Chicago bulls : What is the plan?

[DuckIII]

I’ll try to answer what I think they intend the current plan to be:

1. Resign Giddey, make him the primary ball-handler and playmaker and build a team that considers his strengths and weaknesses.

2. Hope Matas is a franchise player.

3. Develop Essengue as an important part of step 1 above.

4. Give Coby to the deadline and decide what to do at that point.

5. Try to move Pat.

6. Don’t make any significant “win now” moves and treat this season as an experimental and developmental year to try to keep a reasonably good draft pick for next year in a strong draft.

7. After making that pick, put the pedal to the metal immediately and get as good as you can as fast as you can (which would be a mistake unless we clearly see some contending type talent emerging quickly).

Reading the tea leaves, this appears to be the basic plan for now.

Very well said Duck!

I think AK as an anti-tanker is trying to build a team that is a superstar away from contending and is trying to have enough assets to go all-in should the right guy become available down the road a year or two.

I agree. My concern is I don’t trust him to be patient for a genuine superstar and be willing to just ride it out. I see him panicking trading for whatever borderline allstar in decline he can find and then taking a victory lap and disappear for another year like Punxutawney Phil.

[League Circles]

I’ll try to answer what I think they intend the current plan to be:

1. Resign Giddey, make him the primary ball-handler and playmaker and build a team that considers his strengths and weaknesses.

2. Hope Matas is a franchise player.

3. Develop Essengue as an important part of step 1 above.

4. Give Coby to the deadline and decide what to do at that point.

5. Try to move Pat.

6. Don’t make any significant “win now” moves and treat this season as an experimental and developmental year to try to keep a reasonably good draft pick for next year in a strong draft.

7. After making that pick, put the pedal to the metal immediately and get as good as you can as fast as you can (which would be a mistake unless we clearly see some contending type talent emerging quickly).

Reading the tea leaves, this appears to be the basic plan for now.

Which I believe will turn into the Bulls playing .500 ball and a big trade at the deadline for a playoff push.

Absolutely could happen given AK’s preferences. I just don’t think that’s the plan when I look at the whole picture.

But plans change. And we all know the more the Bulls win - no matter how meaningless those wins are to actually being a contender - the faster AK will move to bring in guys “who can contribute right away.”

Hard to know how accurate this is. All AK has really done as exec is build the best team he could in the first year and then make minor tweaks and give it too much time to evaluate. IMO he really hasn't made any desperation moves to stay competitive. He just built a talented but very poorly fitting roster based on a significant overestimation of Vucevic, and then waited significantly too long to try to rebuild. But he eventually did. The closest thing to ill-advised "win now" moves he made after the initial build were signing Drummond and Carter with fractions of the MLE to be supporting bench players.

[Peelboy]

I’ll try to answer what I think they intend the current plan to be:

1. Resign Giddey, make him the primary ball-handler and playmaker and build a team that considers his strengths and weaknesses.

2. Hope Matas is a franchise player.

3. Develop Essengue as an important part of step 1 above.

4. Give Coby to the deadline and decide what to do at that point.

5. Try to move Pat.

6. Don’t make any significant “win now” moves and treat this season as an experimental and developmental year to try to keep a reasonably good draft pick for next year in a strong draft.

7. After making that pick, put the pedal to the metal immediately and get as good as you can as fast as you can (which would be a mistake unless we clearly see some contending type talent emerging quickly).

Reading the tea leaves, this appears to be the basic plan for now.

Very well said Duck!

I think AK as an anti-tanker is trying to build a team that is a superstar away from contending and is trying to have enough assets to go all-in should the right guy become available down the road a year or two.

But refuses to try and trade for assets to assist in that effort if it comes to pass. Prefers to hold assets like Drummond in worthless seasons or sell picks rather than trade for future ones.

[jnrjr79]

I’ll try to answer what I think they intend the current plan to be:

1. Resign Giddey, make him the primary ball-handler and playmaker and build a team that considers his strengths and weaknesses.

