We all know that the Bulls aren’t winning the championship this season. But will they be in the draft lottery relegation zone next year as one of the three worst teams in the league?

It’s certainly feasible based on Vegas over/unders, where only the Nets (21.5) and Kings (22.5) have a lower total than the Bulls’ 25.5 wins. With their roster basically set, I took a stab over at Sporting News on guessing how they would do (If you want the spoiler, I picked them for exactly 25 wins, and that was before looking at the gambling odds).

The full writeup is here, along with what my new win projection model has them at and an explanation of what it will take for them to over/underachieve. I’ve been pretty good historically at guessing their record, oftentimes going against both local and national consensus. Let’s see if my past results are skill or a fluke.

I also have a fresh set of league-wide power rankings post-summer league and after 90ish percent of free agency is complete. You can check that out here (spoiler: I have the Bulls 26th, ahead of the Bucks, Wizards, Nets, and Kings).

I loved what the Bulls did on the first day of the draft, taking Caleb Wilson at No. 4 and Dailyn Swain at No. 15 (Swain was one of my guys that I was higher than consensus on).

I spent Wednesday going on a deep dive on Wilson’s games and wrote my thoughts down over at Sporting News. I’ll be doing the same for Swain tomorrow, and will probably have short blurbs on who they take at 38 and 56. Here are my best players available, if you want to know who I like for those selections.

The trade on Monday night that brought Nic Claxton to the Bulls was met with high enthusiasm from most Bulls fans that I saw. Most remember Claxton from the last time that the Nets were relevant, back in 2023.

Claxton was well on his way towards becoming a top 10 center at that point, earning a four year, $100 million contract during the 2024 offseason. Not many people watched him after that, given that the Nets became one of the worst teams in the league.

I hate to be a bucket of cold water on a day where Bulls fans are excited, but the cold hard truth is that Claxton’s play fell off a cliff after he signed that deal. That was in part due to injuries and in part due to a bad situation with terrible point guard play. That makes me considerably lower on this acquistion than anyone else I have seen (spoiler: I think it’s slightly bad but somewhat trivial given the cost). I do see an outcome where it turns out well for Chicago, but I’m not confident that will happen based on what I’ve seen from Claxton over the past two or three seasons.

I wrote about the high and low end outcomes at Sporting News, also sharing my opinion on how the Wolves and Nets did (skip to the Bulls portion at the bottom if you don’t care about those teams). You can read my full analysis here:

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/julius-randle-trade-grade-timberwolves-nets-bulls-fare-nic-claxton/65e9124a59976a203a3263ec

Thanks for reading as always, and I will surely have some future analysis in the coming days on who the Bulls select at No. 4 and 15 tonight.

The Bulls took their time picking their new head coach, but they have one in place with a week to go before the draft.

Tiago Splitter wasn’t my favorite choice for the job. I thought that he was one of the weaker head coaches in the league last season, but certainly not bad to the point of being damaging to a franchise.

The Bulls don’t need the most brilliant tactician in the world at this stage of their team build anyway. They need an adult in the room who can develop a very young roster. Splitter should be able to do that, and he’s earned the opportunity to remain a head coach after what he did in Portland last year.

I went into the pros and cons of that year over at Sporting News. Check it out here for my full thoughts.

Matt Lloyd was supposedly the favorite for the new lead Bulls job. Instead, Bryson Graham was the somewhat surprising hire and is the new Executive VP of Basketball Operations.

Graham has an interesting resume. He was a 6-3 guard at Texas A&M who didn’t play much. He worked on the coaching side with the Pelicans out of school, starting in their video room. He transitioned to the front office side, eventually becoming the No. 2 guy behind David Griffin. When the Pels let go of Griffin and brought in Joe Dumars, Graham moved on shortly thereafter to the Hawks.

That gives Graham the perspective of a college player, a member of a coaching staff, and various front office roles where he’s done pretty much every job at some point for the Pelicans. I can understand why that was an impressive resume point for the Reinsdorfs.

One of Graham’s major selling points is his eye as a scout. It’s always difficult to assign credit or blame for draft picks within a front office, but the Pelicans had some good picks while he was there. Dyson Daniels at No. 8 was okay. Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Trey Murphy were both nice pickups at No. 17. Yves Missi showed promise at 21 in a very weak draft. And Herb Jones at 35 was a steal.

There have been some misses too, such as Jordan Hawkins at 14, Kira Lewis at 13, and Jaxson Hayes at 8. Overall, it’s a strong draft record, and I have heard Graham was a big part of their overall scouting process.

