5 times the Chicago Bulls missed on a superstar in the NBA Draft

Five NBA superstars stick out as key misses for the Chicago Bulls in past editions of the draft since the turn of the century.

Excitement is in the air for the Chicago Bulls as the much-needed front office changes finally arrived within the last few weeks. Arturas Karnisovas will be taking over the as new executive vice president of basketball operations for the Bulls, and Marc Eversley is set to be the next general manager.

For this list, we are tackling only the times that the Bulls missed out on a superstar in the NBA Draft since the turn of the century and the millennium back in 2000. The Bulls did have quite the mix of NBA Draft success over the course of the last 20 years, under two different lead executives in the front office.

The Bulls started out the 2000’s with the oh so famous former general manager Jerry Krause leading the way. Back then, the Bulls were attempting their first major rebuild since the Michael Jordan-era began in the Windy City in 1984. Krause didn’t do much to instill confidence with the draft picks he made in the early 2000’s.

There was a bit more success in the early years once former vice president of basketball operations John Paxson took over as the lead executive in the Bulls front office in favor of Krause. In the first decade of Paxson’s reign with the Bulls, he had solid first round draft picks such as point guard Derrick Rose, small forward Jimmy Butler, shooting guard Ben Gordon, and center Joakim Noah.

But the success in the NBA Draft tailed off as the Bulls moved further into the 2010’s. And this latest attempt at a rebuild under Paxson and former general manager Gar Forman went down a three year road to nowhere. That’s why the Reinsdorfs finally made the move to bring in the former Denver Nuggets general manager Karnisovas as the new lead executive. Maybe he’ll have less misses in the NBA Draft, and just constructing the roster in general, than GarPax did.

Here’s a deeper look into the five times that the Chicago Bulls missed out on a superstar in the NBA Draft since 2000.