IN AUGUST 2024, more than a month before the start of training camp, a group of Chicago Bulls players gathered in Miami for a player-driven minicamp.
For years the Bulls had talked internally about their desire to play a different style of offense, and that summer they finally began making changes to their roster to do so. They had already moved on from DeMar DeRozan, who was traded to Sacramento earlier that summer.
Two weeks before that, in a sign of the changing priorities within the team’s front office, the Bulls traded defensive stalwart Alex Caruso to the Oklahoma City Thunder for then-21-year-old guard Josh Giddey.
It was Giddey, the team believed, who could be the engine of a new era of Bulls basketball — faster, more egalitarian.
Coach Billy Donovan knew it was going to take a dramatic shift in mindset for a team that played at one of the slowest paces in the league and was centered around two of the most iso-centric players in basketball, DeRozan and Zach LaVine, the latter of whom had for years been the subject of trade rumors until he was finally dealt at the 2025 deadline.
Donovan had long wanted to play faster, with more ball movement. So he hatched a plan.
Before the team gathered in Miami, he gave his initial pitch.
What about playing these scrimmages with a 14-second shot clock?
He was met with silence.
“These guys hated it at first,” Donovan told ESPN. “But I told these guys we have to start playing this way before the start of training camp. We can’t just jog up and down the floor for three weeks and then expect at training camp to play this way.
“I came up with it to get them to understand we need to do this to get in great shape. Stylistically, this is how we’re going to play.”
Still, despite the Bulls jumping from 28th in the NBA in pace in 2023-24 to second in 24-25, Chicago finished with an identical 39-43 record and a third straight loss in the play-in tournament.
But the Bulls believed they played toward a proof of concept in how they closed the season (14-6 in the final 20 games of 2024-25) and had that belief reinforced by the Indiana Pacers‘ run to the NBA Finals behind their own fast-paced offense.
So began a transformation of style in Chicago.
And results. A hot 6-1 start to the 2025-26 season was fueled by a top-10 pace and top-five assist percentage, and it had the United Center humming for the first time in years.
Since then, though, the team has faltered, despite a top-ranked pace and fourth-ranked assist percentage. At 9-10, the Bulls have fallen from first in the East to 10th, firmly in their usual position of competing for the play-in.
Which begs an interminable question in Chicago: Did the Bulls actually discover something last season and during the beginning of this one? Or was it a mirage? Are they more 6-1? Or 3-9?
During the team’s surprisingly hot start, team sources privately acknowledged the excitement but questioned its sustainability.
Said one, “Let’s see where we are at about 20 games.”
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Chicago Bulls vs. Charlotte Hornets: Game Highlights
Chicago Bulls vs. Charlotte Hornets: Game Highlights
THE BULLS’ CROSS-STATE rival, the Pacers, went on an improbable run to the Finals, with a deep roster and an up-tempo style built on multiple ball handlers and ball movement.
The Bulls looked at their final 20 games of the 2024-2025 season. Then they looked at the Pacers, their roster, their style — and saw a blueprint of what they could be if they charted the same course.
“That’s who we have to be,” Donovan said. “We have to be better than the sum of our parts. … Everybody sees Indiana play, and the thing that everybody goes to right away is oh, their pace, their pace, their pace.
“The one thing that Indiana probably doesn’t get enough credit for is yes, they play really, really fast and [Tyrese] Haliburton’s a unique playmaker back there, but the physicality of those guys defensively is where our evolution has to continue.”
“They stole our mojo,” a Pacers team source told ESPN. “They said before the season they were going to emulate our play style. Giddey playing the role as Tyrese. The fast pace, the late-game comebacks, wearing teams down.”
Multiple Bulls team sources acknowledged the similarities between what they are trying to build and the way Indiana constructed a contender, but with two big caveats: The Pacers played stingier defense (ranked 13th in defensive efficiency last season) and paired a second star with their point guard.
“They have Haliburton, who is an All-Star, and they have Siakam,” one Bulls source told ESPN. “If Giddey can develop into an All-Star and be what Hali was, when do we pull the trigger to get our Siakam?”
Giddey, for his part, spent the summer working out six days a week at a gym near his home in Melbourne, Australia. He spent three days going through individual drills, with a few points of emphasis: 3-point shooting, which had plagued him at Oklahoma City; using his size at 6-foot-8 to finish at the rim; and drawing contact to get to the foul line.
The other three days of the week were saved for scrimmages in which Giddey would match up with one of the NBA’s elite defenders, longtime friend and Hawks guard Dyson Daniels. Daniels and Giddey have known each other since they were 10 years old, dating back to a youth basketball team in Melbourne.
“We wanted to go at each other,” Daniels told ESPN, “make each other better that way.”
Chicago made a bold move to acquire Giddey from Oklahoma City in June 2024, sending Caruso, a defensive stalwart and coveted role player, in a one-for-one exchange that left many around the league baffled that the Bulls didn’t get additional draft compensation. A season later, the noise only amplified, as Caruso was teaching his younger Thunder teammates how to pop the cork on champagne bottles after winning the Finals.
Despite the onslaught of criticism the team faced after the trade to acquire him, the Bulls still see Giddey, who turned 23 in October, as a centerpiece, team sources told ESPN.
