The Bulls have spent years trying to put distance between themselves and the mistakes of the past, but Patrick Williams remains right there in the middle of the mess. Chicago used the No. 4 pick on Williams in the 2020 NBA Draft, then doubled down with a four-year, $80 million extension. Neither move has aged well.
Now there’s another layer to the story. On a recent episode of The Hoop Collective, it was revealed that Artūras Karnišovas wanted Williams at No. 4, even though other voices in the Bulls’ front office were pushing for Tyrese Haliburton.
According to Tim MacMahon of The Hoop Collective, some people in Chicago’s draft room wanted Haliburton badly, and one person had him rated all the way up at No. 1.
"There was people in the Bulls' front office at the time who were saying that Tyrese Haliburton was the guy. There was somebody in the Bulls' front office at the time who had Tyrese Haliburton as the No. 1 pick in the draft.
Their bad general manager at the time, who somehow lasted in that job for many years, screwed that up. Screwed a bunch of things up."
Brian Windhorst added: "He made it in the job enough years to get Patrick Williams an $80 million extension." MacMahon quipped: "Another shot at the No. 4 pick."
That miss stings for obvious reasons. Haliburton has become a two-time All-NBA selection and a two-time All-Star. He led the league in assists in 2023-24 and helped the Indiana Pacers get to the 2025 NBA Finals and the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals.
Chicago, meanwhile, has not been to the NBA Finals since 1998 and hasn’t reached the Conference Finals since 2011.
Williams has not given the Bulls much reason to feel better about the pick, either. His minutes have dropped in each of the past three seasons, and that trend hit a low point in 2025-26, when he played only 20.5 minutes per game and shot under 40 percent from the field. That was the second straight season he finished below that mark.
The contract only makes the situation tougher. Williams still has three years and $54 million left, a number that looks awfully heavy for a player performing at this level.
And there’s one more twist that makes the Haliburton revelation even uglier: Lonzo Ball.
A year after passing on Haliburton, the Bulls worked a sign-and-trade to bring in Ball on a four-year, $85 million deal. Ball was excellent when healthy, but he played only 70 games across four seasons in Chicago. Over the first three years of those contracts, he also made more than $16 million more per season than Haliburton.
The logic seems clear enough. Karnišovas appears to have tried to patch over the Haliburton miss by bringing in a taller, similarly skilled point guard with playmaking and shooting ability.
Ball peaked at 42.3 percent from three, which fit the profile. But the move didn’t solve the problem.
Ball missed two full seasons and played just 35 games in each of the other two. Williams never turned into the difference-maker Chicago hoped for, and after a season in which his role shrank and his efficiency still lagged below the league standard, the Bulls are left with another expensive reminder of the draft decision that got away.
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Leonard Miller has made that balancing act more complicated. The preseason has already shown enough of Miller to draw praise from Splitter, and enough impact to suggest he may have played his way into a meaningful role once the games start to count. For a team still trying to define the edges of its rotation, that kind of emergence can change the conversation quickly. [Read more 🡒]