It’s been a few months since the Chicago Bulls finally moved on from Arturas Karnisovas and his front office regime. And now the stories are starting to come out about just how messy things were behind the scenes.
According to a new ESPN report from Jamal Collier, multiple former Bulls staffers say they pleaded with Karnisovas to take Tyrese Haliburton in the 2020 NBA draft. Instead, the Bulls went with Patrick Williams out of Florida State. The decision didn’t age well.
One ex-staffer told ESPN the draft was basically doomed from the start. “Being the first draft that those guys ran and having [the pandemic] circumstances, I think was a recipe for disaster,” they said. “That being said, they way over-indexed on Pat’s potential. It was just a really bad misevaluation.”
At the time, Karnisovas supposedly wasn’t sold on Haliburton as a prospect. He reportedly called him “not a serious prospect.” The Indiana Pacers grabbed Haliburton later in the draft, and by 2025 he had led that franchise to the NBA Finals. Williams, meanwhile, has struggled with inconsistency, poor shooting, and eventually getting pushed into a limited role off the bench. This past season he averaged 7.0 points and 3.0 rebounds while shooting just 37.2 percent from the field.
The Kawhi comparisons that never died
Another thing that came out in the report: the front office apparently believed Williams could develop into the next Kawhi Leonard. That comparison hung around for years, even as Williams failed to look anything like a two-way superstar.
“It took probably three or four years for them to come off of the ‘Well, he could be Kawhi,’ statements,” one former staffer told ESPN. “Those things continued to linger even after Patrick pretty demonstrably proved that he was not going to be Kawhi. That was an unfortunate way to kick things off.”
The Bulls eventually fired both Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley in April. That opened the door for Bryson Graham to take over as the head of basketball operations. Early reports suggest Graham has a much more collaborative and modern approach, which is a stark contrast to the previous regime’s tendencies.
But the damage from that 2020 draft is already done. Chicago passed on an All-NBA guard who’s now a Finals-level catalyst. They bet on potential and lost. The new front office can’t undo that pick, but at least they’re not the ones who made it.
Leave a Comment