Chicago Bulls: Many dominoes left to fall before the NBA Draft

Many things must happen before the Chicago Bulls are on the clock.

On Thursday night, the NBA held its annual draft lottery and the Chicago Bulls got some great news, securing the No. 4 overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft. Almost immediately, mock draft started rolling out trying to project who the Bulls would take with their pick.

In normal years, this exercise can be fool’s gold. It is incredibly difficult to try to project which player a team might select. For starters, you have no idea how the picks in front of your team will unfold. You also have no knowledge of how your team has arranged their draft board.

That is in a typical year. However, this is not a typical year for the Bulls. For a variety of reasons, trying to guess who the Bulls will select in October is almost impossible.

For starters, they just recently parted ways with their head coach Jim Boylen, and while the move was the right one, it still creates a vacancy that needs to be filled. At this point, we have no idea who that candidate will be or what style of basketball they or Arturas Karnisovas want to play. Of course, the style of play will dictate to a large degree the player pool they will target in the draft.

Moreover, without knowing the style of the new head coach, it’s impossible to say whether each of the players currently on the roster fit. We know that in the past Lauri Markkanen and Zach LaVine have expressed some unhappiness with the team and rumors have swirled about whether they would be traded.

Granted, a lot of that discontent can be attributed to Boylen, so his departure, in theory, would appear to resolve that. However, what if they disagree with the new coach’s approach? Alternatively, what if they don’t fit the coach’s style?

They could remain trade candidates, which would certainly create additional holes to fill on the roster. Obviously, one way to do that would be through the draft. So the roster uncertainty also makes it incredibly difficult to predict the pick.

At the end of the day, as fans, we will all digest as many mock drafts as possible over the coming weeks. Let’s be honest, it’s fun to imagine certain players on your favorite team. Just remember, that until these dominoes start to fall, and the direction of the team becomes a little clearer, we are truly throwing darts at a wall.