Why don’t the Chicago Bulls have a 1st-round pick in the 2023 NBA Draft?
By Ian Levy
The Chicago Bulls missed the NBA Playoffs and finished 19th in the standings this season but won’t make a single pick in the NBA Draft. Here’s why:
Nothing really went the Bulls’ way this season. Lonzo Ball’s knee injury held him out for the entire season and the trio of Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic weren’t good enough to carry them into the playoff race. They did make the Play-In Tournament and won their first game against the Toronto Raptors. However, they lost to the Heat in the second and missed the playoffs.
With several big free agents this summer, the Bulls could be in a position for a rebuild or a hard pivot. However, they don’t have a single pick in either round of the 2023 NBA Draft which will make it hard for them to add young talent.
Why don’t the Bulls have any picks in the 2023 NBA Draft?
By their record, the Bulls should have the No. 11 pick in the first round of the draft, but they’ll send this pick to the Orlando Magic as part of the trade they made to acquire Nikola Vucevic in March of 2021. That deal hasn’t worked at all like the Bulls were hoping. Vucevic’s numbers rebounded this season but he was still a less-than-ideal fit with DeRozan and LaVine. His weighty contract comes off the books but the Bulls have steadfastly maintained that they hope to re-sign him. Meanwhile, the Magic will likely roll into next season with Wendell Carter, Franz Wagner and the player selected No. 11 as core pieces of their rotation, all of whom were acquired as part of the trade.
The Bulls owe their second-round pick to the Wizards but had the rights to Denver’s second-rounder this year. However, they forfeited that pick after the league found that they had committed tampering violations in their free-agent negotiations with Lonzo Ball.
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