The Chicago Bulls don’t even believe in their own rebuild

Recent news should have fans wondering whether the Chicago Bulls believe in their own rebuild.

It’s at least debatable how many “rebuilds” the Chicago Bulls have undertaken during John Paxson and Gar Forman’s respective tenures. What isn’t up for debate is that the Bulls are smack dab in the midst of one at the moment.

After drafting Lauri Markkanen, the team has continued to attempt to build through the NBA Draft with Wendell Carter Jr. but has also tried to improve the team via trade. Most notably, they sent Jimmy Butler to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for Kris Dunn and Zach LaVine, whom they re-signed to a 4 year/$78 million deal according to Spotrac.

Next, they shipped Bobby Portis and failed free agent experiment Jabari Parker to the Washington Wizards in exchange for Otto Porter Jr., and his 4 year/$106 million max deal. At the time, the move was sold hard to the Chicago fanbase as a way to improve the team for the long term and that Porter would be an integral part of the future and this rebuild.

The moves, whether you agreed with them or not, at least tacitly signaled that the front office had some semblance of a plan for this rebuild. For so long, the Bulls seemed like a rudderless ship drifting aimlessly in the ocean without any idea of where they wanted to go.

But these moves, along with the extension of Jim Boylen as head coach signaled GarPax had a vision. Again, we can debate the merits of that vision, but that’s not the point of this piece. But it seemed like the team was in the market for a point guard this offseason as the next piece of this rebuilding puzzle. Said point guard would help continue to lead this team out of a rebuild and hopefully into the playoffs. Maybe not right away, but at least there was a vision.

But just when you start to give the front office any credit, they pull the rug out from under you. Such was the case today when Darnell Mayberry from The Athletic dropped a bombshell regarding the Bulls possible offseason plans.

According to Mayberry, there’s a growing belief around the league that Chicago is open to trading anyone except Markkanen or Carter. That’s right — LaVine, the free agent shooting guard they inked to a lucrative deal to serve as a key component of this young nucleus — meh, he’s expendable. Porter, the classic three-and-d wing they hoped would add the scoring punch and shooting prowess to compliment Boylen’s style of play — let’s revisit that whole line of thinking.

If this report is true, it truly makes you wonder what in the world the Bulls are thinking. Check that — it makes you wonder whether they are thinking at all. However, one thing it would signal is that the Bulls don’t believe in the direction of this rebuild and would signal yet another one of GarPax’s seemingly infinite chances to get this thing right.