It can be tempting to draw conclusions from a few (mostly) meaningless summer league games, but it is not a stretch to think the Chicago Bulls' poor 3-point shooting in Las Vegas will translate to the regular season. That makes adding Norman Powell and his 39.6 percent career mark from deep look like an even more brilliant piece of business.
Bulls executive VP of basketball operations Bryson Graham has aced his debut offseason. Caleb Wilson already looks like a star. Acquiring Nic Claxton filled a gaping hole at center.
Dailyn Swain is off to a slow start, but head coach Tiago Splitter has already entrusted the 20-year-old to run his summer league offense.
But dipping into free agency and signing Powell looks like it could be one of the shrewdest moves of the offseason. And he hasn't played a single minute.
Norman Powell gives the Bulls something they desperately need
As a 33-year-old and 11-year NBA veteran, Powell doesn't totally make sense on a Chicago roster that will skew young for the foreseeable future. But on the other hand, he makes perfect sense.
Powell was an all-star for the first time last season when he averaged 21.7 points on 47.0 percent shooting from the field and 38.0 percent from three. That last number was actually down pretty significantly from 2024-25, when he shot 41.8 percent on the same number of attempts (7.1 per game).
And boy could the Bulls use that shooting.
A pair of summer league games obviously don't paint a full picture, but Chicago has been awful from deep. In its most recent contest, an 80-63 loss to the Utah Jazz, Splitter's team shot just 22 percent from deep (8-for-36). Twenty-two percent.
In their first game in Sin City, the Bulls connected on 44 percent of their 3-point tries — but that number is misleading. Wilson was 7-for-11 on his triples in a historically impressive debut; remove his makes and attempts from the equation, and Chicago was 7-for-21 (33.3 percent) as a team.
Swain and Wilson are tantalizing prospects, but neither is a reliable shooter at this point in their careers. Josh Giddey and Matas Buzelis improved, but they're not dependable floor spacers.
The Bulls finished 19th in the league in 3-point percentage last season (35.6 percent) and lost Ayo Dosunmu, Coby White and Nikola Vucevic, plus trade deadline acquisitions Anfernee Simons and Collin Sexton.
This year will almost certainly be a slog for Chicago from beyond the arc, and that makes Powell even more of a critical — and wise — acquisition by Graham.
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