The Milwaukee Bucks’ roster crunch may wind up giving the Chicago Bulls a clean way to finish their own offseason.
Milwaukee has to get from 17 standard NBA contract players down to 15 before training camps open in late September, and the path to that trim is complicated by a franchise that has already been turned upside down. The Bucks’ 2026 offseason brought the end of the Giannis Antetokounmpo era, with the face of the franchise dealt to the Miami Heat for Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Kasparas Jakucionis, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and a bundle of draft picks.
What’s left in Milwaukee is a strange mix: middle-class salary pieces such as Herro, Kyle Kuzma and Myles Turner, plus veterans like Gary Trent Jr. and Caris LeVert. Ryan Rollins is likely to step into the 2026-27 season as the Bucks’ de facto locker room alpha after starting 67 games in 2025-26 and finishing as the team’s third-leading scorer at 17.3 points per game, behind Kevin Porter Jr. and the departed Antetokounmpo.
With Rollins, Ware and Jakucionis forming the clearest young core, the Bucks are in the early stages of their own reset. That creates an opening for Chicago.
The Bulls’ cleanest path to help Milwaukee comes through their $9.4 million room mid-level exception, which gives them one workable route to a deal without diving into more complicated salary-matching mechanics. Unless both sides want to explore higher-priced Bucks contracts, the Bulls could step in as the team that helps Milwaukee clear space.
And there are multiple Bucks players who could fit within that exception as a pair.
The most appealing name for Chicago is Jericho Sims. He’s heading into his age-28 season, stands 6-foot-10 and weighs 250 pounds, and would give the Bulls a veteran look in a frontcourt that still doesn’t have a long-term center even after the 2026 offseason addition of Nic Claxton.
If Chicago landed Sims, the second player in the deal would matter less. That player would likely be a back-end rotation piece, and bringing him in could force the Bulls to waive Leonard Miller just to open the roster spot. Another possibility is that Noa Essengue would be moved to another NBA team or head to free agency.
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