Graham was with the Hawks last year and was in the room when the Pelicans inexplicably traded their 2026 first-rounder to move up 10 spots in the draft. He knew the value of that pick when, by some credible reports, the Bulls did not.

Graham has built up a sterling reputation (you can say that about any GM candidate). In 2022, he was named to The Athletic’s 40 under 40 and had some buzz as a guy who would get this type of job in his future. I have not heard anything but positive reports from beat writers in Atlanta and New Orleans (although I would be lying if I said I knew him at all or heard people talking about him prior to the last few weeks).

Some Bulls fans are expressing extreme disappointment at their guy not getting picked, whether that was Lloyd, Lewin, or someone else. I’d reserve judgment. I’ve said it several times online before, but it bears repeating here. We don’t know anything about these guys until we see their moves for a few years. Karnisovas was similarly regarded as a top scout, and his talent evaluation ended up being miserable.

For now, I’m keeping an open mind. We will learn a lot more about Graham over the coming months. These are the crumbs that I have to share a few hours after the hire.

I’m following my annual tradition of live grades for every trade today at Sporting News (read them here). I usually have a grade up within 5-10 minutes of a trade going down.

As part of those grades, I gave instant reactions to the stuff that the Bulls did on Wednesday. I’ll paste what I wrote about the Coby White and Dalen Terry trades below.

Bulls trade Coby White to Hornets

• Hornets receive: Coby White, Mike Conley Jr

• Bulls receive: Collin Sexton, Ousmane Dieng, three second round picks

Bulls trade grade: C

This is an underwhelming package for White, who was at one time among the best contracts in the league. The second-rounders that the Bulls are getting from the Hornets aren’t particularly good, nor are the players that they’re getting back.

Sexton is a talented scorer, but where does he fit among the plethora of guards already on the roster? Dieng has never averaged more than five points per game over any of his four seasons.

White’s value dipped down because the Bulls waited until he was set to become a free agent this summer before trading him. This trade became somewhat of a necessity after Chicago added Jaden Ivey and Anfernee Simons to their roster.

Hornets trade grade: A-

White is a good young player who fits well with the high-octane offense that the Hornets have created. He should help Charlotte pass the Bulls in the race for the last Play-In spot. He won’t help with their defensive issues, but he’s a starter-level player that adds a ton of shooting next to LaMelo Ball, Kon Knueppel, and Brandon Miller.

Adding to this, after sleeping on it, I am even lower on this White trade. The Bulls acquired Sexton, Simons, and Ivey, who are all similar type of offense-first / bad defense players and worse in that role than White.

Ivey does have some good potential and is two years younger. Simons and Sexton are older. Why not just keep White, who is by far the best passer and playmaker of the group?

This also has the potential to cause locker room dysfunction, which you the reader probably don’t care about but is worth pointing out. All three of those guards are free agents and will be fighting for tens of millions of dollars. Billy Donovan has his work cut out for him.

Dieng is somewhat similar to Noa Essengue. He’s a toolsy, tall forward with a long wingspan and extremely skinny frame. He’s had confidence issues in the past and he’s been a streaky shooter. He’s not a great prospect, but he was a former lottery pick in 2022.

Knicks trade Yabusele to Bulls

• Bulls receive: Guerschon Yabusele

• Knicks receive: Dalen Terry

Knicks trade grade: B+

Yabusele wasn’t getting minutes on the Knicks. He had been a disappointing summer acquisition after a promising year in Philadelphia. The Knicks got what they could for him, picking up a busted prospect in Terry and getting off his salary next season. It’s somewhat surprising that they were able to do so without attaching any draft assets.

Terry has turned into a much better shooter and has some potential as a long defender. He can handle the ball in transition. He’s never been able to put it all together though, and he hasn’t gotten a ton of minutes in Chicago. That probably won’t change for a Knicks team that has championship aspirations, but they get his restricted free agency rights and can sign him to a cheap deal this summer or let him walk.

Bulls trade grade: C-

The Bulls should be trying to get younger and free up future cap space. Instead, they moved Terry, a 23-year-old, for Yabusele, a 30-year-old. Yabu has a $5.8 million player option, potentially impacting that future space. This move doesn’t make sense unless they like Yabu and think he can help them win. Chicago should be going the other way, trying to maximize draft odds rather than making another ill-fated run towards the Play-In Tournament.

