Greenberg: Bulls have long way to go, which is why Noa Essengue is smart draft pick

New York Times

6 hours ago

CHICAGO — The Bulls won't tell you how long Billy Donovan's contract runs. And they definitely won't spell out how long the reported extensions are for the front office duo of Artūras Karnišovas and Marc Eversley.
That's just classic Jerry Reinsdorf organizational policy, and hey, you can't argue with what works. If unnecessary secrecy equated to actual playoff victories, the Bulls would be winning titles again.
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Unfortunately for Reinsdorf and his son Michael, the Bulls president, the scores and standings are in the public domain.
We know this is a team that can't even win half of its games. We know the Bulls are not stuck in the middle, as has been reported, but actually just below the middle. They're above the riffraff of the Eastern Conference and very far from the teams who go into the summer building for an NBA Finals run.
Simply put, the Bulls are in their own world. Despite middling results, the front office has job security, and Donovan isn't going anywhere. As long as the Bulls are first in attendance, ownership doesn't care so much about being ninth in the East. So there's no hurry to get better, and there's plenty of space to reinvent the roster again.
'We've said it before, but it's worth repeating, we are in transition,' said Eversley, the GM, who took the mic after the first round of the NBA Draft on Wednesday. 'We took a step back this season to reposition and retool. And while we don't know exactly what next year's roster will look like, we're encouraged by the early progress and the direction that we are heading. Over the next 18 months, through the draft tonight, free agency and with financial flexibility coming in 2026, we believe we are setting ourselves up to take meaningful steps forward.'
To quote the famous basketball analyst: 'Freeze it!'
'We believe we are setting ourselves up to take meaningful steps forward.'
Isn't that just a perfect sentence to describe a team like the Bulls? They're preparing to succeed, but don't ask for a timeline.
'We know we have a lot of work to do,' Eversley said. 'We know it's frustrating when change doesn't happen overnight, but we've seen encouraging growth from our youth, from our young core, and we're going to keep pushing. Building something great, making it last, it takes a long time. It takes planning, patience and doing the hard work without taking shortcuts.'
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Building something great? How about something decent?
But let's be open-minded. I think Wednesday, they might've taken a step to set them up to take an even bigger step.
I'm burying the lede. Eversley was talking because the Bulls just drafted lanky French teenager Noa Essengue with the No. 12 pick in the draft.
Noa Essengue dropped 20 points in an NBA preseason game when he was 17 🔥 pic.twitter.com/2nE1nwa2py
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) June 26, 2025
My question going into the NBA Draft on Wednesday night: Would the Bulls draft a European lottery ticket like Essengue, the 18-year-old big man for Ratiopharm Ulm in Germany, or a safe college player? I was heavily leaning toward the former option because, well, the Bulls need to hit on a long shot.
They're not a Derik Queen or a Carter Bryant or a Thomas Sorber away from being anything more than the Play-In team they already are. I have little regard for the Bulls as an organization, but I do like this pick. So, if you already didn't trust Karnišovas and Eversley, here's another reason to be nervous: I'm also an Essenguy.
I've watched and read enough to know he's a project. That's fine. The Bulls are a project, too.
Esesngue was the second-youngest player in the draft and has only been playing basketball since he was in middle school. He's so young that a Chicago reporter informed Essengue that he was nine years old the last time the Bulls won a playoff series.
I'm guessing young Noa wasn't glued to his TV in France to watch Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler and company dispose of a young Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks in the spring of 2015, but he did say that he loves former Bulls legend Joakim Noah, who shares a similar background.
Like Yannick Noah, Essengue's father came to France from Cameroon. (According to our Sam Vecenie's draft profile, Charles Essengue owns a car wash and has never won the French Open like Joakim's pop.)
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'That's my guy!' Essengue said in a brief Zoom conversation with reporters. He revealed that he recently talked to Noah on the phone.
If this Noa, who is also rangy and active, can give the Bulls what Noah did in his time here, we'll be lauding this pick for years.
But what if he gives them … something different? Something more?
'I see him as a two-way player who can impact the game both offensively and defensively,' Eversley said. 'His ability to get to the free-throw line and play downhill is super intriguing to us. I think he'll be able to be a versatile wing defender. I think his game is a little bit similar to Matas (Buzelis) in that he can face up, he can post you up, you can get out on the break, his game is just very versatile.'
The Chicago Bulls have selected Noa Essengue with the No. 12 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. The Bulls will keep this pick. pic.twitter.com/oSMaduPzgO
— Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) June 26, 2025
The Bulls nailed their pick at No. 11 last year by taking Buzelis, who all but fell into their lap. Buzelis played his way into the rotation and became a second-team All-Rookie selection. He's already one of the few players on the roster with a puncher's chance of being on the next Bulls playoff team. Sure, the two players are similar, but a little redundancy isn't so bad when you're talking about these kinds of athletes.
'We're a team in transition,' Eversley said. 'We're all about bringing in young, dynamic, athletic players who can play the style of play that we want to play. And I think at the end of the day, if we continue to do that, we're going to build a team that's going to compete on a yearly and nightly basis.'
I think it's obvious I don't have much faith in Karnišovas and Eversley — they haven't earned it since that one productive summer in 2021 — but I can't argue with the idea of gambling a little, as they did with this pick. What do they have to lose?
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The lesson for teams like the Bulls — the ones stuck in basketball purgatory year after year — is that if you don't get lucky in the draft lottery, you have to make your own luck. The Bucks did that when they drafted Antetokounmpo 15th in 2013. He was far from a sure thing that season. The draft pundits liked him but thought he'd take years to develop. Instead, Giannis was an instant contributor, and it took him until his fourth season to be an MVP candidate.
Of course, you can't compare every foreign player to the biggest success stories — how many guys who look like Nikola Jokić can actually play like him — but you have to hope, right?
The Bulls changed their identity last season to be a run-and-gun team. They finished second in pace and sixth in points per game, as promised, but they were 20th in offensive efficiency, 20th in net rating and 28th in points allowed. Essengue should help on both sides of the ball, though Donovan will make him earn his minutes.
'I think I can do like pretty much everything, shooting, passing the ball, attacking the rim,' Essengue said. 'But I think my biggest thing right now is the open-court game.'
Eversley noted the Bulls took a step back, but that's not really true. They said goodbye to vets like Alex Caruso and DeMar DeRozan before the season, and then traded Zach LaVine during it, but they still finished 39-43 for the second straight year and lost to the Miami Heat in the Play-In Tournament for the third straight one.
Everyone thought the Bulls should tank, but the lottery gods wouldn't have rewarded them with much. As we saw this spring, they were only a tiebreaker away from lucking into drafting Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 pick.
They've been lousy with luck, too.
But with a host of expiring contracts on the roster, the Bulls are set up to be players in the summer of 2026 in the draft and in free agency. For a team like the Bulls, where mediocrity is a goal, not a fireable offense, a brighter tomorrow is always within sight, but just out of reach.
'I think for us, we need to remain diligent and pragmatic about how we build this,' Eversley said. 'We don't want to skip steps. I think sometimes when you do skip steps, expectations kind of build and you make mistakes. And I don't think we want to do that.'