MIAMI — It takes time for the NBA to get up to full speed.
The final crush of the trade deadline typically takes on a whirlwind pace. But regardless of gossip and whispers and intrigue, the bulk of the action typically occurs in the final days before the deadline. Executives want to weigh their options. Agents need time to take scope of the market. And once the first domino falls, the rest of the table tumbles into place around it.
The Bulls are about to enter this dead sprint. The trade window closes at 2 p.m. Thursday. Executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas carries the heavy burden of managing seven expiring contracts while chasing the fleeting goal of “flexibility” to rebuild the Bulls roster toward a new vision of development. To understand a front office’s trade-deadline moves, it’s crucial to identify its priorities — both in the long and short term. And like always, the Bulls can be hard to read.
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Although a few surprises cropped up — the Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic have underperformed deeply, the Boston Celtics are making every predictor and pundit eat their preseason rankings — the Eastern Conference remains a wide-open runway to the playoffs. Even at two games under .500, the Bulls (23-25) are still in play-in position with only 3½ games of separation from a playoff spot.
The Bulls could make a push for the playoffs and forgo a lottery pick in one of the stronger drafts in recent years. But do they want to?
At the start of the season, the answer was no. Kind of. During training camp, the party line within the front office was that the Bulls essentially were content to miss the playoffs if it meant setting up decent draft position, making a few trades to maximize the value of expiring contracts and giving hefty minutes to young players such as Matas Buzelis who need development. Karnišovas said as much in his season-opening news conference: “We have to be patient.”
The Bulls front office was not immune to the excitement of a 6-1 start, although executives and coaches alike were not surprised when that hot streak normalized within weeks. But once the season settled into mediocrity, the Bulls regrouped around their original grounding intentions for the season.
This might sound familiar. The Bulls will not make overly brash moves — for instance, dumping players at bargain prices — to force a nosedive into the lottery. But their ultimate hope for the season is to take another patient step toward building a young roster. While making the play-in tournament or even the playoffs isn’t fully ruled out as an option, the future is still the focus.
All right. So that’s the plan. But the Bulls still have to define one crucial aspect before they proceed: Who on this roster even qualifies as young? And who from that group is worth building around?
There are a few obvious answers. Buzelis is 21. Noa Essengue is 19. Both certainly qualify as young players. Josh Giddey still fits that bill at 23, although he is reaching the end of his “young player” tenure as he enters the second year of his second contract next season. Julian Phillips, 22, and Dalen Terry, 23, technically fit in this group, but neither plays enough to register as a priority in the conversation.
Much of the rest of the roster is in a nebulous zone between 24 and 28 that separates young players from veteran status. Patrick Williams is 24 (and still failing to establish himself in the rotation). Coby White, Isaac Okoro and Jalen Smith are 25. Ayo Dosunmu and Tre Jones are 26. Kevin Huerter is 27 and Zach Collins is 28.
The Bulls roster can be lazily classified as “young” simply because of the absence of age. But this in-between group of players makes no sense when aligned with the timeline of a potential breakout from Buzelis. There’s no way to develop this group over the next four years without contracts ballooning unsustainably; and that same group lacks any of the star power necessary to lift the Bulls out of their current mediocrity.
Even coach Billy Donovan acknowledged that the Bulls don’t have enough truly young players on the roster to fill out their vision of a bottom-up rebuild.
“We have to keep building out with younger people,” Donovan said. “I don’t think there’s any question about that from a roster standpoint. … If you’re just talking about the guys that are here that are going to be under contract, they’re going to need more. So however those conversations take place, whether it’s in July or whether it’s in July or whether it’s at the trade deadline, I think the front office is looking to try to build it out as best they can.”
The Bulls clearly intend to build around Giddey and Buzelis, but they are still multiple pieces away from their vision of a young core. So what does this mean for the next week?
Six players — Nikola Vučević, Collins, Huerter, White, Dosunmu and Jevon Carter — are sitting on expiring contracts. Any of these players could be utilized as a mechanism to help another team looking to free up cap space. Phillips will be on a team option next season, which makes him similarly available. This mechanism is only valuable to the Bulls if they receive a reasonable return — multiple sources have made it clear the Bulls don’t intend to offload a player such as White just for the sake of moving him.
Although their contracts are longer term, both Jones and Smith have driven interest in recent weeks. While Jones could be a potential asset still in play, the Bulls’ interest in maintaining a larger presence due to the recent success of two-big lineups could dissuade any deals from prying the center away from the Bulls. That means the Bulls are mostly looking to deal their guards, which could begin the process of rebalancing the roster.
Ultimately, the Bulls should still be volume sellers at the deadline. But that effort still relies heavily on the market — and on Karnišovas’ willingness to accept the offers that come across his table. If his former reticence holds over the next week, the Bulls could end February on a quiet note once again.