I was a fan of the Bulls’ earlier moves. These are worse, particularly the Yabusele trade. Does getting an older player signal that the Bulls will add even more win-now veterans? I sure hope not.

If those or any other trades do come through, check my live grades throughout the day for my thoughts.

The Bulls made three moves leading up to Thursday’s trade deadline that other national reporters won’t really pay much attention to. Readers of this newsletter probably realize though that all three of their trades were out of character from what Arturas Karnisovas usually does in February (I’m assuming it’s a lot of napping).

That’s the only jab I’ll take at Karnisovas, because he deserves legit praise for finally trying to win at the margins and giving up on the pointless chase for the Play-In Tournament. I wrote about why I liked each move, plus what they’re getting in Jaden Ivey and Anfernee Simons, over at Sporting News here.

As a bonus, if you haven’t checked out my salary tool, give it a whirl here. It shows you which contracts are good, bad, and what a fair deal is this summer for Ivey, Simons or any of the other soon-to-be free agents on this roster (Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu, Zach Collins, Dalen Terry, Lachlan Olbrich, Yuki Kawamura, and Mike Conley, who will probably be waived).

The people (and one certain cat) are saying that the Bulls are back. What do the numbers say?

I did a deep dive over at Sporting News to see what is sustainable, what isn’t, and what makes the Bulls so weird on both sides of the ball. Check it out here.

Some bonus content for Substack subscribers. Here’s a one-ish minute video breakdown (listen with audio) of the play that the Bulls used to win the game against the Kings, Spain (or Stack) Leak:

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Back in 2014, Steve Kerr used the slogan “strength in numbers” to highlight the importance of his role players during the team’s dynastic run.

That, of course, was ********. Those Warriors won because of Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green much more so than Marreese Speights, David Lee, and Festus Ezeli.

The Bulls are a team that actually does depends on strength in numbers. Ayo Dosunmu has stolen liberated Kerr’s slogan in order to describe a win where all eight players who played double-digit minutes scored double-digits points.

This was a fun one that went down to the wire. Here’s another nuggets-style notebook dump on what I saw.

Player takeaways

• Matas Buzelis had the new Bulls dunk of the year. If you’re going to watch one highlight, watch this one.

• A good Giddey game — he had 18 points, 13 rebounds, and five assists. He had another crazy spin move for a floater that somehow found the net, chucked it up at the first sign of contact again for free throws, had a sky hook layup finish (???) over Onyeka Okongwu, and got an easy gimme off a beautiful Billy Donovan in-game adjustment.

• Giddey continues to be very solid on his wide open 3’s, hitting 42 percent of them. He hit a lightly contested one that might have been the biggest shot of the night, putting the Bulls up six with a minute to go.

• Giddey’s defense was better in this one too. He did get targeted on switches and gave up two easy baskets early to Trae Young and Kristaps Porzingis, but he held his own on his own matchup of the night. Friend and countryman Dyson Daniels was trying to attack him repeatedly but couldn’t get by.

• Is Vooch ever going to miss a hook/floater? He’s shooting 79 percent on shots from 4-14 feet, which is traditionally considered a dead zone of the floor. He’s always been good from there, but this year is ridiculous. Another game where Vooch was the best guy on the floor, getting 17, 17, and 9.

• In previous years, random people would send me poorly photoshopped images of Ayo Dosunmu and clamps (perhaps made by Bulls meme legend Ross Pins?) or Ayo featured as Trae Young’s father every time the Bulls played the Hawks. Shame on you all — I received zero this year. Ayo has always killed Trae, and this game was no different. Trae went scoreless against Ayo, shooting 0-of-4 when guarded directly by him per matchup data.

• On the other end of the floor, Ayo continued to be a blur. He blew by a good defender in Zaccharie Risacher and two bad ones in Trae Young and Luke Kennard to get some easy layups. He also nailed four threes. Ayo Dos Tres Cuatro.

• Welcome to the season, Isaac Okoro! It’s been a rough opening two games, and he started this one off poorly too with a missed layup and a turnover on the team’s first two possessions. Seeing the ball go in did wonders for his confidence. He went 4-of-7 the rest of the way, getting his first field goal, 3, and points of the year.

• Tre Jones, solid. Write it in sharpie after every game.

Team takeaways

• How are the Bulls doing this offensively? I’m not totally sure. At its core, basketball is a game of advantage generation. The Bulls don’t do it the traditional way, by having guys who can break defenders down 1-on-1. Instead, they do it by not really having any ball-stoppers. They screen for each other, make the right pass, and keep the ball moving. This play illustrated that well.

