To help us get through the NBA’s late-summer blues, we’re taking a look back at teams across the league and how their offseason went.
The Chicago Bulls
Main additions:
Jalen Smith
Josh Giddey
Matas Buzelis
Chris Duarte
Main losses:
DeMar DeRozan
Alex Caruso
Andre Drummond
Offseason review and outlook for the 2024-25 season:
The Bulls are, quite frankly, a complete disaster. I don’t understand what they’ve done the last few years, and one could easily argue that the Bulls are one of the most poorly managed teams in the NBA. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees with you, even among Bulls fans. The Bulls have good players, just good enough to keep from hitting rock bottom, but not good enough to accomplish anything.
The Bulls managed to pull off three bewildering displays of incompetence in a single offseason. First, the Bulls traded Alex Caruso to the Thunder for Josh Giddey, and managed to not extract a single draft asset from OKC, despite the Thunder having most of the league’s draft assets for the next decade. And sure, Josh Giddey is only 21 and a really gifted passer, but he doesn’t do much else and also comes with a cloud of off-the-court allegations (the official investigations were closed with no action taken, but the cloud will remain). Giddey is also a restricted free agent after this season, so the Bulls will have to pay him and use a good chunk of their upcoming salary cap hit on Lonzo Ball finally coming off the books after this year.
The Bulls then signed Jalen Smith, a good player on a fair contract, but the Bulls used the MLE to sign him, meaning they were under the salary cap from the start. 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 all-around big with some potential, so in a vacuum it’s not a bad move, but the salary cap leads us straight to stupid move #3.
The Bulls agreed to a sign-and-trade deal that sent DeMar DeRozan to the Kings, and all the Bulls got in exchange for their best player was Chris Duarte and a second-round pick. The Spurs acted 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 it’s the reason the Bulls didn’t get the pick swap. It’s the reason the Bulls couldn’t deal Harrison Barnes themselves. It’s just massive mismanagement of assets and salary cap space by Chicago management.
Chicago also spent the offseason unsuccessfully trying to trade Zach LaVine, but found no takers.
The future is bleak in the Windy City unless Giddey and/or Matas Buzelis can far exceed expectations. But the Bulls will be good enough to flirt with the Play-In every year, and that seems to be 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 blame the Bulls anymore.
