{"id":752806,"date":"2026-06-05T03:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T03:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/752806\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T03:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T03:51:13","slug":"central-notes-bulls-pacers-cavaliers-offseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/752806\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Notes: Bulls, Pacers, Cavaliers’ Offseason"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bulls hosted a pre-draft workout on Tuesday featuring Keaton Wagler<\/a> (Illinois), Kingston Flemings<\/a> (Houston), Nate Ament<\/a> (Tennessee) and Morez Johnson<\/a> (Michigan), league sources tell Kevin O\u2019Connor of Yahoo Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chicago currently controls the fourth, 15th, 38th and 56th picks in this year\u2019s draft, which will take place on June 23 and June 24. Wagler, Flemings and Ament are all projected lottery picks, while Johnson has been moving up draft boards and could go in the top 14 as well.<\/p>\n

Since none of those prospects are expected to go in the top four, rival teams are curious whether the Bulls might be open to moving down from No. 4 or possibly move up from No. 15 to add a second lottery pick, O\u2019Connor writes.<\/p>\n

We have more from around the Central:<\/p>\n

Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times<\/a> examines the forwards who are under currently under contract with the Bulls, including the impending free agents, writing that Leonard Miller<\/a> deserves to have his $2.4MM team option exercised after he flashed some intriguing tools down the stretch last season. While Chicago would probably be happy to part Patrick Williams<\/a>, the $54MM he\u2019s owed over the next three seasons makes his contact \u201cunmovable,\u201d in Cowley\u2019s view.
\nThe Pacers were originally planning to host Purdue point guard Braden Smith<\/a> and California forward Chris Bell<\/a> as part of Friday\u2019s group workout<\/a>, but they will be replaced by UMBC guard DJ Armstrong<\/a> and Kansas guard Tre White<\/a>, the team announced (via Twitter<\/a>). No reason for the change was given. The Pacers don\u2019t currently control a draft pick, though it\u2019s possible the team could acquire one (or more). Smith, an Indiana native, was a consensus All-America selection each of the past two seasons and is ranked No. 38 on ESPN\u2019s big board<\/a>.
\nThe Cavaliers have some difficult decisions to make this summer after a fairly disappointing 2025\/26 campaign, Yossi Gozlan of Third Apron<\/a> (Substack link) writes in his offseason preview. Cleveland was the only team to finish over the second tax apron in \u201925\/26, Gozlan observes, which means the team\u2019s 2033 first-round pick will be \u201cfrozen\u201d (unable to be traded) for multiple seasons. Moving below the second apron figures to be a high priority for the Cavaliers, likely with the assistance of a lower cap hit for James Harden<\/a>, Gozlan adds. Operating over the first but under the second apron would allow Cleveland to aggregate salaries in trades, among other eased restrictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bulls hosted a pre-draft workout on Tuesday featuring Keaton Wagler (Illinois), Kingston Flemings (Houston), Nate Ament (Tennessee)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":752807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3774],"tags":[7,2456,70800,92462,113,126,3866,560,42824,53476,14489,15324,18339,6,114,6140,18925],"class_list":["post-752806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indiana-pacers","tag-basketball","tag-braden-smith","tag-chris-bell","tag-dj-armstrong","tag-indiana","tag-indiana-pacers","tag-indianapacers","tag-james-harden","tag-keaton-wagler","tag-kingston-flemings","tag-leonard-miller","tag-morez-johnson","tag-nate-ament","tag-nba","tag-pacers","tag-patrick-williams","tag-tre-white"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116695471445747164","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752806","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=752806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}