The Chicago Bulls are already staring past the last scraps of their 2026 offseason and into what comes next. After working through their draft board, playing five uneven Las Vegas Summer League games and sitting in a free-agency holding pattern with one active main roster spot still open, the front office has to think beyond the present tense.
That next step, at least in this case, points toward the summer of 2027 and a possible target in San Antonio: De’Aaron Fox.
A hypothetical Bulls-Spurs deal would send Josh Giddey and Norman Powell to San Antonio in exchange for Fox and the Boston Celtics’ 2028 top-1 protected first-round pick swap that the Spurs picked up when they sent Derrick White to Boston during the 2022 NBA trade deadline.
The pitch for Fox starts with the simplest part first. He had a terrible series in the 2026 NBA Finals and, by the source’s framing, arguably cost the Spurs their sixth NBA title.
But Chicago is not trying to solve title-or-bust problems anytime soon. Under the league’s new tanking rules, the Bulls need players who can keep the regular-season floor solid, and Fox already showed he can do that for San Antonio before its run to the 2026 NBA Finals.
The fit becomes more interesting when you zoom in on what Chicago is actually trying to build. The Bulls need to shape the roster around forward Caleb Wilson and keep developing guard Dailyn Swain into a real NBA player.
Fox lines up neatly with that timeline, too. His current veteran maximum extension with the Spurs expires at the same time Wilson’s rookie-scale deal ends after the 2029-30 season.
That matters because Giddey’s next contract situation lands earlier. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent in the 2029 offseason, right when Wilson becomes extension eligible.
If Chicago has to choose where to spend a major chunk of its cap, the argument here is that Wilson is the priority. That’s a roster-building decision, not a knock on Giddey.
On the court, the case for Fox is cleaner. He would give the Bulls a modest defensive upgrade at point guard and a real boost in ball-screen offense. Fox is the better pick-and-roll handler, and the numbers back that up: according to NBA.com stats, Giddey finished the 2025-26 regular season in the 33.2 percentile as a pick-and-roll ball handler, while Fox finished in the 73.7 percentile.
Fox would also fit alongside Wilson’s offensive skill set. Wilson flashed real self-creation in his Las Vegas Summer League minutes, and there are obvious ways to use him with Fox - either as a screener or as an off-ball shooter in three-man pick-and-roll action. That kind of structure would help round out Wilson’s offensive game.
Swain’s Summer League showed plenty of development work still ahead, and Fox could serve as a veteran presence for him, whether Swain grows as a lead guard or an off guard. He’d also bring some accountability on the defensive end.
The old line says Fox doesn’t fit a rebuild. But the source’s argument is that the NBA of 2027 will look different, and Fox is exactly the kind of player the Bulls should be chasing when that offseason arrives.
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