All season, it has felt like the Bulls were stuck in neutral, talking about change without ever really hitting the gas and making changes. This week, they finally slammed it into drive. In a wild flurry of seven trades before the deadline, Chicago moved core pieces like Nikola Vučević, Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu, Kevin Huerter and several recent draft picks, opting for a haul of young guards, role players and draft capital instead of more let’s run it back. Whether you’re excited or furious, there’s no denying this was the most decisive week of Artūras Karnišovas’ tenure.
The front office didn’t just tinker, it stripped the 2021 vision down to the studs. Vučević was shipped out, White and Dosunmu were moved, Huerter was flipped again, and even former first‑rounders like Dalen Terry and Julian Phillips were cashed in as part of the overhaul. In return, the Bulls piled up guards like Anfernee Simons, Collin Sexton, Jaden Ivey and Rob Dillingham, plus a mountain of second‑round picks that now stretches from 2026 to 2032. The Bulls’ second‑round stash is now one of the league’s biggest. That’s not a tweak; that’s a reset.
Karnišovas’ own words tell you how cornered he was. He even resisted calling this a rebuild and defended the continuity experiment even as the team floated around .500 and lived in the play‑in. This week, he finally admitted being in the middle is what we don’t want to do and doubled down on the idea that the play‑in is not the goal, a championship is. He can call it a stage instead of a rebuild all he wants, but he was without a doubt forced to make it clear what direction he wanted to go in away from NBA limbo and toward a longer‑term, draft‑and‑development plan.
The irony is that this urgency is arriving late, and a lot of people are saying so. ESPN pointed out that the Bulls went three straight seasons without making a single in‑season trade, even as their results flat‑lined in the low‑40s win range. And they were not the only ones to point that out. Other sports reporters and bloggers flat‑out opened their deadline recap by saying the front office should be fired and accusing Karnišovas and Marc Eversley of screwing up every transaction period with no coherent vision.
So let’s be blunt, Karnišovas’ is now on the hot seat, and everybody can feel it. When you trade away your top scorer, your starting center, homegrown favorites, and still don’t come away with a single first‑round pick, you’re betting your career that your read on the market and your development program are better than your critics think. He waited too long to move these assets and turning what once could have been first‑round value into piles of seconds and stopgap contracts. He will not get unlimited time to see if your stage pays off.
Floating over all of this there is the one constant in the room: Jerry Reinsdorf. On paper, he has a reputation for patience with executives. However, he has a long track record of pulling the plug in season when he decides something isn’t working. The Bulls fired Scott Skiles on December 23, 2007, with the team at 9–16 and expectations much higher. They did the same with Fred Hoiberg in early December 2018 after a 5–19 start, promoting Jim Boylen in a bid to spark energy and spirit. Even on the White Sox side, Reinsdorf made a rare midseason regime change in 2023 when he fired longtime executives Ken Williams and Rick Hahn in August, a move South Side Sox called unprecedented. When he reaches his breaking point, he doesn’t always wait for the off‑season.
Put that together, and it’s not some wild hot take to say that if the Bulls don’t start next season strong after all this upheaval, Karnišovas could absolutely be fired by Christmas. That isn’t reporting, it’s connecting dots. He just oversaw the most dramatic teardown the franchise has seen in years, admitted the middle is unacceptable, and leaned heavily into flexibility and draft picks as the justification. If the next seasons early‑season product looks worse, or even just aimless, the same owner who has made multiple December coaching changes and a midseason front‑office purge in baseball will be looking at the man who chose this path and asking whether he’s the one to finish it.
There is a version of this that becomes fun fast. Imagine a team leaning fully into a guard‑driven, pace‑and‑space identity. Simons bombing away; Ivey attacking downhill; Dillingham bringing microwave scoring; Josh Giddey orchestrating in the half court as well as Matas Buzelis and Noah Essengue growing into their roles. The front office specifically targeted players they believe fit a faster, more modern style, and that the next 30 games are officially an evaluation period where these guys will get a long runway to prove they belong. If even two or three of these guards hit in a big way, the rebuild‑without‑saying‑rebuild suddenly feels a lot more intentional.
Of course, that doesn’t make the human side any easier. Coby White was the closest thing the Bulls had to a we developed this dude and he popped success story, a former bench gunner who grew into a legit primary scorer and playmaker. Ayo was the hometown kid who embodied Chicago toughness and made himself into a valued two‑way guard. It’s perfectly reasonable for fans to be gutted by losing those guys and still understand why a front office chose to cash in before they hit free agency. The Bulls are finally tanking, this is what tanking looks like from the executive suite when you trade the right players at the right time to get worse now in hopes of being much better later.
Here’s the thing, folks: The acknowledged the overdue boldness of finally choosing a direction. Fans should applaud the fact that the Bulls stopped lying to themselves that being in middle was a good thing. But don’t confuse decisiveness with success. Direction only matters if it’s followed by execution. Now there are no more excuses left. No more continuity arguments. No more wait and see.
With that… Over the next few months, the Bulls have to identify real foundational pieces, show visible development, and convince everyone this wasn’t just asset shuffling dressed up as vision. If this team looks lost again, if next season opens with another familiar hole, it almost certainly won’t be Artūras Karnišovas answering for it. The Bulls finally chose a path. Now they have to prove it leads somewhere — or accept that this week will be remembered not as the start of a new era, but as the loudest moment before another reset.
If you cannot play with them, then root for them!