Chicago Bulls fans at long last know why their team can't trade Nikola Vucevic, and the answer shouldn't come as a shock. No team is interested in acquiring him.
Or perhaps to be more specific, no team is willing to give up an asset to get him.
In his latest rumor drop on The Stein Line Substack (subscription required), NBA insider Jake Fischer gave Chicago supporters some good news and some bad news: The dessert is that the Bulls are a team that "covets" New Orleans Pelicans center Yves Missi.
The vegetables are that it's "unlikely" Vucevic gets traded before the deadline.
If this front office actually pulls off a game-changing trade for a talented 21-year-old center who can solve that problem, that would surely boost its approval rating. But it won't shake off years of mistakes that will haunt the franchise down the line.
It's obvious why the Chicago Bulls can't trade Nikola Vucevic
Executive VP of Basketball Operations Arturas Karnisovas has repeatedly failed to trade players at peak value. He did it with DeMar DeRozan. He did it with Zach LaVine. And he's now accomplished the same disgraceful feat with Vucevic.
Karnisovas can't muster up the courage to take a big swing. He can't even pull the trigger on small deals that make all the logical sense in the world. The Vooch mishap is the most painful of all.
It seemed like a roster-building crime not to trade the now-35-year-old center at last year's trade deadline. The Bulls were reportedly holding out for a first-round pick in exchange for an aging center with one year left on his contract, whose game doesn't fit anymore. Vucevic is a slow, plodding, ground-bound big man in an NBA that covets long, athletic, two-way centers.
The two-time All-Star makes no sense at all in the up-tempo, run-and-gun, transition-centric offense that Bulls Head Coach Billy Donovan installed last season. Sure, he is still a productive post scorer who can space the floor and help run an offense; that just isn't the direction Chicago should be going in right now.
Yet Vucevic is still starting in the Windy City and it doesn't seem like he's going anywhere soon.
According to Fischer, contending teams would value Vucevic's skill set as a high-level role player, a la Al Horford in Golden State. But none of those teams seems willing to give up anything acquire him this season when they can simply sign him as a free agent this summer. Which makes total sense.
That's where Karnisovas is now stuck -- he couldn't rip the band-aid off and trade Vucevic when it made sense. He may have only landed a pair of second-round picks at last year's deadline, but that's better than nothing.
Once again, he waited too long to waive the white flag and it's costing him.