The Chicago Bulls have spent the offseason tearing things down and rebuilding the picture upstairs and on the floor, and that kind of shake-up always creates a few clear winners and a couple of uneasy fits. With the 2026-27 season still nearly two months away, the dust looks settled enough to sort through who came out ahead and who may be staring at a tougher road.
Tiago Splitter is in a spot plenty of coaches would envy. He is the first head coach chosen by the new front office, and that matters.
Bryson Graham is clearly invested in Splitter leading this rebuild and setting the culture he wants, which should buy him time to work. A rebuild needs patience, something Graham has already been stressing, and Splitter could be around for the long haul if he builds on the strong showing he had in Portland one year ago.
Just as important for Splitter’s career, he got out of Portland. That organization has been in a rocky place under new ownership, and the contrast with Chicago is obvious: Micah Nori was only signed to a one-year prove-it deal there, while Splitter lands with a team that seems ready to hand him the keys.
Norman Powell also looks like a major winner, even if the fit looked odd at first glance. Chicago finally committed to a front office overhaul and a youth movement with No. 4 overall pick Caleb Wilson, so adding a 33-year-old reigning All-Star does not scream long-term reset.
Still, Powell found a clear path to both money and opportunity. He signed a lucrative two-year, $45.0 million contract, with the second year possibly a team option, which gives him flexibility for another payday next summer if things break right.
There is also the chance Powell is a short-term piece who could be rerouted to a contender by February. The Bulls are not built with the postseason in mind this season, and Powell knows that.
But with Chicago short on veteran scoring and needing shot creation, he should have every chance to post numbers and draw interest from a team looking for shooting help. Even if none of that happens, he could still spend the year playing his game alongside a group of young, athletic wings, serving as a voice in the room and taking plenty of late-game shots.
There are worse situations than that.
Josh Giddey is not on the way out, and nobody should expect that. He is still young enough and talented enough to remain part of the Bulls’ future. But the way this offseason unfolded could change his place in the hierarchy.
The previous front office was fully behind the Giddey experiment. They gave him a four-year, $100 million contract and built the offense around his transition playmaking, with the expectation that his scoring role would keep growing.
They wanted him to become a go-to scorer. The question now is whether Bryson Graham and Tiago Splitter see him the same way.
That is not a given. Caleb Wilson has become the priority, and Chicago also drafted Dailyn Swain, another player who could handle the ball.
The team has even discussed Swain becoming more of an on-ball facilitator, a role it tried at Summer League with little success. None of that removes Giddey from the picture, but it does suggest the Bulls may not force-feed him the same kind of usage.
There is still a path for him to matter in a big way. The roster should let him run in the open floor, and the addition of Nic Claxton could help him in pick-and-roll situations. But this front office may view him more as a facilitator than a scorer, and he does not exactly match the physical, defense-first identity Chicago appears to be leaning toward.
If there is a player whose role feels murkier now than it did before, it is Matas Buzelis. He just put together a strong season and became one of the team’s more efficient two-way role players. He also showed he could handle both frontcourt spots, and he knocked down 37.3 percent of his threes, at times looking like one of the better stretch bigs in the league.
Even so, the Bulls keep stacking the frontcourt with options. They added Claxton, re-signed Zach Collins on a two-year deal, and continue to load up on versatile wings.
That leaves Buzelis in a less certain spot than he seemed to have before. If Claxton starts, can Buzelis beat out a healthy Collins for regular minutes?
Can he keep logging time at the four with Wilson, Buzelis, and even Leonard Miller in the mix?
For now, it is fair to say his path is less straightforward than it once was. If he keeps producing like he did in 2025-26, he will eventually force his way into a role. But there is no guarantee he is a major part of the rotation right away, and if the season goes the way Chicago expects, his name could surface in trade talk before long.
In Other News...
Rob Dillingham Could Decide How Fast Caleb Wilson Gets Help
Rob Dillingham arrives with the kind of profile teams love to sort through in August: plenty of talent, a little mystery, and a clear path to either usefulness or regret. Chicago brought him in at last seasons trade deadline after Minnesota moved on from the former top-10 pick, and now the Bulls have a real decision to make about how quickly they want to let his game breathe. For a team trying to build around Caleb Wilson, any young guard who can grow into a steady presence matters.
The appeal is obvious enough. Dillingham has the skill set to make developmental minutes worth the wait, and Chicago has room to decide whether he can become part of the backcourt solution rather than just another flyer. What happens next may say as much about the Bulls timetable as it does about Dillinghams future, because if he takes to the role quickly, the help Wilson gets could arrive sooner than expected. [Read more 🡒]
Bulls May Have Let A Sneaky Guard Move Slip Away
Sylvain Franciscos offseason comments added a little more intrigue to the Bulls search for backcourt help. In an interview, the guard said Chicago was among the teams interested in signing him, which fits the kind of low-key roster homework teams do when they are still sorting out the edges of a roster. The Bulls still have one spot open, so any hint that a playable guard was on the radar is worth filing away.
The timing is what makes it sting a little more. Francisco is now set to return to Europe for the 2026-27 season with Panathinaikos, and the path that might have brought him stateside appears to have been complicated by a league-wide delay that pushed everything past his European exit clause. Whether Chicago was ever truly ready to move or simply kept exploring other options, it leaves the Bulls with one more unanswered question about how aggressive they were in trying to patch that final opening. [Read more 🡒]
Bulls Development Plan Just Sent A Clear Message With This Hire
The Bulls made a familiar-sounding development move by turning to a former player with a deep enough NBA background to understand what the organization wants out of its pipeline. Quincy Pondexter has been hired to run the Windy City Bulls, bringing nine years of pro experience and a past stint with Chicago as a player, along with coaching work at the NCAA level that gives him a different kind of credibility in the role.
It is also a notable handoff for a G League program that often serves as the first real proving ground for young talent and coaching staff alike. Pondexter replaces Billy Donovan III, and while the change signals a fresh direction for the affiliate, it also raises the usual questions around how the Bulls want that job to fit into the bigger developmental picture moving forward. [Read more 🡒]