• From an X’s and O’s standpoint, the Bulls aren’t doing anything particularly crazy. They run a lot, screen a lot away from the ball, and have good improvisation. Almost every team in the league is trying to incorporate some of those ideas. The Bulls have better buy in, execution, and personnel to play that style. It’s the same way that they play defense, as I highlighted in my last entry. Their margin for error is close to zero. They don’t make mistakes and don’t beat themselves.

• There is definitely some shooting luck involved in this 3-0 streak (SB Nation’s Ricky O’Donnell hit on a lot of it today). That shouldn’t discount that they’ve beaten three pretty good teams so far, and they’ve done it without Coby White (and to a much lesser extent, Zach Collins).

• The Bulls and Sixers are the only undefeated teams left in the East. Just like all of us paid experts said would happen, right?

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Pulling back the sports media curtain for a second, nobody wants to write off a single game any more. Only the sickos care enough to read it. Luckily, I have a whole mailing list filled with those people!

I’m not going to write notes on every game this season, but the Bulls’ 115-111 win against the Pistons was interesting enough to be worthy of a Darnell Mayberry Nuggets-style notebook column. Here’s a quick dump of my random thoughts.

Matas Buzelis

• I have to lead with Matas Buzelis, who had 21 points on 7-of-12 shooting, 6 rebounds, 3 blocks, and an assist. I posted the full highlights here:

• The most glaring thing is how often he is scoring off cuts this year. Synergy had 22 percent of his possessions coming off cuts in this game as compared to around 7 percent last season. He has gotten MUCH better at timing those plays out, and he’s pretty devastating when changing directions on a dime.

• When he gets a bit of space, holy hell is he good at finishing now. He shot 86 percent at the rim in this game, showing great touch and power. His poster dunk on Isaiah Stewart was blocked, but he had so much strength behind it that it went in anyway.

• Matas was credited with three blocks in this game. It easily could have been six. One block was taken away by a very cheap foul call, one looked uncredited on a Duncan Robinson floater, and he would have had another on a Robinson 3 but Robinson realized he was about to get packed and wildly threw the ball away at the last second. All of that is a long way of saying that I fully expect Matas to be one of the best shot-blocking forwards this season.

• The one area where Matas has gotten criticism is his lack of passing. He only had one assist in this game, and it was a very generously credited one for an Ayo Dosunmu layup. He did have two very nice passes off great reads of the help defense, but his teammates biffed the assists.

Vooch/Jalen Smith

• Vooch was the best player in this game, scoring 28 on 11-of-18 from the field and pulling down 14 rebounds. That ridiculously hot shooting from last season continued, as he drilled 4-of-6 from deep. He is really effective as a trailer on the Bulls’ fast breaks, lumbering to the top of the key after a Bulls guard has sucked in the defense. His makes were super clean swishes, as were his midrange and floater shots. Maybe last year’s 3-point bombing is for real.

• My work slack had probably the best gif summary of Vooch’s game:

  

• The Vooch/Tre Jones pick-and-roll might have been the team’s best weapon. They went to it repeatedly down the stretch of what turned into a close game after looking like a blowout for the first three quarters.

• Vooch was surprisingly effective on defense (more on that later), but I had to chuckle at this transition defense from him. Isaac Okoro tried to push him into the right spot and he said “NO SIR.”

• Jalen Smith meanwhile was awful. It was more than his 0-of-7 shooting — he’s just not a high-feel player, making a ton of mental mistakes whenever he’s out there. He was trying to do too much, getting lost on defensive assignments, compounding mistakes by not getting back after errors, etc. He won’t look this bad when he’s making shots (which he is normally good at), but this is why he was buried last year.

Josh Giddey

It was a usual rollercoaster game from Giddey. He opened poorly, with a shot that would make Michael Carter-Williams proud. Not sure if this one was blocked or not.

• Things picked up from there considerably, both figuratively and literally. Giddey’s impact on pace is undeniable. The Bulls built up a huge first quarter lead that won them the game after he sucked in the defense on his drives and kicked out for 3’s.

• I don’t totally understand how Giddey’s spin move works every time, but it works every time. He’s maximized that to put rim pressure when he’s otherwise not very good at creating separation. He’s also gotten very good at throwing a shot up as soon as he feels contact, helping him get to the line 11 times (6 of those were intentional fouls or came with the Pistons desperately trying to get steals at the end of the game).

