It took Chicago a long time to get here, but the Bulls finally seem to have a young centerpiece in Caleb Wilson. For years, that wasn’t the case. The franchise drifted without much real direction, stuck in the middle and never quite making the kind of reset that could have stocked the cupboard with high-upside talent.
Now, Wilson is in place, and Matas Buzelis is there too. Those two give the Bulls something they’ve lacked for a while: a young foundation to build around.
Getting to this point, though, came with a lot of self-inflicted damage. The Bulls made a series of moves that left them thinner, older, and less flexible than they needed to be. Here are five of the biggest missteps that helped set the stage for the Caleb Wilson era.
The first major swing came with the Nikola Vucevic trade. Chicago wanted out of its years of empty rebuilding and made the move to bring him in, but sending out multiple first-round picks for Vucevic ended up costing them badly.
Those lost picks mattered even more once the team settled into a core of Vucevic, Zach LaVine, and DeMar DeRozan. In a league where draft capital is everything, that was a steep price.
Then came the Patrick Williams pick, which has aged terribly. Williams has not delivered for the Bulls, and the outlook around him has only gotten worse.
What makes it sting even more is who was still on the board. Deni Avdija went five picks later, and Tyrese Haliburton was taken at No.
- Chicago took Williams at No.
- Four.
That’s a hard one to defend.
The Bulls made that mistake even heavier when they doubled down with the Patrick Williams extension. Drafting the wrong player is one thing.
Paying him before he’s proven he belongs is another. Two summers ago, Chicago gave Williams a five-year, $90 million deal, which works out to $18 million per season.
For a player who still hasn’t matched the expectations that came with his draft slot, that’s a rough contract.
Alex Caruso’s exit was another move that left something on the table. The Bulls did need to trade him, and they did get some value back.
But the return was limited to Josh Giddey and no picks, and that wasn’t enough. Giddey has been solid in Chicago, but he isn’t the kind of player you naturally hand the keys to.
With his shooting and defense limitations, the Bulls probably would have been better served trying to squeeze a first-round pick or two out of that deal.
The Coby White trade came after the Bulls had already waited too long. White was useful in Chicago, and there was a window where the team could have tried to build around him a bit.
Instead, they held on, then moved him later than they should have. And when they finally did, the return was underwhelming: second-rounders and Collin Sexton, who won’t be part of the team going forward.
Chicago likely could have gotten a first-round pick a year or two earlier.
Those are the kinds of decisions that add up. And they help explain how the Bulls ended up needing Caleb Wilson to be the kind of young talent they’d been missing for so long.
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For the Bulls, the appeal is obvious: Mathurin is the kind of young, productive wing talent that can change the shape of a roster, and any uncertainty around his next landing spot keeps Chicagos front office on alert. The situation is still fluid, though, with Milwaukee now part of the discussion and trade chatter beginning to surface around what a deal could look like if the market moves in that direction. [Read more 🡒]