Let's hope Noa Essengue develops better than Bulls' novice front office

a lazy, cheap organization so focused on middling improvement needs Essengue addition to be substantial

The Chicago Bulls took the path of least resistance in their selection of Noa Essengue in the first round of the 2025 draft at #12 overall. Similar to last draft’s #11 selection in Matas Buzelis, as a result the consensus assessment looks to be that the Bulls didn’t over-think things, and while not a ‘safe’ selection it was certainly proper.

I will have to do a better aggregation of the scouting work on Essengue in the future. At first glance, I certainly like that he’s simultaneously young yet played in a high-caliber professional league already. I suppose that fits in with Arturas Karnisovas’s “young players with experience” mindset, and the beauty of AK’s proclamations is that they don’t have to reveal any underlying plan or have anything be consistently applied, because they are not plans but just saying stuff to keep his job.

Though I won’t give them any credit for a ‘plan’, in selecting Essengue they do look to have a type:

Essengue is exactly the type of player Arturas Karnisovas has targeted in previous drafts: toolsy, athletic wings who are raw offensively. Another project, the Bulls will hope to mold Essengue into a shooter and versatile defender, and ideally, his ball skills.

That’s from Will Gottlieb of CHGO, who did a lot of draft prep work at that site and so perhaps it’s worrying that he has Essengue’s comp as “what they hoped Tidjane Salaun would be”. If you need a reminder (I did!), Salaun is also a tall teenaged Frenchman who was picked 6th last summer by the Hornets.

So there’s some bust potential here. Just like how Patrick Williams¹, Dalen Terry, and, to a lesser extent, Julian Phillips have similarly busted. But Buzelis looks like a keeper!

Standing pat and taking Essengue looks like a good result. The team behind the Bulls in the draft order gained an unprotected 2026 first to move down ten spots, but while not being aggressive in that way, it can be said that at least the Bulls didn’t burn assets to move up, which is good: that’s at least not them doing harm².

But I stand by my assertion that there was nothing the Bulls front office could’ve done to have me gain confidence in their abilities. And the post-draft³ remarks and answers from Karnisovas’s deputy, Marc Eversley, only cemented that further.

That Karnisovas was there but didn’t speak was itself a point of evidence that this group is entirely delusional over their achievements so far. Eversley, while technically better at articulating, was articulating bad thoughts consistent with his overmatched boss:

• They have eighteen months to further ‘transition’ the roster from the prior era

• They have a style of play they want to fit players into

• That style means a deep team of versatile two-way players who can’t be “hunted”

• They have a full roster and may not get a player in the second round Thursday night, either trading out (Update: right after publishing, news broke the Bulls have traded down ten spots to #55, and gained CASH) or stashing someone in Europe

• They have a full development staff and promoted internally someone to replace the fired head of that department

To that last point, in a short press conference there was an appropriately-inordinate amount of time dedicated to the reports that AKME and head coach Billy Donovan all saw their contracts extended already. Asked why the secrecy, Eversley responded simply that it’s team policy.

And that ‘team policy’ answer permeated the entire presser, statement after statement with a feeling of security as if any of this has historically worked and achieved anything.

As ever, they will take any positive and amplify its success and projection for future success. The new fast-paced offense finished 20th in the league. Buzelis did have a very successful rookie season, but that does not mean the player development staff has been historically successful (Eversley indicated that Donovan now leads that department too). That Eversley touted that they have a “buzzing” gym this summer of guys who “want to work”, it’s similar to AK’s lauding of the organizational “alignment”. In isolation, that’s a good thing, but it’s not as good as actually making the playoffs in the JV conference, where all this success in low-competition March games was wiped out in a single demolition at the hands of a Miami Heat team that was bulldozed in the real (as real as the East can be) playoffs.

And the degree to which they deliberate, and telegraph how they will deliberate, is the worst part. While they do look to be acknowledging past mistakes when saying they don’t want to “skip steps” in this roster build, and thus will continue this current “transition” slowly⁴, that would make more sense if they didn’t already screw up by being too slow! The teardown, which is the easiest part of a roster transition, was already screwed up because they were too slow and unaggressive.

Now in building back up, they are putting a lot on Essengue, as they did Buzelis last year (out of injury desperation, so I’m not giving Donovan too much credit). Because they are not doing the hard, aggressive work that would help ease the burden on single prospects by getting more future picks, more prospects, and cutting bait on ones that have heretofore failed⁵.

These people pay lip service to the fans, but their ultimate audience is one person keeping them in the job (and his dad writing the checks). And while we can all see through the bullshit, they have successfully convinced that one person that what they’re doing is working.

1. LMAO to this cold-take I saw on The Everything App yesterday

2. though in truth I want them to do something risky so they get fired, the best step they can take in this rebuild

3. the draft moved the second round to the following night, which means at least the Bulls won’t schedule press conferences while picks are being made anymore

4. it’s unfathomable that a big market team in the current NBA talks this way!

5. You know who doesn’t fit “2-way players who can’t be hunted”? Josh Giddey and Coby White!