To help get through the NBA’s late summer lull, we’re taking a look at teams from around the league and how their offseasons went.
Chicago Bulls
Important additions:
Jalen Smith
Josh Giddy
Matas Buzelis
Chris Duarte
Important losses:
DeMar DeRozan
Alex Caruso
Andre Drummond
Looking back at the offseason and looking ahead to the 2024-25 season:
The Bulls are, quite frankly, a total disaster. I don’t understand what they’ve been doing for the last few years, and you could pretty easily argue that the Bulls are one of the worst run teams in the NBA. I don’t think you’ll find anyone who disagrees with you, even among Bulls fans. The Bulls have some good players, just good enough to not completely fall apart, but not good enough to actually accomplish anything.
The Bulls have managed to pull off three stunning displays of incompetence in a single offseason. First, the Bulls traded Alex Caruso to the Thunder for Josh Giddey and managed to not get a single draft player from OKC, despite the Thunder owning the most draft players in the league for the next decade. And sure, Josh Giddey is only 21 years old and a really gifted passer, but he doesn’t do much else and is also tied to a number of off-the-field allegations (official investigations were closed without any action being taken, but the cloud will linger). Giddey is also a restricted free agent after this season, so the Bulls will have to pay him and use up a lot of their upcoming salary cap space since Lonzo Ball finally comes off the books after this year.
The Bulls then signed Jalen Smith, a good player with a fair contract, but the Bulls used the MLE to sign him, which meant they had a salary cap hit on the first apron. And again, I don’t hate the signing, but it doesn’t really make sense when you look at the rest of the roster. The Bulls had already re-signed Patrick Williams and still have Nikola Vucevic. Smith is a good, versatile backup with some upside, so it’s not a bad move on its own, but the salary cap leads us right into dumb move #3.
The Bulls agreed to a sign-and-trade that sent DeMar DeRozan to the Kings, and all the Bulls got in return for trading their best player was Chris Duarte and a second-round pick. The Spurs served as the third team in the deal, receiving Harrison Barnes and a 2031 pick swap with the Kings. So why does the salary cap from before matter? Because that’s the reason the Bulls didn’t get the pick swap. That’s the reason the Bulls couldn’t acquire Harrison Barnes themselves. Just massive mismanagement of assets and salary cap by the Chicago front office.
Chicago also tried unsuccessfully to trade Zach LaVine in the offseason, but found no one interested.
The future in the Windy City looks bleak unless Giddey and/or Matas Buzelis massively exceed expectations. But the Bulls will be good enough to flirt with the play-in every year, and that seems to be good enough for Bulls owners.
Why we hate them:
I hated the Bulls when they signed Jalen Smith, and I hated them again when they traded Caruso to Oklahoma City instead of Sacramento. But then they helped us get DeMar DeRozan, and I can’t be mad at the Bulls anymore.
