Imagine you cut your finger while slicing onions for a delicious, gigantic steak you plan on putting on the grill. You are in agony because of the cut, but you’re so committed to that delicious steak. You tough it out like the patient chef you are and you salt that steak like you’re on the Food Network.
The salt is on the steak. Your cut finger is going through a rollercoaster of pain. You have to wait now for the charcoal to catch fire on your grill. You, your salty finger wound, raw steak, raw onions.
Welcome to the Thursday after your Chicago Bulls blew a 22-point lead at home against the defending NBA Western Conference Champion San Antonio Spurs.
The nasty wound that was a 124-119 Bulls defeat to the Spurs got more salt poured into it than a crock pot full of chilli, in the wake of the news of Caleb Wilson being sidelined for at least a month to recover from surgery on a right hand fracture he sustained in the Bulls’ loss to the Spurs.
The 1-9 Bulls were already a struggling franchise after the Spurs decided it was winning time in the second half of Wednesday’s Bulls home game. With the unsettling news of Caleb Wilson’s absence, the Bulls, without question, must exercise proper strategic judgment and embrace a full-on tank for the 2026-27 NBA season.
Rationalizing Tanking in the Anti-Tank NBA
The traditional context of tanking in the NBA amounts to an NBA franchise executing a coordinated effort to lose as many games as possible to maximize NBA Draft lottery odds. Before the NBA implemented anti-tanking policy measures for the 2026-27 NBA season, that used to look like trading away high trade-value players for future draft capital or benching top contributing rotational players to minimize a team’s winning potential on a nightly basis.
Specific to the 2026-27 Chicago Bulls, who are faced with a month-long or longer absence of their face of the franchise, Caleb Wilson, tanking for this roster should be read as a swift and thorough jettisoning of the salary-flexible veteran players on the roster (looking at you, Norman Powell) to clear the way for young player development and also firmly entrench the Bulls in the bottom-three tier of win-loss rankings in the NBA (aka the relegation zone).
The Bulls should play the long game as it waits for the return of Caleb Wilson. An inaugural trip to the relegation zone for the Bulls helps pave the way for another top-5 draft pick in a stronger 2028 NBA Draft.
In the absence of Caleb Wilson minutes, the Bulls should figure out the long-term viability of players like Dailyn Swain, Noa Essengue, Leonard Miller, and Jaylin Sellers. In parallel, the Bulls should test the trade market value of Jalen Smith, Matas Buzelis, and Josh Giddey for a spectrum of reasons, between cashing in positive value in Smith and, frankly, cutting bait on ill-fitting starting lineup pieces in Buzelis and Giddey.
Overall, this is the moment when all of Bryson Graham’s obsession with future flexibility needs to materialize into viable long-term roster-building commitments.
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