Moving forward, it’s all about action for Arturas Karnisovas, the Bulls’ executive vice president of basketball operations.
That’s because the words he spoke Thursday after the trade deadline came and went were mostly hollow.
Karnisovas said a playoff push was still on the table for this season, threw out a plan of building the team with good depth from one through 10 rather than focusing on landing star players and talked about slowing down the process to allow for all the younger players to be truly evaluated.
He lost the news conference and also didn’t help himself or the organization in the eyes of a fan base that is growing impatient with not only the mediocrity under the Karnisovas/general manager Marc Eversley regime, but also the confusion about the direction moving forward.
A source close to the situation, however, did tell the Sun-Times that Karnisovas is working with more urgency than he shows and has a more definitive plan in place than what he conveyed publicly. That’s all well and good, but that’s why it’s all about his actions now.
Even in his days as an assistant in the Nuggets’ organization, Karnisovas was from the school of never showing his hand. While there is frustration in that, he has made it very clear among his front-office peers that he made the mess, but he intends to clean it up.
He traded Alex Caruso, DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine (on Sunday) in the last seven months, but the hope was that there would be even more cargo thrown off the sinking ship by the deadline.
It didn’t happen, and even more unfortunate was the fact that Karnisovas’ key piece in return was regaining control of the protected first-round pick from the Spurs that the Bulls lost when they first acquired DeRozan.
“We obviously value draft compensation and young players and flexibility, I think in that order,” Karnisovas said. “But again, we have nine players that are between [ages] 20 and 25. You have to have a right mix of players to grow. You can’t just roll out all young players and they’re going to develop on their own. I think you need the right vets, experienced guys to be around. I see Vooch [Nikola Vucevic] and keeping Zo [Lonzo Ball who signed an extension Wednesday] in that role.”
That’s one of the reasons why Vucevic wasn’t traded, but a source told the Sun-Times that the Bulls felt Vucevic, who has an expiring contract entering the 2025-26 season, would bring them back more draft capital in the offseason when teams have a reset. The offers for Vucevic on Thursday were said to be underwhelming and life without the big man wouldn’t significantly change where the Bulls are in the standings.
As far as Karnisovas using the word “playoff push” for the remainder of the season, the only way he would want to see that happen is if it’s led by young players such as Matas Buzelis, Ayo Dosunmu and Josh Giddey.
Privately, Karnisovas does want the highest draft odds as possible and that has been reflected in his advice to coach Billy Donovan to continue upping the minutes of Buzelis. He wants the training wheels off the rookie, and if that means losses but development, it’s a win-win.
The Bulls did come away from the trade deadline feeling good about the groundwork laid down for the summer. They are confident that they can come out of the offseason with more veteran players moved and more draft assets gathered.
That was a fact that Karnisovas did not want to share with the media.
“Yes,” Karnisovas said when asked about doing what it takes to put the Bulls in the best position in this year’s draft lottery. “By getting our pick back and not having to worry about where we’re going to land this year, there’s an opportunity during the draft to land another young player and consistently look for opportunities to get a star player.”
That sounds good, but he need to back it up with action not words.