2. Hope Matas is a franchise player.

3. Develop Essengue as an important part of step 1 above.

4. Give Coby to the deadline and decide what to do at that point.

5. Try to move Pat.

6. Don’t make any significant “win now” moves and treat this season as an experimental and developmental year to try to keep a reasonably good draft pick for next year in a strong draft.

7. After making that pick, put the pedal to the metal immediately and get as good as you can as fast as you can (which would be a mistake unless we clearly see some contending type talent emerging quickly).

Reading the tea leaves, this appears to be the basic plan for now.

Which I believe will turn into the Bulls playing .500 ball and a big trade at the deadline for a playoff push.

Absolutely could happen given AK’s preferences. I just don’t think that’s the plan when I look at the whole picture.

But plans change. And we all know the more the Bulls win - no matter how meaningless those wins are to actually being a contender - the faster AK will move to bring in guys “who can contribute right away.”

My specific "win now" concern for next season is AK, perhaps rightly, may conclude that all this cap space that is lined up for 2026 could be wasted when there likely won't be any max UFA guy you'd realistically go after and if no star is forcing a trade (Giannis, etc.). In that circumstance, I could pretty easily see him trading for a "star" with expiring contracts and some future pick this offseason.

The signs recently seem to indicate that AK may have a degree of patience right now, but a panic move seems plausible enough, too, given his history and the way the books are lining up. Heck, there may even be moves in this vein that would actually be prudent. I'm not a "maximize next year's pick at all costs" guy, but I also don't want him to be cavalier about that concern. A big swing needs to really be worth it.

[sco]

Which I believe will turn into the Bulls playing .500 ball and a big trade at the deadline for a playoff push.

Absolutely could happen given AK’s preferences. I just don’t think that’s the plan when I look at the whole picture.

But plans change. And we all know the more the Bulls win - no matter how meaningless those wins are to actually being a contender - the faster AK will move to bring in guys “who can contribute right away.”

My specific "win now" concern for next season is AK, perhaps rightly, may conclude that all this cap space that is lined up for 2026 could be wasted when there likely won't be any max UFA guy you'd realistically go after and if no star is forcing a trade (Giannis, etc.). In that circumstance, I could pretty easily see him trading for a "star" with expiring contracts and some future pick this offseason.

The signs recently seem to indicate that AK may have a degree of patience right now, but a panic move seems plausible enough, too, given his history and the way the books are lining up. Heck, there may even be moves in this vein that would actually be prudent. I'm not a "maximize next year's pick at all costs" guy, but I also don't want him to be cavalier about that concern. A big swing needs to really be worth it.

The positive is that he just got his contract renewed which may take away the urgency to make a big swing.

[nomorezorro]

the plan is the same as most other bad teams, which is "hope that the young players on your roster become the nucleus of a good team and then decide how to build on that once you get there."

the flaws in our version of that plan are twofold:

1. because of the past several years of mismanagement, our collection of young players with meaningful promise is not as strong as you would hope.

(this is not a value judgement of matas/giddey/coby/essengue. regardless of how you feel about those guys, i think it is just generally true that most teams who have been as noncompetitive as we have been for nearly a decade would have a core of prospects with a stronger pedigree than 2 late lotto picks + two guys of debatable value who have 4-6 years of experience. also, they would also have more than 4 guys they're placing their hopes on.)

2. the history of this front office indicates that, going forward, we are unlikely to generate a ton of extra "bites at the apple" that would increase our odds of landing on a true star (or several good-to-very good players).

(every team needs to get lucky to move from bad to good, but it's harder to get lucky if you're just making one first round pick a year and rarely making trades or free agency moves of note. even if we've finally gotten past the total stasis that defined most of the lavine/vucevic/derozan era, this is still a FO that basically explicitly does not highly value draft capital, and they haven't shown the ability to get more creative than pulling off one-for-one trades involving guys who are set to walk in free agency in a year. if that's how we operate going forward, we're going to need more luck than most other teams.)

