Breaking News: Bulls hire Bryson Graham as new front office leader

Graham, a first-timer in the lead chair, most recently with Atlanta Hawks

It was looking like the Bulls predictable “aim low” search has produced a less-than-predictable winner, as the Bulls have hired Bryson Graham.

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!

The Bulls are doing their thing with hiring a new leader, which is not guaranteed doom

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.

1. technical title Bulls announced is “Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations”

2. for the first time in BaB history, the guy I’m likely going to be losing my shit over is younger than me, damnit

3. you know who else was in the Pelicans front office for a few of those years? Gar Forman

4. Interesting note: assistant GM JJ Polk - purported ‘cap guy’ hired alongside AKME - was with the Pelicans for 10 years with Graham