulls had had enough - this was apparently just the latest and worst of Ivey’s behavior - and were ‘working on an exit strategy’. By the time I started openly wondering exactly what ‘work’ needed to be done2 when you could simply cut the guy loose, the Bulls did exactly that.

I don’t believe anywhere but the fringe of the internet thinks it wasn’t a proper cut-and-dry decision to cut Ivey immediately. Even before his latest rants (he has continued multiple times since, in case there was any benefit of the doubt not burned through yet), the physical and mental issues Ivey was exhibiting meant the Bulls weren’t going to re-sign him.

Would the decision be different if Ivey was contributing, or had a good chance of contributing in the future? Yes, of course, those are different circumstances. The NBA, and Chicago Bulls, have employed players who’ve done worse because of their performance.

It’s easy to let go of people who aren’t producing. The Bulls should take a similar approach to their front office, and fire Arturas Karnisovas immediately.

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I don’t need to lay out the multitude of reasons AK should be canned. He should’ve been replaced years ago, and instead received a secret contract extension over the summer with the message from ownership being that he succeeded once (?) and deserved another chance to shape the next iteration of the six-time world champions going for the sixth seed in the East.

This past trade deadline was the easiest, lowest-risk step in this next ‘stage’, as AK called it. And while Ivey was one of the more high-profile additions, it was only at the cost of Kevin Huerter. Perhaps, like so many times before, the draft pedigree of Ivey gave AK tunnel-vision in his ask, but the Pistons were not going to offer much different if not Ivey.

Given the cost, Ivey already looking like a bust was not an indictment in and of itself. It was the kind of low-risk swing at talent that the Bulls put themselves in position to have to attempt, and it always had a low likelihood of working out.

But we didn’t know just how much of a longshot that was, with the added problem of organizational embarrassment, given Ivey’s personality. And that Karnisovas either knew about Ivey’s behavior and went for it anyway, or didn’t perform proper due diligence (not the first time this very deadline!), is just the latest reason to fire this guy already.

The knives are out for Arturas Karnisovas. We recently saw Billy Donovan start to backchannel his own exit strategy, publically distancing himself from this mess. In the wake of cutting Ivey, Donovan was forced to face the media before a game and be the only person in the organization to address the issue beyond PR’s “conduct detrimental to the team”.

Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune had a fantastic column about how that public-facing dynamic is reason to fire Karnisovas:

It’s impossible to extend this grace, however, to an executive too cowardly to face any public acknowledgment of his error. Karnišovas offered nothing — not a public statement, not a private comment — in the wake of Ivey’s tirades. Instead, he placed that burden once again on the shoulders of Donovan, who handled Monday’s meltdown with a stoic professionalism that has become his standard over the many, many times he has been asked to answer for another man’s actions.

How many more times will the Reinsdorfs allow this loop to be repeated? Karnišovas made a mistake. The Bulls paid the price. The man in charge ducked responsibility. It’s a dull, exhausting, pointless pattern.

Poe follows with further rationale that the Bulls used with Ivey: It’s not as if AK is doing a good job!

Cowley also had a column calling for AK’s head, speculating that if he stays Donovan is walking. The only reason there aren’t more publications like this is because, sadly, the third biggest media market (with one team) has no other full-time independent coverage.

When finally relieving Bulls fans from GarPax’s multi-decade reign of terror, it was cited that the national embarrassment was the final straw. Ownership performed an actual outside-the-organization search to hire Karnisovas, whose first action was bringing in Billy Donovan at a high price for ‘stability’ to clean up after Jim Boylen’s clown show.

It didn’t work. But like with Ivey, wiping your hands of Karnisovas has no downside. The only better time than doing it now would’ve been doing it earlier.

We have also began the now-yearly tradition of media no longer paying attention to the 3rd biggest media market team. The smaller independent sites don’t send people on the road, and so we just have beat writers from the Chicago Tribune (Julia Poe) and Chicago Sun-Times (Joe Cowley) to be fan advocates in Philadelphia1 this week as questions swirl the future of head coach Billy Donovan.

Joe Cowley shit-stirred-in-passive-voice (Cowley’s janky version of ‘reporting’) earlier in the week saying “There has been growing speculation that Donovan might step away from the mess and take a season to reevaluate what he wants from the profession.” Mentioning the personal life struggles Donovan has been through recently as eloquently detailed by Poe.

As we know, Billy has been given zero direction from the front office and is in control of the team for the rest of this year. While that’s a working culture Donovan desires, it can’t be too pleasant of an experience right now. His team sucks, and is consistently further sabotaged by injury and the front office not bolstering the back-end of the roster. Billy is doing what he knows, playing veterans a lot (no mystery why players love praising him even after leaving) and maybe win more games. But with his bosses going into hiding, it’s on Billy to face questions derogatory of the franchise whether they lose (“you guys stink, huh”) or win (“you guys are going to continue to stink if you keep picking 10th, huh”).

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And that’s just the day-to-day, there’s the existential crisis that Billy is facing in how he wants his career to conclude. Sure there’s the money, and his son being employed, and the money, also the security from and trust in ownership money , but there is also money in the newly-opened job at University of North Carolina, and as College Hoops insider Jeff Goodman hilariously put things: “there are a ton of people in Billy Donovan’s circle right now who have told him: get the hell out of there, you can’t win”

When asked about it in Philadelphia, Donovan did not deny the speculation. It was pretty telling in that he still doesn’t know of any plan from Arturas Karnisovas:

“We’re pivoting right now. A lot of it’s going to be me sitting down with ownership, with Arturas, just to find out — OK, what’s the next step? How are we all looking at going through this? What do we need to do to continue to improve and to get better?”

“I wanted to get into coaching to win. How are we going to work to get into a place where we’re really competing? And how do we build this out going forward? Those are the things I think we need to talk about. Because, yeah — selfishly, competitively, I want us to be in that situation where we’re playing in real, legitimate (games). … I want to be in that situation. I understand that that doesn’t happen overnight or in a blink of an eye. It takes a lot of hard work and diligence.”

It’s looking like the situation stands where Billy Donovan is just as in the dark as us fans are. Does Donovan really believe in AK after the dogshit rosters he’s been given and, like what us fans hear, vague platitudes about ‘patience’ with any plan simply listing off ways to acquire players?

Donovan, unlike Karnisovas, is smart and accomplished. So I find it pretty obvious that the answer is ‘no’: It’s very hard to think of ways how to get out of this hole in the first place - even winning the lottery, and/or poaching a restricted free agent, then requires a lot of smart decisions - and we know even if there is a plan, there’s no way AK can effectively articulate it.

Like I said 2 years ago when Billy was rumored to be gone to Kentucky, an NBA team - especially a ‘glamor franchise’ - losing a head coach to the college ranks is an embarrassment. I would think it is so much of an embarrassment that ownership would finally pull the plug on the AKME regime. Maybe when that decision is made, Donovan really more needs the time off and will settle in a cushier front-office role? Or ownership will remain stubborn and give AK yet another chance, they’ll hire some Will Hardy or Brian Keefe esque bozo on the cheap (Billy III?) to run this rebuild ‘stage’ for another year, and then like all things Bulls they’ll do the correct thing way too late and mass firings in 2027.