After watching his last team celebrate a championship with the roster he constructed, Arturas Karnisovas may decide to pull the plug on the DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, and Nikola Vucevic experiment as it has failed miserably over the past two seasons.
One name to keep an eye on in the draft is Scoot Henderson. Among all the top draft prospects, the Chicago Bulls visited Henderson's Pro Day ahead of the 2023 NBA Draft. The worst-kept secret in sports is Victor Wembamyama going to the San Antonio Spurs with the first overall pick. After that, it seems like a toss-up between Scoot Henderson and Brandon Miller.
According to Yahoo Sports' Jake Fishler, the Chicago Bulls are now interested in finding a trade partner to acquire Zach LaVine. Typically, if a team is in the top five of a draft, they want to develop young talent and build a foundation. The Portland Trailblazers are an outlier of that rule as they prefer to build around an aging Damien Lillard instead of drafting a young teenage prospect.
A bidding war will likely take place for the third overall pick held by the Blazers, especially if the Hornets do what they do best and botch the draft pick with the second overall pick. If Scoot Henderson is at three, expect several teams, including the Bulls, to make a significant bid to move up in the draft.
The Bulls' Best Trade Package
Bulls Trade: Zach LaVine, sign-and-trade Nikola Vucevic
Blazers Trade: 2023 3rd pick, Jusuf Nurkic, Shaedon Sharpe
The Blazers could put together a scary lineup around Damien Lillard with Anfernee Simons, Zach LaVine, Jerami Grant, and Nikola Vucevic. That should buy them enough time to figure out what to do in the post-Lillard era.
The Bulls' main focus will be to acquire Scoot Henderson, who has been compared to a prime Russell Westbrook and Derrick Rose. He can be a franchise-changing addition to the city of Chicago. Minus of all the off-the-court distractions in Memphis, Ja Morant's style of play has jolted the Grizzles to become one of the top teams in the West. There is a winning recipe for that kind of style in this era of basketball. Scoot could be the savior the Bulls have been looking for since Derrick Rose tore his ACL back in 2012.
