'Change is happening': Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley discuss the Chicago Bulls plans

LAS VEGAS — Prior to the Chicago Bulls‘ second pre-season game, Executive VP of Basketball Operations Arturas Karnisovas and General Manager Marc Eversley met with a small group of traveling beat writers to address the changes in direction, the state and future direction of the team.

“Change is happening,” Karnisovas said. “We were telling the truth.”

Though those changes have primarily focused around young players with upside, the executives aren’t interested in scratching off lottery tickets. Instead, they’re focused on adding experienced players like Josh Giddey and Jalen Smith to help build the foundation and push things along.

“In terms of ‘youth movement’, per se, I would say that we had a lot of experienced young guys that are moving in the right direction,” Karnisovas said. “And I think the changes that are happening right now are going to help us to build for the future.”

Karnisovas and Eversley believed in the way the group was playing prior to the injuries, but it became clear to them sometime last season that they were going to need to change course.

“I think we saw it probably before it happened,” Karnisovas said. “Obviously, reaction from media and fans is when there’s a lack of results. And I understand that. It’s a result-driven business. It’s on us to figure it out.”

“Now, we’re kind of making these changes. You could argue with it too late or early. But that’s where we are right now.”

Those changes start with Alex Caruso and DeMar DeRozan, the two best players on last year’s team. Though it had become clear to the front office that changes were needed during last season, their commitment to winning with DeRozan was a factor in them staying the course.

So why wait?

“When we met with him (in 2021) and talked about the opportunity, we were committed to winning,” Eversley said. “And we wanted to win right away. And partly to your question about like, ‘did we wait too long?’ I think DeMar was almost central in that decision of, ‘no, give these guys one more chance’. Like we told him, we’re gonna give them an opportunity to win and he was a gigantic part of that reason why we did that.”

That’s why, ultimately, they parted directions with DeRozan and are in the process of exploring a new direction.

“You know, the pivot away from him, I would love if he was still a Chicago Bull right now,” Eversley continued. “But I think, one, doing right by the organization and letting him explore that opportunity to go somewhere else and try to win. We were not positioned well enough to bring him back in. One, trying to win for the organization and two, trying to help him chase that dream as well. So I think it’s a two-part thing. It’s not just exclusive to just letting him go.”

If the Bulls had been able to move off of Zach LaVine without taking back equal salary, there may have been a pathway to keeping DeRozan. Instead, his down year and injury hurt his image and his play. But he’s fully healthy now and they expect him to be back with the team for training camp.

“I think most of it (was) frustration for him as a competitor and as an athlete,” Karnisovas said. “Not being healthy and not being able to perform I think was very frustrating. And I think now he feels 100 percent.”

Attaching assets to move off of LaVine is a non-starter for a Bulls team that projects to take a step back next season. That said, they aren’t trying to be the worst team in the league to keep their top-10 protected pick going to San Antonio. It’s a factor, but the primary focus is building a young group that can be the foundation for the next great Bulls team. If they make the Play-In or Playoffs with this group, it will have been because of some of their young players taking a step forward.

Unlike the previous iteration of the team was sitting too long on the same roster without making major roster changes, this is going to be a work in progress. Whether that included LaVine and Nikola Vucevic in the long-term is yet to be determined, but for now, they’re focused on continual improvement of the young core they’re working with.

“We’re not going to make deals that are not going to make us better,” Karnisovas said. “We’re going to be patient with that. But I think we’re far away from a finished product now.”