The Chicago Bulls should be standing on the brink of a golden opportunity.
Heading into the 2025-26 season, the Eastern Conference is in a strange — and precarious — position due to paradigm-shifting injuries to some of the league’s top players.
The Boston Celtics are likely to take a year’s reprieve from their stature as the East’s perennial powerhouse after Jayson Tatum ruptured his right Achilles tendon in the conference semifinals. Coming off a jubilant postseason run, the Indiana Pacers are in a similar position after Tyrese Haliburton suffered the same injury in the final game of the NBA Finals.
Taking those two heavy hitters out of the equation seems to remove some of the variability from the outlook in the East. The New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers can be expected to duke it out for the top seed, leaving teams such as the Orlando Magic, Atlanta Hawks and Detroit Pistons with plenty of room to rise in the standings.
And all of that upheaval should give hope to long-suffering play-in tournament staples such as the Bulls that a playoff berth might finally be in reach.
Right?
Well, maybe not this year.
Photos: Chicago Bulls media day at the United Center
During media day Monday at the United Center, executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas didn’t give a definitive answer to whether making the playoffs is the Bulls’ goal this season.
Instead, he repeatedly emphasized the team’s mantra of “building while competing” — an ethos focused firmly on the future.
“At the end of the day, our ultimate goal is obviously to win a championship,” Karnišovas said. “But we are in a position where we have to focus on our growth and what we’ve done well last year and what we need to do this year.
“There’s a certain specific way we have to play in order to win games. We watched the playoffs, we saw how physical and demanding physically it was every game. So our guys (have) got to play that way, and this year will show if they’re capable of doing it.”
The Bulls didn’t stray from their previously laid plans this summer. The front office still hasn’t offloaded veteran center Nikola Vučević, who will anchor the starting lineup in the third and final year of his second contract in Chicago. Outside of trading Lonzo Ball to Cleveland and re-signing point guard Josh Giddey, the Bulls kept their offseason business tidy and quiet.
Karnišovas did acknowledge the widespread belief that the East is wide open this season: “You talk to a lot of teams right now, they think they’re in and they think they can compete.”
But the Bulls’ moves — or lack thereof — reflect the front office’s commitment toward a long-term roster build.
“This is the way we have to do it,” Karnišovas said. “We have to be patient. We have to do it the right way. We can’t skip steps. For this team next year, we’ve got to show growth.”
That growth centers around a key group of young players headlined by Giddey, guard Coby White and second-year forward Matas Buzelis.
Karnišovas said the front office continues to feel bolstered by the final 20-game stretch of last season, in which that trio led the Bulls to a 15-5 record. The fact that same group was immediately clobbered in an elimination game against the Miami Heat hasn’t deterred Karnišovas from the belief the Bulls eventually can build a championship-caliber team around this core.
And that means spending this season developing young talent while evaluating the future of players such as White and Ayo Dosunmu, who are set to hit unrestricted free agency next summer. Karnišovas noted several times Monday he doesn’t want to “place goals” on the young roster during this evaluation season — including refusing to set any playoffs-or-bust expectations.
It’s hard to predict how this approach will translate on the court for a team that failed to make the playoffs for three consecutive seasons. The Bulls haven’t finished above .500 since 2021-22 — the same season they recorded their last playoff win — despite adamantly attempting to make a playoff push in those seasons.
But after a summer with their sights already set on the 2026 offseason, the front office seems prepared to treat this season as a transition if it sets a foundation for the future.
“We’ll stay present in the moment,” Karnišovas said. “We’re going to look at this year, at this team — how we’re going to start, how we’re going to go through the season and all of those very specific goals and how we want to play and how the guys have to respond. We’ll see during the year, and that information collected is going to help us make those decisions.”