I was going to wait until the preseason finale on Friday night for this post, but in all likelihood that game won’t provide much in the way of worthwhile evidence. In their penultimate preseason game, their opponent in Milwaukee seemingly sat everyone over 24 years old to produce pretty much a junk game.
While Bulls head coach Tiago Splitter said his playing rotation in this game would be more true to the regular season, he abandoned ship pretty quickly and got 2-Way Contract guard Jaylin Sellers a first half look.
This from the Bulls broadcast1 is pretty funny:
Haven't seen lot of Jordan Hawkins (but Dan Hurley, his college coach, has been consistently advocating for him via Twitter) but Bulls' 2-way players can play. Sellers with strong debut tonight, building off his strong summer league. Tobe Awaka, currently sidelined, has been good
So we got that going for us! I do genuinely applaud new GM Bryson Graham’s use of the 2-Way Contract spots, a distinct improvement over his predecessor. Between them and some young active roster players, the GLeague team could be relatively interesting.
Tobe Awaka is needed with the big club right now with so many center injuries likely extending into the season2 , and can be active for up to 50 games on his 2-Way deal.
The other guys are likely out of the rotation. It’s probably not a coincidence that Noa Essengue had his most productive moments of the preseason against the Bucks G-League caliber team.
I just hope he gets minutes, which with the Bulls crowded frontcourt (all power forwards) means GLeague. Simply physically surviving in a professional league will be an improvement over his rookie year. And if any of Wilson, Buzelis, and Miller get hurt, then he can join the regular season rotation.
It was interesting to see against the Bucks that Splitter didn’t play Dailyn Swain the entire first half. I knew I had reason to worry that Splitter - as a head coach, it’s natural - praising Okoro in training camp meant he’d be a veteran binkie to comfort Splitter after seeing Swain’s abysmal play. And this was a game that saw Okoro held out, and still Swain didn’t crack the rotation.
I wonder how Graham feels about his lottery pick who had 3 years in college being relegated to ‘developmental’ status so soon. Maybe they really do see him as a long-term project (fix broken shot, develop PG skills) that needs the GLeague, at least to start his rookie season.
Or maybe Graham - not the coach, so this is natural too - looks at Okoro and a couple other veterans as “in the way”. Graham has certainly expressed his desire to balance out the roster with veterans, but can likely spare one or two and they’re all fungible3.
The Bulls have an open roster spot (they technically have many open roster spots) and a ton of room under the Luxury Tax. It looks like the new standard for getting picks in trades is not just taking on bad money but ALSO sending back a serviceable player on a neutral-or-better-value salary.
There’s the trade deadline which will offer more flexibility and perhaps some increased value after a solid first half of the season, but now is the time to ‘help’ other teams in a roster crunch looking to save them money. Like how good of a draft asset (pick or swap) would the Lakers offer for Okoro in exchange for likely roster casualties Jaden Hardy and Dalton Knecht? Or the Mavericks if you take on Caleb Martin’s ‘27-’28 guaranteed $9M?
There’s gaining the asset, and the other benefit of forcing Swain into the rotation.
Graham will defend any inactivity with wanting to remain flexible at the deadline, but that’s only true in whether they use the Room Exception to complete a trade. In terms of available roster spots, they could create one by waiving players, most likely whomever they’d get in a hypothetical trade now.
One of my principles is always link to sources…however another more recent principle is send zero traffic to X.
never a good sign when Zach Collins is the one most likely to return soonest
Outside of Jalen Smith, who I think is necessary for offensive stability. But this does not include Josh Giddey, who is getting a lot of attention for his lackadaisical-looking preseason, and…I don’t think he matters? If he plays better to become tradeable, great, but his career progress is no longer important with a new regime.
Can someone explain why Swain has to be groomed to play PG? He's 6'8" and was almost a defensive specialist his first 2 years of college. Why should he not be deployed more of less how Ausar Thompson is?