Building out the front office was always priority No. 1 for the Bulls’ new man in charge Bryson Graham and that construction project officially broke ground on Tuesday.
As multiple reports indicated last week, Stephen Mervis and Acie Law IV were the first two big pieces added to Graham’s front office. Mervis will serve as the senior vice president of basketball operations and Law will be the vice president of player personnel.
But Graham is far from finished.
Since being named executive vice president of basketball operations earlier this month by team president Michael Reinsdorf, Graham not only promised to advance the Bulls from the days of playing checkers to now start playing chess, but was given an empty checkbook by Reinsdorf to do just that.
Mervis and Law were just the first two pieces added to the board and smart additions at that.
Mervis has a nose for salary-cap strategy and analytics, spending the last 12 seasons climbing the ranks in the Magic — most recently as their assistant general manager. The strategy background is key, as the Bulls seemingly fell behind on that front during the Arturas Karnisovas regime, -according to Reinsdorf.
As for Law, he spent last season as the director of player personnel for the Nets, but before that he was with the defending champion Thunder from 2022-25, serving as the director of amateur scouting.
It doesn’t hurt that Law and -Graham were college teammates back at Texas A&M, but Law’s reputation as a talent finder had taken off in his last few years with the Thunder.
The immediate focus for both Graham and Law — both considered -successful talent evaluators — will be the upcoming NBA Draft on June 23-24, with the Bulls holding Nos. 4 and 15 in a loaded class.
The good news for both men is there’s no need to play catch-up because they each have been scouting the class for their previous organizations. Graham was with the Hawks, who also acquired a lottery pick from the Pelicans, so he had personally scouted all of the top talent the last six months.
It was a good sign at last week’s draft combine that almost every player projected to go in the top 20 -admitted to meeting with Graham and the Bulls.
But Graham has way more on his plate than just the draft.
Besides continuing to add to the front office, there’s a coaching search that will start picking up momentum in the wake of Billy Donovan opting to leave in April after six seasons.
There has been a list of names floating out here, including Timberwolves assistant coach Micah Nori and Spurs assistant Sean Sweeney.
Sweeney was front and center during the double-overtime win by the Spurs in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals on Monday, and he was picked up on camera several times giving instructions to star big man Victor Wembanyama out of timeouts.
As for Donovan, the initial thought process was the long-time coach would be a shoo-in for the Magic opening, and while he is in the running as the Sun-Times reported, it’s not as clear cut as initially believed, according to a source.