[Dominator83]

I also think it's really silly to have a "plan". The team building rules are so constraining that it's best to just continuously analyze your situation and look at how all possible moves affect your 5 year outlook, and be ready to pivot at any moment to a variety of different rosters. I've never understood the notion that in order to win you need some grand narrative tale or vision to unfold over the course of years.

I agree with you here. The problem is, AKME is slow to pivot. Look how long it took them to start pivoting when it was clear as day to anyone with common sense that the mid-3 just wasn't gonna work after the poor finish to 2022 + the 5 game shallacking from Milwaukee. They ran it back for 2 more seasons when they should have known it was a dead end.

[League Circles]

the plan is the same as most other bad teams, which is "hope that the young players on your roster become the nucleus of a good team and then decide how to build on that once you get there."

the flaws in our version of that plan are twofold:

1. because of the past several years of mismanagement, our collection of young players with meaningful promise is not as strong as you would hope.

(this is not a value judgement of matas/giddey/coby/essengue. regardless of how you feel about those guys, i think it is just generally true that most teams who have been as noncompetitive as we have been for nearly a decade would have a core of prospects with a stronger pedigree than 2 late lotto picks + two guys of debatable value who have 4-6 years of experience. also, they would also have more than 4 guys they're placing their hopes on.)

2. the history of this front office indicates that, going forward, we are unlikely to generate a ton of extra "bites at the apple" that would increase our odds of landing on a true star (or several good-to-very good players).

(every team needs to get lucky to move from bad to good, but it's harder to get lucky if you're just making one first round pick a year and rarely making trades or free agency moves of note. even if we've finally gotten past the total stasis that defined most of the lavine/vucevic/derozan era, this is still a FO that basically explicitly does not highly value draft capital, and they haven't shown the ability to get more creative than pulling off one-for-one trades involving guys who are set to walk in free agency in a year. if that's how we operate going forward, we're going to need more luck than most other teams.)

There was a decent amount of creativity in the initial build to bring in DeRozan and Ball. The Zach trade was hardly one for one, it was one for 3 and a lottery pick. Ball wasn't a year from walking in FA. We signed him to a perfectly tradable deal and a few months later did it without Ball ever playing a minute for us after the extension.

IMO Matas is easily top 3 pick caliber and Noa was also better as a draft prospect than his #12 slot. Giddey and Coby are also #6 and #7 picks who have panned out very well compared to historical projections IMO. Oh and then we have another 3 top 10 picks under 25 in Smith, Patrick and Okoro.

[League Circles]

I also think it's really silly to have a "plan". The team building rules are so constraining that it's best to just continuously analyze your situation and look at how all possible moves affect your 5 year outlook, and be ready to pivot at any moment to a variety of different rosters. I've never understood the notion that in order to win you need some grand narrative tale or vision to unfold over the course of years.

I agree with you here. The problem is, AKME is slow to pivot. Look how long it took them to start pivoting when it was clear as day to anyone with common sense that the mid-3 just wasn't gonna work after the poor finish to 2022 + the 5 game shallacking from Milwaukee. They ran it back for 2 more seasons when they should have known it was a dead end.

I actually blame him more for the poor fit of the initial build than I do for not pivoting quickly enough. I believe he probably had mostly very poor trade options (by my standards), and his third best player in Ball (obviously better than Vuc from the moment he got here and paid like it too) was catastrophically injured. I just think anyone could see that despite the significant talent, there was very little chance that Demar, Zach, Ball and Vuc were going to fit well together. Then again, they did play well together for the brief period they were all healthy. As boring and lame as it was, I mostly agreed with not "tearing it down" because I believe we'd have been left without much of value anyway.

[Rose2Boozer]

The plan is to have projects and then get roadblock veterans to keep from giving your projects meaningful playing time.