“[Giddey] plays exactly how we want to play,” Bulls general manager Marc Eversley told ESPN after the trade last year.
Giddey rewarded the Bulls for their faith late in the 2024-25 season, and his ascension has continued this season. He’s nearly averaging a triple double with 20.5 points, 10.0 rebounds and 9.3 assists, and he’s shooting a career-best 39.2% from 3 and a career-high 6.0 free throws per game.
“Being in Josh’s position, then getting traded and then your team goes and wins the chip, it’s going to add motivation for sure,” Daniels told ESPN. “He’s playing hard every day, he’s got his head down. He’s trying to win.”
And just as the Bulls envisioned, Giddey’s pass-first approach has become the Bulls’ identity. Chicago has eight players averaging double figures in points and ranks second in the league in bench scoring. The Bulls have the fifth-best assist percentage (68.5%) in the league, way up from 2023-24, before Giddey arrived, when their 59% ranked 28th.
Giddey couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the Bulls and Pacers during last season’s playoffs, he said, but he also sees the gap the Bulls are still trying to close.
“If you look at the teams, it’s similar personnel,” Giddey told ESPN. “Tyrese obviously is an unbelievable player, but they don’t have that one superstar. They’ve got a lot of really, really solid, good players. They defend collectively, and that’s an area we need to get better at.”
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Nikola Vucevic calls game with buzzer-beater 3 for Bulls
Coby White kicks it out to Nikola Vucevic, who calls game for the Bulls with a buzzer-beater triple vs. the Trail Blazers.
NIKOLA VUČEVIČ OFFERED a warning.
After an upset victory on the road against the Denver Nuggets snapped a five-game losing streak, one in which the Bulls had given up an average of nearly 130 points per game, it took a buzzer beater from Vučević to beat the Portland Trail Blazers on. Nov. 19 to close a short West Coast trip.
Two days later, the Bulls lost by 36 points at home to a Heat team missing Andrew Wiggins and Tyler Herro. The next night, the Bulls eked out a one-point victory over the NBA’s worst team, the 2-16 Washington Wizards.
A visibly frustrated Vučević gave an on-court postgame interview after the win against Washington on Nov. 22 while his younger teammates celebrated behind him.
Matas Buzelis, 21, jumped up and down. Jalen Smith, 25, rested his chin on Vučević’s shoulder.
“Move, man,” Vučević finally snapped.
Vučević is in his 15th NBA season and sixth in Chicago. At 35, the two-time All-Star is the oldest player on the team by five years.
He said the Bulls were soft, that the way they were playing was not compatible with winning.
“We just didn’t play up to NBA standards,” Vučević told reporters. “We talk about it, but I don’t think we really understand it’s not sustainable to play this way.
“It’s just not going to always work in your favor. Sometimes, you’re going to play well and be in close games. But more often than not, if you continue to play this way, it’s going to be bad loss after bad loss.”
It was a point born out of his years of experience. And it proved prescient almost immediately.
The following game, two nights later, the Bulls gave up 143 points to the New Orleans Pelicans, who ranked 27th in the league in offense. Their next game, they gave up 123 points to the Charlotte Hornets, who had lost nine of their previous 10 games. On Saturday, they fell to a depleted Pacers team on a 16-footer from Siakam with a tenth of a second remaining. It was Indiana’s fourth win of the season. Chicago is now on a three-game losing streak against three teams likely destined for the lottery. Just one month ago, on Nov. 1, the Bulls were 5-0 and in first place in the Eastern Conference. By Dec. 1, they were back under .500 again. Chicago has not been over .500 at the start of December since 2021.
During their 6-1 start, the Bulls were seventh in offense and 10th in defense. But since then they rank 23rd in offense and 23rd in defense. In that same span, the Bulls are giving up an average of 56.5 points in the paint, third most in the NBA.
Chicago still sees Giddey, Coby White and Matas Buzelis as its future core, team sources said, along with rookie Noa Essengue, the No. 12 pick in the 2025 draft who does not turn 19 until later this month. He debuted last week, the last rookie lottery pick to do so.
But the Bulls also know they need to continue adding to that core, team sources said, and are prepared to do so.
Chicago owns its own first-round draft picks for the next seven years and an additional 2026 top-14-protected first from Portland. The Bulls can trade up to five firsts and five second-round picks, and could have close to $70 million in cap room next offseason, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
The Bulls have had internal discussions about how to proceed, including conversations about Dallas Mavericks star Anthony Davis, sources told ESPN, whom they believe could help the team’s porous rim protection and defensive interior.
Davis is from Chicago, and the Bulls have three players on the roster (Ayo Dosunmu, Jevon Carter and Buzelis) who grew up in the area, which is not a coincidence.
However, team sources said the Bulls will not sacrifice any of their young core to execute such a deal until the team is closer to contention.
“I don’t think going out and chasing X megastar is the way to proceed — at least today,” one source told ESPN.
White, the team’s longest-tenured player, has been around through the Bulls’ various iterations. He endured the 22-win season and celebrated the 46-win one. He also endured the past three: the 40-, 39- and 39-win campaigns that ended in the play-in tournament.
“You can’t flip the switch,” he said earlier this month.
“Building a culture takes time. Building how you want to play takes time. Building an identity takes time.”
