During the GarPax-era, which former Chicago Bulls draftees were given up on too early and found success elsewhere around the NBA?
The drafting ability for the Chicago Bulls former vice president of basketball operations John Paxson and general manager Gar Forman produced mixed results over the course of the last 10-15 years. The Bulls did draft players in the last three years that have a lot of potential to become quality starters in the NBA. But roster construction and development have limited what GarPax draftees were able to do with the Bulls in recent years.
GarPax took a lot of criticism over the course of the last four or five years with how they treated former Bulls stars on their way out and how they handled this rebuild. The Bulls aren’t taking many steps forward in the midst of the third year of the rebuild, and the fashion in which GarPax got rid of stars like Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose was not popular in the public eye.
The good news for Bulls fans is that GarPax is either reassigned to another role or on the way out of the Windy City altogether. And that means that recently hired lead executive Arturas Karnisovas has a shot at bettering the roster construction with this franchise. Maybe past NBA Draft mistakes can be avoided for the Bulls, like drafting some players and shipping them elsewhere for little to no valuable returns.
Karnisovas will get his first shot in the 2020 NBA Draft to prove how he’ll build this roster heading into the fourth year of the rebuild.
Here’s a look into five former Chicago Bulls draftees that are having success elsewhere around the NBA that were selected since the turn of the century (close to when Paxson took over for Jerry Krause as lead exec).