The Chicago Bulls are in an interesting place, sitting in a tower watching the rest of the NBA around them. They saw the Orlando Magic draft Jett Howard with the No. 11 pick in the NBA Draft, a pick the Bulls handed them — and the second lottery pick the Magic earned from the Nikola Vucevic deal. They watched the Washington Wizards declare they were done with purgatory and tear down their team. They watched the Toronto Raptors insist nothing was wrong and watch Fred VanVleet walk out the door and lock them in NBA purgatory.
The Bulls were themselves at a crossroads this summer, with no draft picks and a number of rotation players hitting free agency. Would they find landing spots for Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan and enter a rebuild? Or would they bring everyone back and make another run at the bottom half of the playoff bracket?
Perhaps fans of the Bulls hoped they would tear things down and follow the Wizards’ model. Perhaps they hoped that this team could finally draft and develop elite talent as they hadn’t done in 15 years. Instead, the Bulls reached out and locked the door out of NBA purgatory themselves, trapping themselves in the middle of the league once again.
How did the Bulls do this offseason?
Let’s walk through each of the moves the Bulls made this offseason and hand out letter grades. They’ll receive an “A” for an excellent move, a “B” for a move worth making, a “C” for a questionable move, and down from there. In the end, we’ll hand out an overall grade that will take the greater context of the team into account.
We start with the best move of the offseason, which also may be the most inconsequential.
1. Signed Torrey Craig
Signed free agent forward Torrey Craig to a 2-year, $5.37 million contract
The Chicago Bulls had a lot of rotation guards last season, even without Lonzo Ball being able to play with his chronic knee injury. Where they struggled was fielding forwards, with their bench frontcourt consisting of an overmatched Derrick Jones Jr. and lots of minutes of guards downshifting to play the 3 or even 4.
The Bulls addressed that need by signing Torrey Craig in free agency to what is essentially a two-year minimum contract. When the Bulls are fully healthy he is unlikely to start over Patrick Williams, but he can capably back up DeMar DeRozan and Williams at both forward positions.
Craig played last season with the Phoenix Suns and was a critical rotation player on a good team, starting 60 games and shooting 39.5 percent from deep while playing solid defense. His shakier free-throw shooting and overall career number (just 34.7 from deep) made defenses comfortable not guarding him, but if he can continue shooting at an above-average level that respect from defenses will come around and help space the court.
Grade: A-
2. Re-signed Coby White
Signed restricted free agent point guard Coby White to 3-year, $36 million contract.
The 2019 NBA Draft was a tale of peaks and valleys. Zion Williamson, Ja Morant, and Darius Garland went in the first five picks and have made All-Star teams, and each of those five picks secured a lucrative new contract. Then comes the valley, with picks 6-10 largely feeling like a disappointment.
That was the story for Coby White, who went seventh to the Bulls on draft night. He spent most of his first four seasons in the league as a largely negative player, able to get hot on any given night but overall a picture of frequent turnovers, poor defense, and streaky shooting.
Then something clicked during this past season, as White settled into a role as a full-time bench player and seemed to change his mentality from on-ball chuckster to supporting guard. He posted a career-high true-shooting percentage, including taking a huge leap on 2-pointers, and actually seemed to be a positive contributor defensively.
That glimmer of hope from White was worth a new deal to bring him back and see how he can build on that progress. The contract he signed is for Mid-Level money, $12 million per season; that’s fine for a bench player, and they can keep him in their system and see whether he can return the potential he showed coming out of college.
Grade: B+
3. Signed Jevon Carter
Signed free agent guard Jevon Carter to a 3-year, $19.5 million contract.
There is a class of NBA point guards that fits best when playing with another on-ball creator. While someone like Ja Morant or Russell Westbrook is going to provide diminishing returns when the ball is not in their hands, other guards are the size of a point guard but thrive offensively when the ball is in another player’s hands.
Jevon Carter fits that role to a T, as a career 39.7 percent 3-point shooter who hit 42.1 percent of his 3-pointers last season. He can handle and pass but not in adverse situations, and he isn’t going to do much of anything when creating a shot for himself. Allow him to cut or shoot off the catch and he becomes a weapon.
Defensively Carter is also a weapon, the kind of on-ball pest who can pick up opposing guards full-court but also has the strength not to be completely overwhelmed in a switch situation. Add all of that up, and he’s well worth the $6.5 million per season he will earn on this contract.
The issue with the deal from Chicago’s point of view is that Carter is somewhat duplicative of the guard room they have already built. Perhaps they’ve fully given up on Lonzo Ball returning, which is fair, but they also have Alex Caruso and Ayo Dosunmo, both of which are positive backcourt defenders who aren’t dynamic with the ball in their hands. The Bulls apparently have a type, and at some point, they’ll have too much of the same archetype to play them all.
Grade: B
4. Re-signed Ayo Dosunmo
Signed restricted free agent guard Ayo Dosunmo to a 3-year, $21 million contract.