[dougthonus]

I'm not trying to be a doom and gloomer with this comment, but since the end of the Jordan era the plan has always been to remain within the top 5 in attendance and merchandise sales. This is usually accomplished with a roughly .500 record and play-in or late seed playoff appearance. It doesn't matter who's running the FO, this is and always has been the primary goal.

This is a business after all and the way the Reinsdorfs and co. run this organization is optimized to maximize profits above everything else, even winning.

What they don't seem to realize is investing in winning will pay for itself in the long run; look at how profitable we are still coasting off the Jordan era despite having maybe 2 notable seasons since that era ended. Without all that winning we did in the 90s we wouldn't be the money printing machine we are now.

Don't take my word for it. Jerry Reinsdorf has infamously made comments like "strive for 2nd place" and has told his family to sell the White Sox and keep the Bulls after his passing due to the Sox being his passion and the Bulls being a business.

Or just look at how roster management is handled; this organization has paid the luxury tax once in its entire existence and has never been a big player in major free agency pursuits.

These are not the words and actions of anyone who is serious about winning.

The goal is to continue lining the Reinsdorfs and minority owners pockets. How we get there and how many games we win in pursuit of that goal is just the window dressing.

I think a lot of this stuff gets overstated and fundamentally misunderstands profits and how to build a winning team in the NBA.

People state this like if only paid the luxury tax they would be way better, when the reality is the teams that pay the tax are the ones that already are positioned to win. No one pays the luxury tax when they don't have superstars and are .500ish teams.

The Bulls got lucky one time. When they did, they had the best record in the NBA in the 3rd/4th year after that draft. They were an ACL tear away from being a perennial contender for the next decade with capable 2nd and 3rd stars already on the roster and lots of cheap depth pieces and all of their future picks.

When they had that player they made aggressive moves to dump salary to try and surround him with two max contracts and generally seemed like they came in 2nd in the chase for LeBron/Bosh, so they were definitely willing to go all in to make aggressive championship type moves.

Yes, everything else you said is true about wanting profits, selling merch, and selling out the stadium, but largely their results are due to the decision making of the people running the basketball ops. AK doesn't suck because he chases profits, he just has sucked because he's made bad decisions. If he had made good decisions and positioned this team to win 50+ games, they'd make way more profits.

If they won 50+ games, you would then see if they would pay the luxury tax or not pay the luxury tax in order to chase a title (probably would pay some, but not 2nd apron style), but that would be the point where money gets in the way. Building a team to 50 wins first is something you do prior to looking at whether to pay the tax, and that is entirely on the combination of luck / FO execution.

So yeah, I'd be cynical about whether the Bulls will or won't pay big time in the future with a title on the line, but nothing about aiming for 40 wins is about generating profit or a set goal. That's about failure of the basketball ops people. A 50 win 2nd round playoff team that didn't pay the tax would probably make 50-100M more per year in profit than what they're doing now.

[dougthonus]

Then again, they did play well together for the brief period they were all healthy. As boring and lame as it was, I mostly agreed with not "tearing it down" because I believe we'd have been left without much of value anyway.

I mean, you'd be where you are now except with 8 extra first round picks and the same number of playoff appearances.

[dougthonus]

I’ll try to answer what I think they intend the current plan to be:

1. Resign Giddey, make him the primary ball-handler and playmaker and build a team that considers his strengths and weaknesses.

2. Hope Matas is a franchise player.

3. Develop Essengue as an important part of step 1 above.

4. Give Coby to the deadline and decide what to do at that point.

5. Try to move Pat.

6. Don’t make any significant “win now” moves and treat this season as an experimental and developmental year to try to keep a reasonably good draft pick for next year in a strong draft.

7. After making that pick, put the pedal to the metal immediately and get as good as you can as fast as you can (which would be a mistake unless we clearly see some contending type talent emerging quickly).

Reading the tea leaves, this appears to be the basic plan for now.

