{"id":612861,"date":"2026-02-20T03:25:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T03:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/612861\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T03:25:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T03:25:21","slug":"the-chicago-bulls-are-giving-rob-dillingham-a-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/612861\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chicago Bulls are giving Rob Dillingham a chance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than two years after the Minnesota Timberwolves drafted Rob Dillingham<\/a> with the eighth overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, the franchise effectively gave up on him. <\/p>\n

That can happen \u2014 although usually not all that often \u2014 when a project player makes the move to a team trying to win a championship. Combine that with the rumored rift between Dillingham and his head coach, Chris Finch, and it resulted in the electric Kentucky alum barely receiving 10 minutes per game across his 1.5 seasons in Minneapolis. <\/p>\n

The hope was that he\u2019d be the secondary ball handler behind star guard Anthony Edwards. But the Timberwolves, now looking to make their third straight Western Conference Finals, quickly made it clear throughout the season that Dillingham was not part of the immediate plans to help them do that. He shot 33.3 percent from the field in 9.3 minutes per outing during 35 appearances for the Wolves this season, picking up a handful of DNP-CDs along the way.<\/p>\n

So the Minnesota front office elected to ship out the 6-foot-2 guard<\/a> ahead of the trade deadline earlier this month. Dillingham was sent to the Chicago Bulls in a deal headlined by Ayo Dosunmu and several second-round picks. That\u2019s far from the expected return for a 21-year-old lottery pick with clear talent. Keep in mind that Minnesota traded multiple future first-round picks to scoop up Dillingham in 2024. Sending him away 16 months later was a startling vote of little confidence.<\/p>\n

But Chicago is going to give him a real opportunity to make the Timberwolves look foolish. That started right before the All-Star break. In Dillingham\u2019s first three games with the Bulls, he averaged 11 points, four assists, 3.7 rebounds, and two steals in 24.7 minutes while shooting 44.8 percent from the field. Chicago lost all three games, but this is a team sitting in 11th place in the Eastern Conference with no clear intentions to make a playoff run. <\/p>\n

The Bulls\u2019 front office and head coach Billy Donovan, at least early on, intend to see what they have in Dillingham as a possible long-term piece. In Chicago, he\u2019ll be able to learn through his mistakes, which was not the case in Minnesota. He played a career-high 30 minutes against the Celtics on Feb. 11 and dropped a season-high 16 points in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust two different styles of offense \u2014 not as much holding the ball [with the Bulls],\u201d Dillingham said of the difference between Finch and Donovan, per the Chicago Sun Times<\/a>. \u201cJust, like, get off the ball. And, really, in Minnesota, it was, like, every possession.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, every possession matters here, but you\u2019re going to mess up. Over there, not everyone could mess up and keep playing. So [it was] just the opportunity and the pace of the game, just the playing styles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chicago will have no problems letting Dillingham work on the ball the rest of the season, especially with a couple of key guards (Josh Giddey and Tre Jones) dealing with minor injuries right now. But if he wants to be included as a piece for the future, he\u2019ll need to showcase the same level of production he did at Kentucky. His next opportunity to do so will be Thursday at 8:00 p.m. ET against the Raptors. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than two years after the Minnesota Timberwolves drafted Rob Dillingham with the eighth overall pick in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,6,29530],"class_list":{"0":"post-612861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bulls","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bulls","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-bulls","12":"tag-chicagobulls","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-robert-dillingham-23-overtime-elite"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116100826912757928","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612861","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=612861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}