Artūras Karnišovas and Marc Eversley are out in Chicago, leaving behind a Bulls era marked by drafting misses, middling records and one playoff appearance that never turned into sustained success.
Artūras Karnišovas’ tenure as the Chicago Bulls' executive vice president of basketball operations has been defined by a mix of bold swings and underwhelming draft outcomes. It has now culminated with his ouster, along with general manager Marc Eversley.
According to ESPN's Shams Charania, Karnišovas and Eversley have been dismissed from their roles with the team.
Karnišovas’ legacy in Chicago will be remembered as much about the Bulls’ on‑court record as the draft picks and trades he orchestrated. Since he was hired on Apr. 13, 2020, the Bulls have hovered around .500 in the regular season, never cracking more than 46 wins in a single campaign and reaching the playoffs only once under his leadership. That sole postseason appearance came in 2021‑22, when Chicago earned the East’s top seed before a series of early‑round exits and repeated play‑in‑round failure left the fan base feeling perpetually short‑changed.
His first full season, 2021‑22, offered a glimpse of promise. The Bulls bolted out of the gate behind a healthy roster and a top‑seed October‑to‑January stretch, but injuries and roster instability quickly undid that momentum. In the years that followed, Chicago alternated between the play‑in cutoff and slipping into the lottery. The team earned a playoff‑type record in 2022‑23, only to be bounced in the first round. The 2024‑25 season showed incremental improvement on paper, but the 2025‑26 campaign has been one of the franchise’s bleakest, with the Bulls stumbling through a 0‑11 February and posting the worst net rating in the league over a 17‑game stretch.
Karnišovas’ draft record has been pretty spotty. Out of the four first-round selections since 2020, Patrick Williams and Dalen Terry have to be considered busts. Matas Buzelis has shown promise in his second season and looks to be a key piece for the team moving forward. The latest first-round draft pick, Noa Essengue, was injured and missed the majority of his rookie year and is still considered a long-term project for the franchise. To his credit, Ayo Dosunmu is widely considered a great draft pick in the second round, but he was traded during the trade deadline to Minnesota in a move that brought in guard Rob Dillingham and forward Leonard Miller.
The front-office shakeup arrives when there is also uncertainty about the future head coach of the Chicago Bulls. For over a week now, Billy Donovan has been considered one of the strong favorites for the open North Carolina head coach position. The position was filled on Monday, but it appears the Chicago Bulls organization had already made its decision to move on from Karnišovas and Eversley and start fresh.
A flurry of trades this past deadline lead to a perceived full-on rebuild for the rest of the season. The Bulls have lost 11 of their last 13 games and it seems that Michael Reinsdorf has decided that, with a potential top-10 pick coming up in the NBA draft, there needs to be a new set of eyes and vision to make that decision for the Chicago Bulls team.
Now that the North Carolina job is filled, there could be some voices who suggest that Billy Donovan move up into the organization as a general manager. Whether or not that's something he could be interested in is yet to be seen.