A history of the Bulls' utter disregard of 2nd Round Picks

the AKME era, purportedly about player development and needing to win on the margins, has eschewed an entire type of league currency

No real news going on as the league enters a dormant period that the Bulls have been in for months.

The Josh Giddey negotiations have (to my pleasant surprise!) stalled, with consensus reporting indicating the Bulls are not coming up to meet Giddey’s asking price. Summer League produced an unalarming up-and-down performance by Noa Essengue and one breakout performance from Yuki Kawamura, earning him a 2-way contract for this coming season.

That signing looks to make sense for what the Bulls fringe active roster should be about: player development. While Kawamura himself has a low likelihood of breaking in to the playing rotation, his time in the GLeague should help Essengue develop.

But this is a rarity in the Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley era¹. As bad as they are at the big things, they are possibly even worse at the little things. And that has a compounding adverse effect as their whiffs (and lack of attempts) put more reliance on those little things to make up it.

Just recently it was found out that the Bulls trade for Isaac Okoro is even worse than I thought, as AKME didn’t know the cap rules for outgoing salary with Lonzo Ball’s health-based incentives, and thus couldn’t use his salary in the trade but had to cut into an existing Traded Player Exception (from the Zach LaVine 2025 trade deadline deal). This is a perfect definition of “minutia”, but while not very significant it did mean an additional tangible benefit to the Cavaliers in that trade (as they now generated a TPE to match Okoro’s outgoing salary) in a deal that overall saw the Bulls, yet again, not understand basic concepts of value and leverage.

Couldn’t they have gotten a 2nd round pick in the trade, for all they were giving the Cavaliers? It brought to mind their disregard of the most common lower-value asset in the league, those 2nd round picks.

Since taking over² , here is their history with seconds:

• 2020
  selected Marko Simonovic 44th

• 2021
  selected Ayo Dosunmu 38th
  traded 2024 selection (Lonzo Ball sign-and-trade acquisition)
  traded 2022 (Lakers slot³) and 2025 selection (DeMar DeRozan sign-and-trade acquisition)
  acquired 2023 (Denver slot - Lauri Markkanen trade)

• 2022
  traded 2026 and 2027 (Julian Phillips acquisition)

• 2023
  the pick was forfeited due to tampering violation when acquiring Ball

• 2024
  acquired 2025 (Kings slot) and 2028 (Kings slot) (DeMar DeRozan sign-and-trade)
  traded 2028 (Kings slot) (Zach LaVine trade⁴)

• 2025
  swapped 10 spots down (gained Cash), drafted Lachlan Olbrich

Putting that all together, after 6 years owning 2nd round selections:

• Players still with team: Dosunmu, Phillips, Olbrich

• Future years without picks: 2026, 2027

• Future years with excess picks: 2028*
  *[if (when?) the first round lottery protection runs out on the Blazers pick]

• Cash

Keep in mind that in that time there also hasn’t been a single contributor developed after other modes of acquisition. No undrafted Free Agents, and/or Two-Way signees.

I want to stop and re-emphasize the point that this is especially bad for a team with the Bulls inherent limitations:

1. Inability to hit big in free agency or the draft

2. A hard cap at the luxury tax line

3. Currently in self-purported “roster transition”

They’ve expressed platitudes ever since being hired over being about player development and internal improvement, which due to the above limitations isn’t so much an intention as it is a necessity.

Thus (and also due to laziness) I didn’t go through the whole league and see how their 2nd round pick balance sheet was in relation to every other team. And if looking simply at productivity, for all I know Ayo Dosunmu alone has generated more value than the average team’s aggregate of six years of 2nd round picks.

But the Bulls are not an average NBA team given those limitations mentioned above. Look at one franchise more in their tier, the Washington Wizards, and how many 2nd round picks their new management has wheeled and dealed in just two offseasons.

To co-opt a Simpsons-ism:

AK: a 2nd round pick? I want a young player with experience!

BaB: 2nd round picks can get you many attempts at a young player with experience

AK: explain how

BaB: 2nd round picks can be exchanged for players, future picks, and cap relief

The Wizards have gained several 2nd rounders via helping other teams salary dumps. They turned around and used two of them to acquire Cam Whitmore⁵, the type of ‘second draft’ player the Bulls are actively searching for. They could also be using 2nd rounders to move guys off the active roster⁶ to free up spots for those kinds of development projects.

That AKME has proven unable to acquire excess picks, even 2nd rounders, in their sell-off trades of the vaunted in-first-place-in-january-2021 squad is not a matter of preference, like we’re making a subjective judgement of their trade strategy. That they can’t even wring value out of 2nd round selections is objectively poor job performance. And like 2nd rounders themselves, that’s not very significant alone, but is yet another indicator that they should be fired.

1. recently ranked merely next-to-last in the league, thank you flowers to be sent to Joe Dumars. Hilariously there was a recent CHGO podcast including furious debate over whether they should be 26th instead of 29th.

2. GarPax were notorious for this too, of course, with ‘our board dried up’ -gate and all.

3. their own 2022 selection was traded in 2019 to sign Tomas Satoransky. again: GarPax!

4. I suppose because Kings were compensating the Bulls to take Kevin Huerter’s contract? He’s one of Billy Donovan’s favorites, suckers!

5. fittingly, one of those picks wrapped into a multi-team Frankenstein’s monster of a transaction was the 2027 Bulls 2nd rounder.

6. they have such a low payroll they could also simply cut them, but, you know…::does the thing with the fingers that means taxes::