CHICAGO \u2014 The Chicago Bulls clearly have a type.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s OK. Everyone has their preferences. And for the current Bulls front office, that prototype is crystal clear \u2014 gangly, teenage wings who offer the potential of versatile playmaking in a raw, unproven package.<\/p>\n
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So when Noa Essengue\u2019s name was called Wednesday night as the No. 12 pick in the NBA draft, it was hard for the Bulls to shake the sighs from their own fan base: Here we go again.<\/p>\n
Repetition is a strange thing in the draft process. Roster restrictions don\u2019t allow enough flexibility for teams to overstock at a given position. And development is considered a yearslong process \u2014 just because a draft pick didn\u2019t hit as a rookie doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s a lost cause. For all of these reasons, teams typically use a varied approach to address different positional needs each year.<\/p>\n
Not the Bulls. Wednesday marked the third time in the last four drafts that the Bulls used a first-round pick on an oversized wing. And the front office\u2019s obsession with this specific style of player offers more questions than answers about the trajectory of the team\u2019s alleged attempt to build around a young core.<\/p>\n
Essengue is exciting in his own right. He\u2019s a great dunker. He\u2019s incisive in the open court. His defensive instincts show considerable promise. He\u2019s athletic enough to go toe to toe with larger forwards, albeit not big enough to be bruising. Sure, his shot needs work and his footwork is a bit raw, but he doesn\u2019t turn 19 until December. The Bulls have plenty of time to nurture Essengue through every awkward stage of development.<\/p>\n
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This line of logic would be somewhat comforting if it weren\u2019t so familiar. The Bulls made an almost identical pitch last year when summing up the qualities that informed their selection of then-19-year-old Matas Buzelis with the No. 11 pick.<\/p>\n
General manager Marc Eversley didn\u2019t shy away from those similarities on draft night. He offered up his own comparisons between Buzelis and Essengue, noting their shared versatility as wing defenders. No, they\u2019re not carbon copies. Buzelis is a better ballhandler. Essengue is more of an end-to-end threat in transition. But the buzzwords used to describe both prospects \u2014 defensive versatility, length on the wing \u2014 were an echo.<\/p>\n
And Buzelis wasn\u2019t the first of his kind. Those were the same traits the Bulls were seeking when they traded into the second round to grab Julian Phillips in 2023 and when they added Dalen Terry with the No. 18 pick in 2022 \u2014 and even when they bet on Patrick Williams with the No. 4 pick in 2020. Ayo Dosunmu, drafted in the second round in 2021, is the anomaly in this pattern, a lone guard in a sea of toolsy wings.<\/p>\n
There is, I guess, some validity to the assumption that if the Bulls keep picking this exact type of player year after year, eventually one might pan out to become a bona fide star. In fact, the Bulls already were hopeful they pulled that winning lottery ticket last year when they landed Buzelis, who showed flashes in the second half of a second-team All-Rookie season of potential that could germinate into something greater.<\/p>\n
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But how long will the Bulls keep taking swings on the same position before they turn their focus to another need? And how will that work on the court in the meantime?<\/p>\n
As the front office prepares for the first year of a rebuilding \u2014 or, at least, retooling \u2014 process, this team needs more than just one well-stocked position.<\/p>\n
That starts with a center. As versatile as Essengue (and Buzelis and Phillips and Terry and Williams) may be, he can reasonably slide down only to guard the four at his current weight and strength. And veteran Nikola Vu\u010devi\u0107 is on his way out as the Bulls proactively shop their starting center ahead of the final year of his contract.<\/p>\n
The Bulls missed out on one top center option in the draft when Khaman Maluach went to the Phoenix Suns at No. 10, but they also passed on prospects such as Derik Queen and Thomas Sorber. Now they\u2019re left to scour the free-agent market for replacement options.<\/p>\n
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None of this should be read as a knock against Essengue. He was arguably the best player available when the Bulls picked at No. 12. If he can improve his 3-point shot \u2014 an area of player development the Bulls coaching staff has been able to deliver with regularity \u2014 Essengue offers more upside than anything else.<\/p>\n
The Bulls are certainly not competitive enough to pass up on that good of a prospect simply because of positional needs. This is not a team that\u2019s one acquisition, or even two or three, from making a deep playoff run, even in the battered Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
And the Bulls don\u2019t need to live and die by their current personnel \u2014 again, they\u2019re simply not good enough to do that. The fact a player like Terry or Williams is still on the books shouldn\u2019t dissuade the front office from selecting a more talented player in the same role who they believe will blossom into a more consistent contributor.<\/p>\n
But repetition can\u2019t be the only recipe. And the Bulls can\u2019t build a team on wings alone. It\u2019s time for something new \u2014 starting on the trade market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 The Chicago Bulls clearly have a type. That\u2019s OK. Everyone has their preferences. And for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[4102,7,920,919,329,3824,15697,803,3225,7505,958,973,6,2282,6140,472,954],"class_list":{"0":"post-130547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bulls","8":"tag-ayo-dosunmu","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-bulls","11":"tag-chicago","12":"tag-chicago-bulls","13":"tag-chicagobulls","14":"tag-dalen-terry","15":"tag-derik-queen","16":"tag-front-office","17":"tag-julian-phillips","18":"tag-khaman-maluach","19":"tag-matas-buzelis","20":"tag-nba","21":"tag-noa-essengue","22":"tag-patrick-williams","23":"tag-phoenix-suns","24":"tag-thomas-sorber"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114758894601686559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}