Generally agree with all of this except very minor tweaks on a few points:
3: Developing Essengue is important because hitting on our draft picks is important more so than Giddey will benefit. If we hit on Essengue, he'll likely be here long after Giddey.

4: I don't think they will have any serious thought about trading Coby unless the team is absolutely tanked, though maybe you're saying the same thing and that's the evaluation, but if we're in the playoff hunt, we'll keep pushing for the playoffs, especially given we've had really strong finishes the past couple years post all-star break after poor starts.

6: I don't think they'll make desperation moves to "win now" but I don't think they'll consider their draft position at all. I think they will hope to make the playoffs with this roster. If they don't, then they don't, but I think the pick is an after thought to them, but we've had opportunities to get much better playoff position the past couple years and instead scraped and clawed our way into the play in instead of looking at the draft.

[League Circles]

I'm not trying to be a doom and gloomer with this comment, but since the end of the Jordan era the plan has always been to remain within the top 5 in attendance and merchandise sales. This is usually accomplished with a roughly .500 record and play-in or late seed playoff appearance. It doesn't matter who's running the FO, this is and always has been the primary goal.

This is a business after all and the way the Reinsdorfs and co. run this organization is optimized to maximize profits above everything else, even winning.

What they don't seem to realize is investing in winning will pay for itself in the long run; look at how profitable we are still coasting off the Jordan era despite having maybe 2 notable seasons since that era ended. Without all that winning we did in the 90s we wouldn't be the money printing machine we are now.

Don't take my word for it. Jerry Reinsdorf has infamously made comments like "strive for 2nd place" and has told his family to sell the White Sox and keep the Bulls after his passing due to the Sox being his passion and the Bulls being a business.

Or just look at how roster management is handled; this organization has paid the luxury tax once in its entire existence and has never been a big player in major free agency pursuits.

These are not the words and actions of anyone who is serious about winning.

The goal is to continue lining the Reinsdorfs and minority owners pockets. How we get there and how many games we win in pursuit of that goal is just the window dressing.

I think a lot of this stuff gets overstated and fundamentally misunderstands profits and how to build a winning team in the NBA.

People state this like if only paid the luxury tax they would be way better, when the reality is the teams that pay the tax are the ones that already are positioned to win. No one pays the luxury tax when they don't have superstars and are .500ish teams.

The Bulls got lucky one time. When they did, they had the best record in the NBA in the 3rd/4th year after that draft. They were an ACL tear away from being a perennial contender for the next decade with capable 2nd and 3rd stars already on the roster and lots of cheap depth pieces and all of their future picks.

When they had that player they made aggressive moves to dump salary to try and surround him with two max contracts and generally seemed like they came in 2nd in the chase for LeBron/Bosh, so they were definitely willing to go all in to make aggressive championship type moves.

Yes, everything else you said is true about wanting profits, selling merch, and selling out the stadium, but largely their results are due to the decision making of the people running the basketball ops. AK doesn't suck because he chases profits, he just has sucked because he's made bad decisions. If he had made good decisions and positioned this team to win 50+ games, they'd make way more profits.

If they won 50+ games, you would then see if they would pay the luxury tax or not pay the luxury tax in order to chase a title (probably would pay some, but not 2nd apron style), but that would be the point where money gets in the way. Building a team to 50 wins first is something you do prior to looking at whether to pay the tax, and that is entirely on the combination of luck / FO execution.

So yeah, I'd be cynical about whether the Bulls will or won't pay big time in the future with a title on the line, but nothing about aiming for 40 wins is about generating profit or a set goal. That's about failure of the basketball ops people. A 50 win 2nd round playoff team that didn't pay the tax would probably make 50-100M more per year in profit than what they're doing now.

