Entering a complete roster overhaul, is anyone in Chicago truly "untouchable?"
The Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley regime in Chicago was marked by a refusal to rebuild and a delusional idea that the Bulls could contend for a title, despite being mediocre. New executive vice president of basketball operations Bryson Graham did not shy away from calling a spade a spade at his introductory press conference.
"We're not in a place where we're going to be adding players and competing for a championship in the '26-'27 season," Graham said on Wednesday. "This is a time for us to grow and build and layer it the right way, and we'll make the right decisions. I'm confident in that."
"Rebuild" has been a taboo term around the Bulls organization. Karnisovas actively avoided using "that word" in his final public press conference at the 2025-26 trade deadline. But Graham was open in labeling the Bulls' situation exactly what it is.
"Most rebuild situations are when you don't have star-caliber players," Graham said. "Right now, not to say that we don't have anyone on this roster that can get there, but until we continue to draft well, add to this mix and add more overall talent and team identity, we are in the rebuilding phase, and we're extremely young too... I'm not going to be up here and mince words and say we're further along if we just add a couple of pieces, because that's not the case."
Off to the side of the press conference crowd was 21-year-old forward Matas Buzelis. The former first-round pick is widely viewed as the franchise cornerstone entering his third season, following a sophomore campaign in which he started 77 games and averaged 16.3 points, 5.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.5 blocks per outing. Along with 23-year-old point guard Josh Giddey, the two are Chicago's best assets in terms of both age and skill.
But neither of them was brought to the Bulls by Graham, who is viewed as an elite talent evaluator across the league. If Chicago's new head decision-maker doesn't believe those are winning players or gets a trade offer that he simply can't refuse, the Bulls would seriously consider moving on from the young potential stars.
"There's only a few players in the NBA, let's be honest, that are untouchable. And even then, you can get them. That's just the nature of the beast. You're going to listen on every player. I'm not trying to strike fear in the guys on the roster, but that's just the nature of this business. I'm not going to sit here and say that no one on this roster is untouchable, but that doesn't mean we're trading guys. We're going to come in, we're going to look at this holistically and then we're going to proceed."
The Karnisovas-led Bulls shipped off half of the roster at the February trade deadline, including Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu and Nikola Vucevic. Patrick Williams is the only player remaining from before 2024, when Giddey and Buzelis both joined the team, and the roster could face significantly more turnover during the next year as well.
It's impossible to tell who will still be a Chicago Bull 12 — or even three — months from now. Graham has complete control of the franchise's direction, but he won't be tasked with rebuilding the team alone.
"It's not going to be just me; it's going to be the people that I put around me and work with me," Graham said. "We're going to do this together. That's from the performance room, the communications department, the coaching staff, cap strategy, evaluation, every aspect of this. I don't ever want to put this on, 'I have the answer,' because I don't. If I'm the smartest person in the room, we're going to fail. And so I'm going to make sure that we add the right group of people, we're going to pull in the right direction and we're going to win games. It's not about me, it's about the Chicago Bulls as a whole."