The Bulls and Thunder have reached an agreement on a trade that will send guard Alex Caruso to Oklahoma City, with guard Josh Giddey heading to Chicago, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
The deal isn’t official yet, but it sounds like it will be a straight-up, one-for-one swap. It won’t include any draft compensation, according to Joel Lorenzi of The Oklahoman and Marc Stein (Twitter links)
Caruso, one of the NBA’s best point-of-attack defenders, has earned All-Defensive nods and Defensive Player of the Year votes in each of the last two seasons. The 30-year-old has also developed into a reliable three-point shooter, making 40.8% of his 4.7 attempts per game in 2023/24 to push his career rate to 38.0%.
In 71 total games for the Bulls last season, Caruso averaged a career-high 10.1 points, 3.8 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and 1.7 steals in 28.7 minutes per contest, with a .468/.408/.760 shooting line. He’ll add even more defensive firepower to a Thunder team that ranked fourth in defensive rating (111.0) in ’23/24 and also features lockdown defenders like Luguentz Dort and Cason Wallace.
The Bulls had resisted trade offers for Caruso in recent years, but decided to part with him as he enters the final year of his current contract. He’ll earn $9.89MM in 2024/25 and will be extension-eligible beginning in July, though he won’t become eligible for his maximum extension (four years, $78MM+) until six months after the trade.
If he doesn’t sign a new contract with Oklahoma City at some point during the coming league year, Caruso will reach unrestricted free agency next summer. However, Wojnarowski (Twitter links) reports that the Thunder had pursued the veteran guard for a while and are making the deal with an eye toward keeping him long-term.
As Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer points out (via Twitter), it will be a reunion for Oklahoma City and Caruso, who played for the OKC Blue in the G League under Mark Daigneault in 2016/17.
Giddey, the sixth overall pick in the 2021 draft, started all 210 regular season games he played for the Thunder over the past three seasons and showed intriguing upside as a play-maker during that time. His best season came in 2022/23, when he averaged 16.6 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 6.2 assists per game on .482/.325/.731 shooting.
However, Giddey took a step back in ’23/24, averaging a career-low 12.3 PPG and 4.8 APG as his playing time dipped from 31.1 MPG to 25.1 MPG. While he improved his three-point percentage to 33.7%, he remained inconsistent from beyond the arc, resulting in opposing defenses sagging off of him. That led to the Thunder eventually moving him to the second unit for the first time in his career during the team’s second-round playoff series vs. Dallas.
Giddey was also the subject of investigations by the NBA and local police due to allegations that he engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a minor, but both the league and police closed their investigations into that matter due to a lack of corroborating evidence.
According to Wojnarowski (via Twitter), the Bulls had been “determined” to find a play-maker capable of replacing Lonzo Ball, who has been sidelined due to knee problems since January of 2022 and is entering the final year of his contract. There’s optimism in Chicago that Giddey, still just 21 years old, will have a clearer path to realizing his full potential in a situation where he has the ball in his hands more often — he often ceded ball-handling duties to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Oklahoma City.
The deal will save the Bulls a little money in 2024/25, with Giddey set to earn $8.35MM in the final year of his rookie contract. The difference between that figure and Caruso’s isn’t massive, but could end up being significant, given that Chicago’s team salary could approach or surpass the luxury tax line this offseason.
Like Caruso, Giddey will be extension-eligible with his new team. The Bulls will have until the day before the start of the regular season to negotiate a rookie scale extension with their new lead guard. If they don’t come to terms by that point, he would be on track for restricted free agency in 2025.
As cap expert Yossi Gozlan observes (via Twitter), this will be the first time the Bulls have made a trade involving a player since August 2021. It sounds like it probably won’t be the last deal the team makes this summer, with Zach LaVine and Ball said to be among the other trade candidates to watch.