Isaac Okoro was finishing up a hot Pilates class in late June when he noticed a call from his agency, Excel Basketball.
“At that point I knew I was getting traded,” Okoro recalled Tuesday. “I had a good class and a good opportunity to come here to Chicago, so it was a great day for me.”
Maybe even better for the Bulls.
Okoro needed a change of scenery after the top-seeded Cavaliers flamed out in the second round of the playoffs in May. The Bulls needed a culture change on defense. Lonzo Ball was beloved as a two-way player but wasn’t available as much as the Bulls needed him to be, even after missing more than 2½ years recovering from a difficult leg injury that required multiple surgeries. So on July 6, the teams swapped guards.
The hope now is that Okoro can do what another guard, Alex Caruso, did when he was a Bull — put the success of the defense on his shoulders.
“I take a lot of responsibility in bringing a lot of physicality to this team,” Okoro said. “My first five years in the league, that’s typically what I did for Cleveland: pride myself on the defensive side and being physical, just guarding the team’s best player and trying to cause havoc on that end.”
His work toward doing the same thing in Chicago has already begun. The Bulls, who have been running open gyms for weeks, held their first official scrimmages of training camp Tuesday, with Okoro a key standout, throwing his body in front of anything headed in his general direction.
“He definitely is going to help us in that area — physicality,” guard Coby White said. “Also, him coming from a Cleveland organization that’s built up to where it is now, I think his perspective can really help us a lot, and using his voice can really help us a lot.
“Obviously, from playing against him, he’s very physical — he’s a menace defensively. From seeing him playing pick-up these last two or three weeks, he’s taken like two or three charges. Last year, we were in the bottom half of taking charges, so that’s another aspect he can help us in. I’m excited to share the court with him. He’s a really talented player and highly valued.”
Taking charges on Day 1 😤 @isaacokoro303 pic.twitter.com/djYwS8GWfP
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) September 30, 2025
Although Okoro would love to expand his offensive game in the up-tempo run-and-gun system the Bulls use, he knows his defensive mindset is the reason he was acquired.
“It’s definitely contagious,” he said. “If you see one of your teammates dive on the ground and go for a loose ball [and] they’re playing hard, you don’t want to be the guy that’s out there looking like he’s not playing hard, so it’s kind of a contagious thing. Like, if I see Matas [Buzelis] take a charge, I want to be the next guy to take a charge. Coby, Ayo [Dosunmu] wanting to be the next guy to take a charge — little things like that are very contagious.”
Buzelis, the Bulls’ second-year forward, has already caught the bug.
“[Okoro] has been really speaking about the physicality, battling through the screens, fighting, and I think it kind of helps all the other guys,” Buzelis said. “They see that and they want to do it, too. So he’s been a great leader on that.”
The question now is whether he’ll be a starter. This past spring, Buzelis, White, Josh Giddey, Nikola Vucevic and Kevin Huerter were successful in playing off each other, with the Bulls going 7-1 down the stretch with that group as the starting unit. Defense, however, continued to be a weak point — as evidenced when the Heat hammered the Bulls physically en route to eliminating them from the Play-In Tournament in April.
Coach Billy Donovan will be watching everything over the next few weeks to determine how Okoro fits in.
“We’re going to have to use our whole roster, and last year was probably the first year that we rotated 10,” Donovan said. “I think I would be open — and being around these guys, they’re pretty much open — to doing what’s best. Maybe it’s starting Kevin. Maybe it’s starting Isaac. I’m not sure yet.
“Certainly, defensively, with Isaac being out there, just on his body of work, you would say, ‘OK, there’s that guy that anywhere, probably, one through four, he can guard those kind of guys, right?’ But there’s evidence out there that Kevin was pretty good, too. I think it’s probably something we’re going to have to look at.”
It’s all fine by Okoro. He’ll do whatever Donovan asks.
“At the end of the day, you look at every team in the NBA [and] there are guys on winning teams that have to sacrifice,” Okoro said. “Everyone in this league wants to score 20 — they probably can score 20. They’re coming from being the best player on their high school team, college team, but people have to make sacrifices.
“In Cleveland, I played my role of guarding the best player on the other team, being the hustle guy, and I don’t mind that. At the end of the day, I want to win, so if that’s sacrificing, that’s the role that I will play.”
While that shakes out, there’s one other pressing matter for Okoro to address.
“I’ve been trying to find a good hot Pilates class since I got here in Chicago,” he said, smiling. “So I’m still looking for that.”
