Bulls MOVE UP in lottery, get #4 overall pick
have picks 4, 15, 38, 56 in next month's draft
Not that I believe in anything beyond the actual odds, and deserve’s got nothing to do with it. But if you were assigning supernatural intervention helping the Bulls with their 20% chance of jumping up in the top-4 of the draft lottery, there were reasons to think the Bulls were not only due, but acted in a way to generate some karma. They shit-canned a failed front office who didn’t deserve any luck, and definitely didn’t deserve the longer leash that luck would’ve granted them.
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.
which I will do…later!
This legitimately is the biggest day for this franchise in over 10 years.
Likely going to be either Wilson or Boozer. Either will be awesome.
If it’s Boozer, he could pick #5 for his jersey and save a bunch of Bulls fans who kept their old jerseys a lot of money.
If it’s Wilson, he’s going to accidentally be called Caleb Williams by a bunch of barflies in Chicago for the next decade.
Early predictions for Stacey King catchphrases:
If it’s Boozer, he’ll say “Get back on the Booze cruise!”
If it’s Wilson, he’ll just tell “Wilson!” like Tom Hanks in Castaway.
"sets fire to every scouting report left over from Karnisovas or Eversley (or, really, any of their underlings)"
Man, I know AKME's underlings sucked, but setting fire to the left-over underlings is a bit harsh.