The calendar has turned to September. You know what that means, right?! Our offseason outlook series is back for the third-straight year!
Hot Hot Hoops senior writer Matt Hanifan will provide his take on the offseasons of all 30 teams for the next 30 days! We will be going in alphabetical order, beginning with the Eastern Conference. Today, we will look at the Chicago Bulls’ summer!
Previous offseason outlooks:
Evaluating the Chicago Bulls’ 2026 offseason
Additions: Nic Claxton, Norman Powell
Subtractions: Mo Gueye, Nick Richards, Collin Sexton, Anfernee Simons, Guerschon Yabusele
Re-signed: Zach Collins
Draft: Caleb Wilson (No. 4 overall pick), Dailyn Swain (No. 15)
Hanifan’s outlook: The Bulls have been wedged in between a rock and a hard place for the last nine seasons, failing to finish with more than 46 wins, with their win total either repeating or declining each of the last five years.
Coming off a miserable 31-win season, the Bulls cleaned house. They parted ways with head coach Billy Donovan, and axed executives Marc Eversley and Arturas Karnisovas — who did way more harm than good in their respective Bulls tenures.
They hired former Atlanta Hawks executive Bryson Graham as the team’s executive VP and former Blazers interim head coach Tiago Splitter for the same position.
Chicago also netted the No. 4 overall pick, drafting North Carolina forward Caleb Wilson. Outside of his freakish physical profile, Wilson has the perfect competitive makeup to be an NBA star. He’s a franchise altering talent, and a player that Chicago should tailor every next move around.
Though I don’t think the Bulls did a good job of that this summer. They poached Norman Powell from Miami on a two-year deal, while also adding Nic Claxton from the Brooklyn Nets. Where Chicago went wrong, however, was with their asset accumulation — or lack thereof.
It entered the offseason with over $50 million in practical cap space and didn’t use any of it to add poor contracts laced with draft capital. The previous regime did an abhorrent job regarding the returns of Zach LaVine, Lonzo Ball, Nikola Vucevic and DeMar DeRozan. So asset accumulation has to be a goal for Graham and Co. in the future.
Grade: B- … Caleb Wilson rules
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Powell is on a cheap contract relative to his production and it’s effectively a one year/expiring contract with the team option, they could add assets by trading him at the deadline which I’m guessing would also be his preferred outcome.