Chicago Bulls: 5 players the team regrets trading in last 10 years

Players the Chicago Bulls regret trading from the past 10 years: Jimmy Butler

Outside of the Vooch trade that Karnisovas and Eversley pulled off at the trade deadline this year, the biggest deal that any Bulls’ front office regime made in the past decade involved shipping off star shooting guard/small forward Jimmy Butler back during the 2017 offseason. The 6-foot-7 and 230-pound 31-year-old Butler was the biggest star that the Bulls had on the roster at the time.

The return that the Bulls got for “Jimmy G. Buckets” wound up providing some very mixed results for this team, though. Point guard Kris Dunn didn’t wind up making the impact that was anticipated by GarPax in his few years in Chicago. He is now playing for the Hawks.

Power forward Lauri Markkanen was one of the big pieces that the Bulls got in this trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves for Butler. But Markkanen never really lived up to the hype and he might be done with the Bulls as in impending restricted free agent this summer.

Definitely, the player that paid the most dividends in this Butler-Timberwolves trade for the Bulls was star shooting guard Zach LaVine.

It’s hard to argue that it wasn’t worth parting ways with Butler for LaVine at this point. But the Bulls definitely had the ability to build a title contender around Butler, they just gave up on him pretty early on. The Miami Heat showed you can do that last year.

However, this subject is a bit taboo. What is clear is that the Bulls actually wound up winning most of this trade between them and the Timberwolves. LaVine got his first career All-Star nod this year and is part of the star duo this front office will build around moving forward.