There’s a lot to unpack here since the Chicago Bulls didn’t have much of any consistency through the 2014 NBA Draft straight up. The Bulls did select the former Michigan State Spartans shooting guard Gary Harris with the second selection it had in the first round, at pick No. 19. Harris and the other first round selection for the Bulls wound up landing with the Denver Nuggets in the rights for a trade that sent former Creighton Blue Jays guard Doug McDermott to the Windy City.
More than just Harris was involved with the trade involving the Bulls and McDermott, but he was one of the key pieces of the deal. But, Harris was definitely worth more to the Nuggets thus far than McDermott ever was for the Bulls. Last season, Harris truly broke through by averaging more than 17.0 points per game while posting a career best player efficiency rating of 16.5.
Meanwhile, McDermott never averaged much over 10 points per game in the Windy City. He’s having more success now with the Indiana Pacers than he ever had with the Bulls. This is one of the worst first round NBA Draft trades in recent memory and wound up being completely one-sided in the Nuggets favor.
In terms of what we’ll re-do here for the Bulls instead of selecting Harris, we’re going to slide the selection of big man Nikola Jokic up quite a bit. Jokic went down as the No. 41 selection to the Nuggets in the second round. He’d be huge in the Windy City as a frontcourt staple. Also, the Nuggets killed it in this draft.