Exactly. We appreciate your objectivity. I'll just add this. The ONE time that the Bulls were in a position to just elect to pay the LT in a way that would make any sense (summer 2011), they did so for what anyone probably including them would perceive as a marginal upgrade at the 2 position by signing Rip Hamilton when they already had two very good quality role players (of similar caliber as Rip at that point in his career) in Korver and Brewer. They paid LT for a minor upgrade to give them a little different skill set in the hopes of pushing a league #1 seed, ECF team into a title winner.

It's the specifics of how that all unfolded, and the spending in the second dynasty three peat that has made me never really worried that if and when it makes sense, this org will spend a satisfactory amount into the tax.

It's all about sequencing. It's just nearly impossible to go into the tax unless you ramp up incrementally with re-signings (which obviously should only be good players) as you become and stay really good. There are some ways you could do it quicker via trades, but that's a big unknown.

[sco]

the plan is the same as most other bad teams, which is "hope that the young players on your roster become the nucleus of a good team and then decide how to build on that once you get there."

the flaws in our version of that plan are twofold:

1. because of the past several years of mismanagement, our collection of young players with meaningful promise is not as strong as you would hope.

(this is not a value judgement of matas/giddey/coby/essengue. regardless of how you feel about those guys, i think it is just generally true that most teams who have been as noncompetitive as we have been for nearly a decade would have a core of prospects with a stronger pedigree than 2 late lotto picks + two guys of debatable value who have 4-6 years of experience. also, they would also have more than 4 guys they're placing their hopes on.)

2. the history of this front office indicates that, going forward, we are unlikely to generate a ton of extra "bites at the apple" that would increase our odds of landing on a true star (or several good-to-very good players).

(every team needs to get lucky to move from bad to good, but it's harder to get lucky if you're just making one first round pick a year and rarely making trades or free agency moves of note. even if we've finally gotten past the total stasis that defined most of the lavine/vucevic/derozan era, this is still a FO that basically explicitly does not highly value draft capital, and they haven't shown the ability to get more creative than pulling off one-for-one trades involving guys who are set to walk in free agency in a year. if that's how we operate going forward, we're going to need more luck than most other teams.)

There was a decent amount of creativity in the initial build to bring in DeRozan and Ball. The Zach trade was hardly one for one, it was one for 3 and a lottery pick. Ball wasn't a year from walking in FA. We signed him to a perfectly tradable deal and a few months later did it without Ball ever playing a minute for us after the extension.

IMO Matas is easily top 3 pick caliber and Noa was also better as a draft prospect than his #12 slot. Giddey and Coby are also #6 and #7 picks who have panned out very well compared to historical projections IMO. Oh and then we have another 3 top 10 picks under 25 in Smith, Patrick and Okoro.

I think that the notion of strategy often becomes an after-the-fact interpretation of outcomes based on a certain degree of luck coupled with the GM's own view of his job security. When AK came in, he had at least had a half-decent plan of roster building and he was (too) aggressive in executing it quickly. The aftermath of the Ball injury led to some hope-based bad decisions that I would call tactical. At least there seems to be an acknowledgement that we are in transition, trying collect assets that can become or be traded for our next core team...although it is debatable whether the focus on young overlooked assets vs. tanking ultimately plays out, but either way there's probably equal weights luck and skill involved - just think about the whole Dallas coin toss outcome and how it could just as easily been us landing Flagg.

[kodo]

The "won't pay tax" criticism often levied against the Bulls isn't a generic "well all teams should be paying tax" complaint, it comes up because Chicago refuses to most obvious route to being competitive which is to get a star through the draft.

Chicago isn't the only team that refuses to prioritize high draft positioning, but those teams leverage their financial power. NY didn't draft Brunson, KAT, Mikal, OG, etc.. Not a single one of them. But they outbid Dallas in FA for Brunson, they took on KAT's contract when Minny had to reduce salary, and they threw out all their future draft picks for OG & MIkal. They have a $204M roster and are deep into the lux tax. If NY is the model on how to build a playoff team without the draft, Chicago doesn't operate anything like that.

