NEW YORK — The NBA trade deadline came and went Thursday and the Chicago Bulls stood still — at least for now.
The Bulls were one of only two teams not to make a move ahead of the deadline. But that’s not a surprise if you believed the words of executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas and coach Billy Donovan, both of whom emphasized consistency and continuity as the deadline neared.
In a post-deadline news conference Thursday, Karnišovas said the Bulls’ inaction didn’t come from a lack of interest — but the available options weren’t lucrative enough to warrant shipping off any of their players.
“There were so many buyers, so there were a lot of teams that didn’t want to take a step back, including us,” Karnišovas said. “We tried to improve our team, but at what cost? That price was not OK with us. The next stage for us now that we’ve passed the trade deadline is to evaluate this group over the next 28 games.”
Consistency and continuity have been the buzzwords of the front office since last year’s trade deadline. In that span, the Bulls have gone 38-43 entering Thursday’s game against the Brooklyn Nets while floundering against Eastern Conference opponents who continue to rebuild and reload.
Karnišovas said the Bulls were genuinely interested in making a deal, but the team’s main goal ahead of the trade deadline was to maintain the core trio of Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vučević. While no player was deemed “untouchable”, Karnišovas said the front office felt the Bulls were better off retaining their roster through the season.
“We tried to get into a lot of deals, but at the end of the day we didn’t make any of them,” Karnišovas said. “We have a good team. We have a lot of good players. We made calls, we got a lot of calls. It was pretty busy, but at the end of the day I think we were also buyers. We wanted to improve our team but we couldn’t capitalize on that.”
The next chance for the Bulls to make major moves will come after the season. Karnišovas emphasized that the Bulls will approach the remaining 28 games of the regular season — and pending playoff games, which he felt confident would follow — as an evaluation period.
But the Bulls will be in a bit of a bind when they enter the offseason. Despite being a big-market franchise with a deep-pocketed owner, the Bulls are rarely a high-spending team. They have paid the luxury tax only once in franchise history — for the 2015-16 roster that included Pau Gasol, Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose — and currently sit $1.7 million below the threshold.
LaVine’s maximum contract immediately loads down the budget. Lonzo Ball is locked up through 2025, and the Bulls are severely hampered in their ability to trade him because of the ongoing mystery of his left knee injury. (Karnišovas reiterated that the Bulls would provide further updates on Ball after the All-Star break, when it is likely they will have to shut him down for the second straight season.)
Karnišovas said the Bulls plan to bring back Vučević and are “confident” they can re-sign him this summer: “We want him to be here.” But committing to Vučević would only further constrict the Bulls in their offseason possibilities.
“We’ll have ways to do it,” Karnišovas said. “This trade deadline showed us that we have a lot of good players that have a lot of value around the league. … We turned the roster around the last couple years. We’ve done deals in the summertime that a lot of people said we couldn’t do. There are ways to improve it. It’s just the timing is going to depend on when you make those moves.”
The Bulls still have options to improve their roster this season, such as making a move on the buyout market. The Bulls reportedly would be interested in signing Russell Westbrook should the Utah Jazz buy him out, according to TNT’s Chris Hayes, which would reunite the point guard with Donovan, his coach from their days with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Any bid to acquire Westbrook — or another player on the buyout market — would require the Bulls to waive a player to make room on their roster.
Although the Bulls will survey buyout options, Karnišovas did not target the mechanism as a necessity for roster-building in the final one-third of the season.
“We’ll look at it,” Karnišovas said. “First I have to look through every trade that actually happened and what kind of rosters each team has before we look at the buyout market.”
Throughout the news conference, Karnišovas repeated that the Bulls’ lack of movement did not reflect satisfaction with their current standing. But after two seasons of preaching consistency as the answer for an inconsistent roster, it’s unclear whether future moves will be enough to right the ship.
“Mediocrity and average is not OK with us,” Karnišovas said. “But the next step is what’s going to happen for the rest of the season and then how we can address — during the draft and free agency — our shortcomings.’’