We pick things up from the last slide, where we discussed the Bulls’ love of on-ball defensive guards. They found a real gem of that archetype in the 2021 NBA Draft, taking a player in Ayo Dosunmo 38th overall who was a high-volume scorer in college, then developing him into a rotation player and high-end defender.
The problem is that the offensive game is not there; he doesn’t have the burst to create offense against NBA defenders, so he is limited to scoring in transition. That kind of player has to be an excellent shooter to thrive in the league and in contrast to Jevon Carter, Dosunmo hit only 31.2 percent from deep last season.
He is just 23 years old and is back on a reasonable contract; it made sense to bring him back and “retain the asset” in order to move him in another deal later on. As currently constructed, however, trying to shoehorn two of Carter, Dosunmo, and Alex Caruso into a lineup seems perilous.
If he can sharpen his jumpshot his value will rise, but if he doesn’t he could get squeezed by the presence of Carter and end up as a contract the Bulls can’t move. Even with Ball sidelined, the Bulls will be trying to find minutes for Caruso, Carter, Dosunmo, Coby White, and Zach LaVine in the backcourt, not to mention sophomore Dalen Terry’s best position likely the 2.
Grade: B-
5. Drafted Julian Phillips
Drafted Tennessee forward Julian Phillips with the 35th pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.
The Chicago Bulls needed to find a way to add forwards to this team, so it was not a surprise to see them go after one in the NBA Draft. Without a pick in either round heading into Draft Night, the Bulls had to trade back into the draft, doing so at pick No. 35 to take Tennessee forward Julian Phillips.
The good for Phillips is that he is a fantastic athlete with a nearly-7-foot wingspan. His defensive chops are solid, both defending man-to-man and rotating inside. Looking at players such as DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic, he could step in as one of the team’s best defensive forwards from the jump.
The issue is the offense, and Phillips couldn’t have been much worse than his freshman season at Tennessee if he tried. He averaged just 8.3 points per game, shot 41.1 percent from the field and 23.9 percent from 3-point range, and largely eroded the scouting report until his offensive projection is simply a big shrug.
If the shot comes around, he’s a clear rotation player and perhaps a long-term starter. If it doesn’t, and right now that seems more likely, he’ll be unplayable. Given the Bulls’ struggles with Derrick Jones Jr. the past two seasons, for the Bulls to let him walk and then draft such a similar player is a bizarre move.
Grade: C
6. Re-signed Nikola Vucevic
Signed Nikola Vucevic to a 3-year, $60 million extension beginning in 2023.
The Chicago Bulls had to re-sign Nikola Vucevic, because to lose him for nothing would be more harmful to their future success than re-signing him would be.
That’s the truth that the Chicago front office must have bought into because otherwise, this is a move that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Bringing back Vucevic at $20 million per season for the next three years is a move that further locks them into purgatory in the present and prevents them from tearing down in the future.
Vucevic is not on a tradeable contract; teams don’t need centers as it is, and they certainly don’t want to match $20 million in salary for a center who doesn’t protect the rim and is only getting worse as he ages; he’ll turn 33 years old during the opening week of the season.
The Bulls overpaid for Vucevic once, and now they’re watching Franz Wagner and Wendell Carter Jr. thrive in Orlando. They have done so once again, locking the door to their tower of purgatory and handing Vucevic the key.
Grade: C-
Full offseason report card and overall grade
The Chicago Bulls brought back most of their key free agents, added a guard and drafted a forward. How do things look all together?
1. Signed Torrey Craig
Grade: A-
2. Re-signed Coby White
Grade: B+
3. Signed Jevon Carter
Grade: B
4. Re-signed Ayo Dosunmo
Grade: B-
5. Drafted Julian Phillips
Grade: C
6. Re-signed Nikola Vucevic
Grade: C-
Overall Grade
The Chicago Bulls have spent the past few seasons refusing to look in the mirror; or conversely, perhaps they’re simply looking in a funhouse mirror at a distorted and unrealistic view of themselves. The Bulls are not a contender and cannot be a contender with this core of players.
If their goal was to maintain a team on the fringes of the Play-In Tournament each season, they accomplished that task. Bringing back Vucevic, White and Dosunmo will help them maintain last year’s rotation, and Carter is the exact kind of high-floor, low-ceiling role player to maintain a status quo.
The problem is that the Bulls clearly think that if they can get healthy they can make a move in the Eastern Conference, perhaps fueled by their hot start in 2021-22. That version of the Bulls was a mirage anyway, but it’s also not coming back. The Bulls needed to find a path forward that wasn’t simply “win 40 games” and they couldn’t do that.
Most of these deals look fine in a vacuum, but taken together they reveal a mistaken approach to team-building. And by signing three-year deals, Chicago is planning to live in purgatory for the foreseeable future. That’s a bitter pill of mediocrity for fans to swallow.
Grade: C