The direct comparison is Miami. Miami paid the lux tax for a 37 win team this year, and a 44 win team the year before. Most of that is due to Jimmy Butler, and Chicago should have had Butler but dumped him precisely because we didn't want to pay him max. Miami did. It's a direct comparison of two teams, both not willing to go for the high draft pick strategy, one willing to spend for talent, the other not. It's not like Miami had an amazing team in the Butler era, they averaged 43 W per season.

This is ultimately the Simmons rant in a nutshell. It's not any one thing in isolation, it's the combination of not going for high draft picks (where Chicago isn't alone) combined with the history that when Chicago does get lucky to get a star with a low pick, they won't pay for him as soon as he needs to be paid like a star. This separates Chicago from the other teams like the Knicks, Miami, Clippers who have all paid the lux tax recently, and all 3 teams at least get into the playoffs and make some kind of run instead of just fumbling at the play-in. So Simmons' conclusion was that Chicago's hope laid in getting a star in the mid draft, basically the Giannis bet. That's why he had Chicago as the worst outlook, in his opinion this is the least likely way to build a competitive team. Not that it was impossible, just the most unlikely.

[MrSparkle]

They built a team to suit Giddey’s strengths… a fringe/long-shot star… but now are having a hard time resigning Giddey. Makes perfect sense!

[League Circles]

The "won't pay tax" criticism often levied against the Bulls isn't a generic "well all teams should be paying tax" complaint, it comes up because Chicago refuses to most obvious route to being competitive which is to get a star through the draft.

Chicago isn't the only team that refuses to prioritize high draft positioning, but those teams leverage their financial power. NY didn't draft Brunson, KAT, Mikal, OG, etc.. Not a single one of them. But they outbid Dallas in FA for Brunson, they took on KAT's contract when Minny had to reduce salary, and they threw out all their future draft picks for OG & MIkal. They have a $204M roster and are deep into the lux tax. If NY is the model on how to build a playoff team without the draft, Chicago doesn't operate anything like that.

The direct comparison is Miami. Miami paid the lux tax for a 37 win team this year, and a 44 win team the year before. Most of that is due to Jimmy Butler, and Chicago should have had Butler but dumped him precisely because we didn't want to pay him max. Miami did. It's a direct comparison of two teams, both not willing to go for the high draft pick strategy, one willing to spend for talent, the other not. It's not like Miami had an amazing team in the Butler era, they averaged 43 W per season.

This is ultimately the Simmons rant in a nutshell. It's not any one thing in isolation, it's the combination of not going for high draft picks (where Chicago isn't alone) combined with the history that when Chicago does get lucky to get a star with a low pick, they won't pay for him as soon as he needs to be paid like a star. This separates Chicago from the other teams like the Knicks, Miami, Clippers who have all paid the lux tax recently, and all 3 teams at least get into the playoffs and make some kind of run instead of just fumbling at the play-in. So Simmons' conclusion was that Chicago's hope laid in getting a star in the mid draft, basically the Giannis bet. That's why he had Chicago as the worst outlook, in his opinion this is the least likely way to build a competitive team. Not that it was impossible, just the most unlikely.

Lol, the Bulls maxed Jimmy!

[League Circles]

They built a team to suit Giddey’s strengths… a fringe/long-shot star… but now are having a hard time resigning Giddey. Makes perfect sense!

They're not having a hard time re-signing Giddey. They're being wisely patient with the process. And they certainly have not yet built a team to suit his strengths.

[League Circles]

It's comical to essentially see things like "the Bulls refuse to draft a star with a high pick" or "the Bulls refuse to pay enormous tax to lock themselves into a mediocre playoff team" (paraphrasing with exaggeration) at a time when the best 3 players in the league were all drafted later than we have drafted the past two years, and way later than Coby, Giddey, Patrick, Okoro were all drafted.

You cannot "choose" a great team by "agreeing" to accept a star with a high pick or pouring money into the team like this is baseball.