The familiarity that Chicago Bulls lead front-office executive Bryson Graham has with the Atlanta Hawks should breed…COLLABORATION!

For the uninitiated, Graham’s NBA employer for the 2025-26 NBA offseason was the Atlanta Hawks, who hired him during the 2025 NBA offseason as senior vice president of basketball operations.

Contrasting franchise situations are obvious when you compare the Bulls and Hawks heading into the 2026-27 NBA season, with the Hawks expected to continue the playoff-caliber performance they displayed during the 2025-26 NBA season, while the Bulls are clearly on the ground level of a full-scale roster rebuild.

Graham’s collaboration opportunity to realize in trade conversations with the Hawks should zero in on guard Lugentz Dort, who the Hawks acquired via trade during the 2026 NBA offseason.  Dort’s own familiarity dynamics would vault to the forefront of the Bulls roster if acquired by Graham, as Dort was teammates with Bulls guard Josh Giddey for three seasons with the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Lu Dort Bulls roster logic

Giddey has three seasons left on his contract as of the 2026-27 NBA season.  While Giddey is still playing on a relatively reasonable annual contract price tag of $25 million per year, the Bulls need to figure out sooner rather than later who their long-term starting backcourt will be to presumably support the continued growth of their wing tandem of Caleb Wilson and Matas Buzelis.

Dort is extension-eligible and is also playing the 2026-27 NBA season on a $17.7 million expiring contract.  

In a scenario in which the Bulls don’t see any trade offers for guard Noman Powell that would return desirable draft capital, perhaps the Hawks could be motivated to swap Dort for Powell to optimize their veteran guard minutes towards a viable three-point shooting threat, while Dort would certainly give the Bulls a legitimate point-of-attack defender who would be able to handle a variety of positional assignments as a defender.

Backcourt reunion risks for the Bulls

Pairing Dort with Giddey as a starting Bulls backcourt would be a basketball experiment to validate, as opposed to a basketball solution that is guaranteed to work.  Both Giddey and Dort are generally treated as non-shooters by opposing defenses, despite the strides both players have made in recent seasons as three-point shooters.

In Giddey’s two seasons playing for the Bulls, he has shot 37.1% on 4.5 three-point attempts per game. Meanwhile, Dort’s three-point shooting demonstrated a noticeable peak between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 NBA seasons, in which he shot 40.3% on 5.4 three-point attempts per game, according to Basketball Reference.

There’s no reward without risk

For a young roster in desperate need of a defensive identity, there’s value in taking the risk of fielding a flawed shooting backcourt when one of the guards will provide high-level on-ball defense, while the other guard’s underappreciated defensive contribution is his defensive rebounding.

Ideas on what Tiago Splitter could game plan to reduce some of the offensive concerns of a Giddey-Dort backcourt might include putting Giddey into inverted ball-screen actions to put him in position to make short-roll passing reads.  Or maybe it could be turning Dort into the designated Iverson cutter in Splitter’s offense to either create space or find open spots for shot attempts.

Overall, pairing Giddey with Dort will either dramatically improve the Bulls’ defense or it will give Graham a frame of reference to decide if Giddey is a long-term piece to keep on his Bulls roster.

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