The Chicago Bulls find themselves in the twilight of their 2026 NBA offseason after working through their 2026 NBA Draft board, playing five uneven Las Vegas Summer League games, and hovering in a free agency holding pattern with one active main roster spot left to fill.
With the sun setting on the 2026 NBA offseason, the Bulls front office should start to think about how the sun will rise on their 2027 NBA offseason.
An ideal partner the Bulls should engage to advance Bulls lead front office executive, Bryson Graham’s roster vision during the summer of 2027 is the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs player that should be on the Bulls' radar during the 2027 NBA offseason is De’Aaron Fox
A hypothetical framework for a Bulls and Spurs trade to send De’Aaron Fox to the Bulls might look like sending guards Josh Giddey and Norman Powell to the Spurs in exchange for Fox and the Boston Celtics’ 2028 top-1 protected first-round pick swap the Spurs acquired when they shipped guard Derrick White to the Celtics during the 2022 NBA trade deadline.
The Bulls’ case for De’Aaron Fox
First, to get the obvious out of the way, De’Aaron Fox had a terrible series in the 2026 NBA Finals and arguably cost the Spurs their sixth NBA title.
The Chicago Bulls will not have NBA title concerns for the foreseeable future. Still, given the new NBA tanking rules, the Bulls will need to field a roster with players who set a solid regular-season competitive floor like Fox did for the Spurs before their run to the 2026 NBA Finals.
Spurs v different levels of opponents
— Dean Oliver (@DeanO_Lytics) July 17, 2026
- Wemby slowed down some vs Really Good, otherwise amazing
- Fox struggled v Really Good, but most of supporting cost ok pic.twitter.com/kLqaMMPUHD
What concerns the Bulls do have is how to build the best roster around forward Caleb Wilson, in addition to developing guard Dailyn Swain into a competent NBA player.
The expiration of Fox’s current NBA veteran maximum contract extension, signed with the Spurs, lines up exactly with the expiration of Caleb Wilson’s rookie scale contract at the conclusion of the 2029-30 NBA season.
Josh Giddey, on the other hand, will negotiate his next NBA contract as an unrestricted free agent during the 2029 NBA offseason, at the same time Caleb Wilson becomes extension eligible.
In a priority choice between paying a large share of the Bulls' salary cap to Josh Giddey or Caleb Wilson, the reasonable choice is Caleb Wilson. This point made here in isolation is a basketball business argument and not a judgment on Giddey’s abilities.
The points to be made about Josh Giddey’s abilities relative to De’Aaron Fox’s abilities are two-fold: Fox represents an opportunity for the Bulls to realize a marginal upgrade in defense at the point guard position, and offensively, Fox also can provide the Bulls an upgrade in their ball screen offense, as Fox is a better pick-and-roll ball-handler than Josh Giddey.
According to NBA.com stats, Giddey finished the 2025-26 NBA regular season in the 33.2 percentile of pick-and-roll ball handlers, compared to Fox, who finished in the 73.7 percentile of pick-and-roll ball handlers in the same period.
To complement Caleb Wilson’s offensive versatility, which flashed strong signals of self-creation in his Las Vegas Summer League minutes, positioning Wilson as either a screener for Fox or as an off-ball movement shooter in three-man pick-and-roll action with Fox would be a great way to round out Wilson's NBA offensive bag.
Swain’s 2026 NBA summer league laid bare a long list of development needs, and having Fox in the locker room with Swain should give him a mentor to help him grow as a guard in either capacity (lead or off guard) and hold him accountable on defense.
Conventional wisdom says Fox doesn’t fit a rebuild, but the NBA of 2027 is a new environment for NBA rebuilds, and Fox is exactly the type of player the Bulls should target to acquire during the 2027 NBA offseason.
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