\u201cTonight, Derrick is going to talk about flowers for 25 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karni\u0161ovas is an easy punching bag in this town. But give him some credit. He has been criticized in the past for trade-deadline inaction, but this time, he was a wheeling-and-dealing dervish. In the span of a few days, he traded away Nikola Vu\u010devi\u0107, Ayo Dosunmu, Coby White, Kevin Huerter, Dalen Terry and Julian Phillips, waived Jevon Carter, and acquired and redirected the contracts of Dario Saric, Mike Conley Jr. and Ousmane Dieng.<\/p>\n
In return, the Bulls added Simons, Ivey and fellow guards Collin Sexton and Rob Dillingham, along with forwards Leonard Miller, Nick Richards and Yabusele. He mostly moved around guys with expiring contracts for other guys with expiring contracts, but he also added nine second-round picks. How many first-rounders did he get? Don\u2019t ask.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/USATSI_28165566-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n The Bulls will give Anfernee Simons, left, a long look the rest of the season. (Dan Hamilton \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
If Bears general manager Ryan Poles acquired nine second-round picks, they\u2019d throw him a parade down Michigan Avenue. But when Karni\u0161ovas does it, everyone wants to make fun of him. That\u2019s life in a big market.<\/p>\n
While the activity was necessary, the achievement wasn\u2019t anything to brag about. But what could you expect? The reason the Bulls are in this situation is the same reason Karni\u0161ovas came up light in the trade returns: He\u2019s just not that good at his job.<\/p>\n
Thankfully for him, you don\u2019t need to be proficient at your job to keep it when you work for a Jerry Reinsdorf-owned team. The standards are a bit lower. Then again, a few years ago, Reinsdorf\u2019s baseball front office was mercifully fired weeks after they executed a sell-off at the trade deadline. So you never know.<\/p>\n
For now, Karni\u0161ovas is in charge and he has big plans for the present.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting right now, I think our pro group is going to focus on watching games with very specific lists of players that we\u2019re going to target during free agency,\u201d he said. \u201cAlso, we\u2019re going to watch a lot of college games, international games, and we\u2019re going to focus on the draft and constantly try to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, they\u2019re going to watch a lot of basketball games. Got it.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Karni\u0161ovas outlined what the team\u2019s three goals were going into the deadline.<\/p>\n
The first was admitting the team isn\u2019t very good, and that\u2019s actually a bad thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Play-In is not our goal, a championship is,\u201d he said. \u201cWe know where we are in the standings, and we\u2019re not satisfied with being in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second was staying focused on building around the remaining core players. Karni\u0161ovas named five of them, but there are really just two on the active roster: Josh Giddey and Matas Buzelis. Rookie Noa Essengue is hurt and is a very lanky question mark until proven otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are intentional about surrounding these core pieces with players who have real NBA experience, along with upcoming draft picks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And the third was keeping the books clean going into free agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve maintained sustained flexibility heading into the offseason,\u201d he said. \u201cThat gives us real options, whether that\u2019s free agency, trades, the draft or continuing investment in development.\u201d<\/p>\n
None of this was very impressive, but it\u2019s a start. Where will it lead? Probably right back here.<\/p>\n
The Bulls have had one winning season in Karni\u0161ovas\u2019 six in charge, and in that outlier campaign, he failed to supplement the team when they needed it. His inert leadership style directly influenced the next few years of mediocrity that got the organization to where it is now. Karni\u0161ovas won\u2019t call it a rebuild, but that\u2019s what it is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still staying away from that word,\u201d he said. \u201cI just would call it a stage that we are in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will this team move to a bigger, better stage soon? It\u2019s not impossible if they get some lottery luck. Buzelis looks like a solid NBA player, if not a superstar, and Giddey has continued to progress in his second season with the club. I like the additions of Simons, who is an unrestricted free agent, and Ivey, who is a restricted one. I liked White and Dosunmu too. But then again, they didn\u2019t win much while they were here. No one did.<\/p>\n
This team needed a full reset, including a new front office, coaching staff and ownership. Instead, it just got a reshuffled roster and promises of brighter days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago Bulls return home Saturday to play the Denver Nuggets, and you get the feeling Nikola Joki\u0107…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,6,2294],"class_list":["post-586580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bulls","tag-basketball","tag-bulls","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-chicagobulls","tag-nba","tag-opinion"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116024765188309477","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586580","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=586580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}