• Giddey drilled a wide open 3 and bricked another wide open one. Not bad.

• The six turnovers are a major issue. They’re unforced, and a lot of them are from very sloppy reads or handle.

His defense was up-and-down. He held up well in the first quarter, but he started slipping mid-game. He slammed the ball down in frustration after he gave up two big scores with the Pistons clearly going after him. Late in the game, he was committed about 30 percent to taking a charge late (he’s taken almost none for his career), but backed out and drew his fifth foul.

The Bulls defense

• How is the Bulls’ defense even mediocre? They have some of the worst individual talent in the league, but knowing where to be is a lot of the battle. Their team defenders are for the most part smart and try hard.

• Also a huge testament to Billy Donovan, who always gets his teams to defend above their weight. Here’s a great example of everyone filling their role and getting a stop.

• The Bulls did defend well, but they were also helped by Cade Cunningham sleepwalking through this game. This is a Bulls recap, but Cade’s 8-of-24 shooting was a huge reason for the end result.

Other notes

• This is getting long, so I’ll run through some other player stuff quickly. Isaac Okoro was mostly terrible in his debut, following up on a disappointing preseason. Shout out to Trey Kerby for the “NoSkoro” nickname.

• Tre Jones continued to look very polished as a lead guard. He’s gonna have trade value down the line.

• Patrick Williams got in late, got a rebound in traffic, and actually got mad for one of the first times I remember when his jersey got yanked on the way down. Also had a great deep pull-up 3 and turned it over while trying to dribble.

• Bad Dalen Terry six minute stint.

• Noa Essengue couldn’t break into the game, even when the Bulls were up huge.

• I’m not feeling great about my Bulls 12 seed prediction. They looked great in the opener, even despite giving back most of a 23-point lead. Schedule is ROUGH for the next 10 games aside from a Kings gimme (Zach LaVine blew their opener by fouling on a 3-point attempt at the end of the game).

Josh Giddey’s four year, $100 million deal has generated mixed reactions online. That’s not terribly surprising for a player who still remains fairly divisive in terms of skill evaluation. He was all over the place last year, and that inconsistency makes him a difficult player to project going forward.

I did my best anyway, explaining the pros and cons of his deal. You can read my analysis over at Sporting News: https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/josh-giddey-contract-grade-bulls-guard-worth-100-million/0603c12d22fe167dfd008508

On Friday, I watched my first full Essengue game. You can’t learn a ton from only one game, but you do get a much better scout than from highlights that only show the good stuff.

I clipped all of the good and bad noteworthy plays to make a 3 1/2 minute scout of the things that stood out on my first look. I’ll keep on watching him at Summer League and updating my observations. For now, here’s what I think of him.

And here’s the YouTube link if you prefer to watch on there rather than the Substack video player.

My third annual Play-In preview is up at Sporting News ahead of Wednesday’s game. This isn’t going to be the pinnacle of basketball excellence, but it should be entertaining. There are several interesting strategic elements that I outlined based on rewatching both games that these guys played after the trade deadline (the Bulls won both of them, along with a third game played on Feb. 4).

I also included some notes on Josh Giddey, who I have to take a huge L on in terms of being way too low in my evaluation. I’ll surely have more on him during the offseason, but I picked out a couple of things besides the obvious 3-point shooting that have made him better during the last few months of the season.

Check out my preview here, and thanks as always for reading!

If you read my suggestions on what I thought the Bulls should do at the trade deadline last week, then my reaction to the Bulls moving LaVine probably won’t surprise you. I thought that they’d get a mediocre offer that wasn’t worth taking. They did get that mediocre offer, but they jumped on it instead.

It’s far from the worst trade that Arturas Karnisovas has made, which is the nicest thing I can say about it. Here’s my reasoning, along with what I thought of the deal for the Kings and Spurs, over at Sporting News.

With the Feb. 6 trade deadline quickly approaching, I figured now was a good time to share my opinion on what the Bulls should do.

I would have liked to see them sell low on their guys earlier in the season and try to maximize their Cooper Flagg/Dylan Harper odds. Now, they’re somewhat stuck in the standings.

Here’s what I think they should do with Zach LaVine, Nikola Vucevic, Lonzo Ball, and others:

Bulls trade deadline preview: Here's what Chicago should do with Zach LaVine, Nikola Vucevic, Lonzo Ball and others

Here’s a short video explaining what happened: