It’s the time of the NBA off-season when teams start looking to make trades, and everyone wants to know if the Chicago Bulls will get in on the action.
Some wondered if the Bulls would possibly look to kick off a rebuild this off-season by trading the main components of their roster, but they have seemingly decided against it. Keeping this group of players together would make sense, as the Bulls have a ton of win-now pieces in DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, Nikola Vucevic, Alex Caruso, and more. Instead of trading any of them away, Chicago should be looking to add complementary pieces to help get them back to the NBA Playoffs.
If they do indeed go that route, one player who would make a ton of sense is Royce O’Neale of the Brooklyn Nets. In a recent article done by the Bleacher Report staff, the Bulls landed O’Neale in an incredibly interesting hypothetical package involving a pair of second-rounders and the team’s Disabled Player Exception that they were recently granted due to Lonzo Ball’s injury.
It should be noted that the article has the Bulls sending second-rounders in 2026 and 2027, but with the team sending a pair of unknown second-rounders in their draft night trade to acquire Julian Phillips, they will be referred to as just second-rounders. With that said, let us break down this trade by looking at the pros and cons before handing it a letter grade.