Bulls 2025 Draft Prep: expect little and still be disappointed

they have their picks, they have their full roster, and they think it's trending correctly so why think we'll see anything significant?

It’s remarkable that the Bulls not only give us no entertainment during playoff season but during transaction season as well.

Yes, while saying they do nothing is hyperbole given their flaccid-to-awful¹ teardown trades of the last calendar year, they don’t do anything that meaningfully changes the direction of the team let alone signal hope that any direction would be a good one.

Granted, there is nothing they could do to have me think otherwise. The guy in charge is irredeemably bad at his job, and I think part of the fundamental reason why is because Arturas Karnisovas has turned out to be an over-promoted scout.

You could assess, given his acquisitions, that Karnisovas isn’t that good of a scout either. But part of the head job is having some humility when it comes to scouting and development: recognizing that you aren’t going to get it right very often, and thus continually work at other ways to increase your odds of success. Instead, we get bare minimum player churn where everyone is held on for too long, and you try and spin that ‘your guys’ will undoubtedly improve and are pretty great already and pay them exorbitant raises based on nothing² much beyond a desire to keep everyone’s comfort and security.

This is, of course, a terrible way to run a basketball team. And the reason I preferred a reckless move versus staying the course, because this course is charted by an incompetent.

While other teams are constantly, every year, working arbitrage by treating picks and players as assets to be goosed and flipped, Karnisovas seems to believe his job is only about people and organizational alignment.

And he won’t even do the fan-facing part of the job this draft, as deputy dummy Marc Eversley will be the one addressing the Stockholm Syndrome suffering Bulls media.

And so in this leadup period, we are left to do what what we did during the playoffs: forlornly look at other teams and be fans of their activity.

However! The Bulls do have 2 draft picks to make, one on Wednesday (#12 overall) and then another the following day (#45). And despite a stated desire to keep acquiring players with experience, based on their history they will incongruently select two very young developmental projects.

I don’t do draft prep myself because I’m lazy, but I will do the next best thing: rely on draft’perts opinions of AKME selections with the underlying assumption that the Bulls likely had a narrow and cheap focus, YET perhaps they make a good pick anyway due to other teams’ mistakes since the draft is wacky like that!

1. LaVine trade was fine. DeRozan and Caruso ones total screwups. And Vuc and Lonzo are still here which is another screwup.

2. think about it: dozens of players already moved which leads to speculation of dozens more players in future moves - and NEVER is Josh Giddey mentioned as desired by any other team besides the one that already has him under contract