In late March 2021, first-year Bulls executive Artūras Karnišovas made the second big move of his tenure — the first being hiring Billy Donovan as coach — when he traded third-year center Wendell Carter Jr., Otto Porter Jr. and two first-round draft picks to the Orlando Magic for center Nikola Vučević, who had just made his second All-Star team.
“Usually you don’t get too many chances at All-Star-level players,” Karnišovas said at the time, “and we were fortunate to get it done.”
He added: “We’re serious here about winning. We’re serious about the culture of being very competitive. And any opportunity we get to make this team better, we will.”
He sold me. He sold everyone. And now we’re checking our pockets, wondering how we were so fleeced.
Nearly six years and just one winning season later, Karnišovas traded Vučević (the deal wasn’t yet official as of this writing) to the Boston Celtics as part of a busy few days of wheeling and dealing that saw the Bulls acquire three players (Anfernee Simons for Vooch, and Jaden Ivey and Mike Conley Jr. for Kevin Huerter) and some second-round picks, while passing around the contract of Dario Šarić.
By the time you read this, Karnišovas might have done some more wheeling and/or dealing. The results will surely underwhelm.
Trades aren’t official, but Coby White talked Vuc/deadline mayhem
“He’s been a guy that was a believer in me since Day 1. Obviously gon miss him a lot. … tough day, but I guess it’s part of the business so we supposed to be robots about it.
“Obviously I want to be here. I… pic.twitter.com/Hw7dmZYeKB
— Joel Lorenzi (@JoelXLorenzi) February 4, 2026
In looking back at the Vučević trade, I had forgotten that on the same day this deal was consummated, the White Sox, Jerry Reinsdorf’s other, more favored team, announced that left fielder Eloy Jiménez had injured his pectoral muscle on an ill-timed attempt at catching a fly ball in a spring training game. It was a bigger story than the trade, given the stakes involved. Jiménez would return, and the White Sox would make the playoffs that season, but instead of opening a window of contention, everything fell apart in dramatic fashion. Jiménez is long gone, and so is every other uniformed person on that Sox team that had high hopes and a precipitous decline.
Karnišovas’ boasts about quickly improving the team were soon realized, as he and general manager Marc Eversley attacked free agency that summer and built a competitive team that lasted half a season before things (and Lonzo Ball) broke down. The Bulls have been an also-ran franchise ever since, not bad enough to be interesting and not good enough to be relevant.
Only two players from Vučević’s first season are still around. Coby White is on deck to be traded, and Patrick Williams’ bad contract extension (Karnišovas’ worst move) makes him all but untouchable. Alex Caruso, DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Ball are all gone. But Donovan is still here, and so is the front office.
Five years is a long time. And both the Bulls and White Sox are in new rebuilds with uncertain futures.
Vučević got his wish to play for a team with real postseason hopes in the Celtics. Vooch, who got a three-year, $60 million extension after the 2023 season, played in 378 regular-season games for the Bulls, and they went 185-193 in those games. He played in five postseason games for Chicago and won one. He has played 1,020 games in his career but only 16 playoff games, and only three of those were wins. (He also competed in five Play-In Tournament games for the Bulls, which don’t officially count.)
The people who worked with Vučević, on and off the court, will surely miss him, but it’s hard to wrangle up much emotion at the end of his time here or at the end of this Bulls run.
We’re just a couple of weeks past Derrick Rose’s number retirement ceremony, which also served as a reunion for different teams from that era. Those Bulls, particularly those coached by Tom Thibodeau, never won a title, obviously, but they were loved in the city for being a consistent winner that played hard. They imbued Chicago with a positive spirit and created a lasting legacy. That’s why Joakim Noah is as popular as an ’85 Bear. It’s why Taj Gibson gets a standing ovation at the United Center. It’s why Rose himself got MVP chants every time he returned here, even when he was playing mop-up minutes at the end of his career. Those teams made you feel something.
A night that will be remembered forever!
Relive some of the best moments from Derrick Rose’s Jersey Retirement in Chicago last night 🌹🥹 pic.twitter.com/NTd9Colra6
— NBA (@NBA) January 25, 2026
Meanwhile, the Bulls of the “Vooch Era” have just been kind of … there. Missing them would be like yearning for a Panera Bread near your house that closed down. It was fine, but not good. These Chicago teams were like a Caesar salad and a bowl of soup. They kept you from starving, but you wouldn’t recommend them to your friends.
As the Bulls embark on another rebuild, it’s hard to have any faith in the current regime. They have added some interesting players, like Matas Buzelis and Josh Giddey, and last year’s first-round pick, Noa Essengue, is a question mark after a season-ending injury. Simons is an unrestricted free agent after the season, and Ivey is a restricted one. But the front office and coaching staff have yet to prove they can build a winner.
In other franchises, Karnišovas would’ve been fired after his rebuild failed. His popularity among Bulls fans is currently at sub-Gar Forman levels, and he’s not exactly feared by his peers. But the only opinions on his tenure that matter belong to the Reinsdorfs, and they’ve already rewarded the front office and Donovan with contract extensions. The standards at the United Center are about as high as 5-foot-8 guard Yuki Kawamura.
In the 10 full seasons since Jerry Reinsdorf signed off on firing Thibodeau, the Bulls finished in ninth, eighth, 13th, 13th, 11th, 11th, sixth, 10th, ninth and ninth place in the Eastern Conference. In that span, they had two winning seasons and made the playoffs twice, and lost in the first round both times. They are currently below .500 and in ninth place. With these trades and what might come, they actually might not make the Play-In Tournament for the fourth straight season. Charlotte and Atlanta are hot on their heels, and the Bulls have almost no healthy big men on their roster.
I’d say the best thing would be for the team to bottom out and hope for the best in the lottery, but we’ve seen how that goes too. Luck isn’t a plan, but I guess it still might be the only franchise’s only hope.
Cross your fingers, I suppose. You can uncross them to wave farewell to Nikola Vučević, a nice guy and a solid pro, and this era of Bulls basketball, which was neither memorable nor successful. We’d miss you dearly if there was anything tangible to really miss.