What is this Chicago Bulls season all about?

Chicago Bulls Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Arturas Karnisovas vowed to make changes after failing to making the Playoffs through the Play-In for the second consecutive season.

While he wasn’t able to completely overhaul the roster around young players, he has initiated the process.

“This is the start of reshaping our roster, our strategy and how we move forward. This isn’t finished product, and we’re confident in the adjustments we made and the direction we’re heading as we enter training camp,” said Karnisovas in his opening remarks.

“This evolution is fluid, but we’re focused on building a team that plays faster is more versatile,” he continued. “Our emphasis is on playing a fast paced, tough and energetic style that will showcase the talent we’ve invested in, particularly our youth, while still retaining key veteran leadership to guide them. This season marks a fresh chapter.”

DeMar DeRozan, Alex Caruso and Andre Drummond — the Bulls top three players in Estimated Plus-Minus (EPM) last season, excluding Javonte Green and Zach LaVine — are out. While LaVine and Nikola Vucevic remain, this does not, on paper, look like a roster that can compete for the playoffs this season.

The roster has been re-oriented around the young players. And yet, winning is still the priority, seemingly over player development.

“We’re here to win,” Karnisovas said. “Developing our players is crucial, but we won’t sacrifice the integrity of the game just for the sake of development.”

There’s nothing wrong with building a winning mindset, developing winning habits and establishing a winning culture on which to build the next great Bulls team. That’s what they should be doing.

Whether they want to or not, the Bulls are not constructed to win many games this year. There’s talent on the roster to be sure, and it’s possible things click more than where the Las Vegas lines are projecting them (the current win total by most sportsbooks is 27.5).

On the one hand, the Bulls seem to understand they need to take a step back in order to eventually take two steps forward, even if they won’t outwardly admit it.

On the other, it would be a shame to see the Bulls let their desire to remain competitive supplant what’s best for the longer term health of the organization.

If they want to eventually be able to compete for a championship, history says they’ll need a superstar player to do so. The ways to do that are through the draft, trades and free agency. So as the Bulls enter a season in which they owe their first round draft pick to the San Antonio Spurs unless it falls within the top-10, one might expect keeping the draft pick, and improving the likelihood of it becoming the first-overall pick to be the most important.

“This is not our focus,” Karnisovas said of the protected draft pick. “The focus going into season is basically to define our style of play and to find our identity. What is our identity with this group? And the last thing that I’m trying to think about is basically, how do we have a home court advantage playing in this building? Last year we had a losing record. So those kind of things that I’m trying to focus on, instead of what’s going to happen after the season.”

Even if it was their plan, it’s understandable why the Bulls wouldn’t want to advertise to their fans, players and the rest of the basketball world that they intend to tank.

But clearly a tank job is not in the cards. The specifics of that plan, however, remain a mystery.

“The concrete steps have started to change,” Karnisovas said when asked what steps he’s taking to get the team towards a window for contention. “And going into the season right now we have so many questions in training camp. How is this group going to work together? And constantly being open to make adjustments, to make changes. And we’re in the stage that we have to find out a lot of things about this group.”

These concepts, winning now vs. developing the young players and keeping the draft pick, seem to be fundamentally opposing forces. Threading the needle in this way is a challenge few teams have been able to pull off.

Let’s see if the Bulls can be the exception to that rule.

Injury Updates

Lonzo Ball

By the time the Bulls play their first preseason game on October 8, it will have been 998 days since Lonzo Ball‘s last NBA game.

Three knee surgeries, including a cartilage transplant, later, he is ready to get back out there for opening night.

“That’s the goal,” Ball said. “Obviously, we can’t really tell the future, but that’s the plan I’m on. I think I’ll be ready for the first game for sure.”

The Bulls are wisely taking Ball’s return to play conservatively. No player has come back from this type of procedure. The Bulls will monitor Ball closely and adjust the plan as they gather information on how he performs in camp.

“It’s going to be an ongoing process obviously,” Ball said. “This is something that no one has really come back from, so I’ll be the first. But we had a couple conversations so far. Obviously, back-to-backs are off the table. Definitely, there will be a minutes restriction. We don’t have a set number yet but there will be one. But it’s going to be constant communication throughout the year because this is sort of a new project, if you will.”

Ball’s return to play would be one of the feel-good stories in the NBA this season. Hopefully he is able to get back to some semblance of the electric, dynamic playmaker he was for the Bulls in 2021-22.

Patrick Williams

Following his foot surgery for a bone edema in early March, Patrick Williams, the $90 million man confirmed to a small group of reporters in July at Las Vegas Summer league that he was continuing the rehab process 4.5 months into his 4-6 month recovery timeline.

There’s been a quiet front since then, until The Athletic’s Darnell Mayberry reported that Williams experienced a setback during the team’s minicamp in Miami.

When asked today whether Williams was 100% healthy and ready to go for training camp, Karnisovas wouldn’t quite admit that Williams was fully healthy, but did say he was ready to go.

“He’s ready to go,” Karnisovas said. “He’s been playing five-on-five again, you know, we’ll use his training camp to, you know, to bring him up. You know, slowly. We haven’t seen him again play in the game quite some time. So he’s gonna, you know, he’s gonna be in drills, he’s gonna be in contact. He’s going to play five on five, and we’ll see what he’s going to play.”

The lack of transparency surrounding this injury makes it difficult to know for certain whether he will be ready. Training camp starts Tuesday afternoon, we will know more then.

Josh Giddey

Apparently, Josh Giddey ruptured his ATFL ligament during the final play of his Olympic quarterfinal game with Team Australia against Serbia.

“I ruptured my ATFL,” Giddey admitted, unprompted, to reporters at Media Day. “We thought it was just a regular ankle at the at the time, but flew back to Melbourne, got scans, and, you know, they confirmed that.”

Reporters spoke to Giddey for the first time after he was acquired by the Bulls prior to the Olympics in Paris, France.

“It’s probably at a point where, if it was a playoff game, I’d be out there playing,” he continued. “But because we’re in the off season, this isn’t something you want to rush. We just want to get it 100% right.”

It sounds like the injury isn’t projected to be a long-term issue, but not the surprise news you want to hear less than 24 hours before training camp.

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