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The Bulls front office remained active in trade talks on Tuesday, with Coby White still the piece most frequently discussed, according to a source.
Minnesota and Houston are still in the mix, but it’s not just a two-team race with the Feb. 5 trade deadline approaching quickly.
While the source stressed that nothing was imminent, it vibed with Sun-Times reports since early December that executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas is looking to conduct business with the roster. The ongoing issue is the tightrope he is trying to walk, moving a player like White — who does have an expiring contract — for young talent that coincides with the timeline the Bulls feel Josh Giddey and Matas Buzelis occupy.
That’s why names like Reed Sheppard, Tari Eason, Rob Dillingham and Terrence Shannon Jr. have all been floated around in some capacity. Unfortunately, with far too many no’s.
Noise around the team? Definitely. But not loud enough to disrupt the business of basketball as far as the current Bulls players were concerned.
Following the 129-118 loss to Luka, LeBron and the Lakers, that flex of star power left the Bulls making sure that the losing doesn’t turn into yet another lull this season.
There’s a reason the Bulls are a .500 team despite having two five-game winning streaks and a four-game winning streak before Monday. That’s because when the losses come, they’ve also come in bunches. A five-game losing streak in November, an embarrassing seven-game losing streak to close out November and enter December, and then four losses in five games in early January.
A game against five-win Indiana on Wednesday would seem like the perfect remedy. Not so fast, as two of the Pacers’ wins have come at the expense of the Bulls. White pointed that out when asked about the upcoming schedule of four games in the next five days.
“Just make sure we take it game by game for one,” White said. “Don’t look at, ‘Oh, we got four games in five days.’ Mentally, just stay locked into what we’re doing. Continue to bounce back and not let it snowball into an avalanche.”
What if it does, however?
Does that change the mind of which direction Karnisovas is leaning into? Unlikely. The source stressed that Karnisovas is looking to add young talent either way. The idea of just trading pending free agents like White, Nikola Vucevic, Ayo Dosunmu, Kevin Huerter or Zach Collins for the sake of being bad and improving 2026 lottery odds is not in play.
It’s definitely not an option for the locker room, no matter which players remain after the deadline. With recent wins over Minnesota and Boston, and even playing well in the second half against Los Angeles, it’s business as usual as far as Giddey was concerned.
“We’ve had these stretches where we’ve looked really good,” Giddey said of the season so far. “We pull off five-in-a-row, and then we’ve had stretches where we don’t look very good. It’s about getting back to where we are as a team, playing to our identity. When we do it we show that we can play with anyone in the league.
“It is (frustrating). It’s about not letting these losing streaks spiral. You want to keep it to one or two games and then get back on track quickly, but we’ve got a pretty resilient group. We don’t feel like the world is crashing after a loss.”
Will it be five games in seven nights that determine the immediate future of the franchise as the Feb. 5 deadline gets closer? Veteran center Nikola Vucevic was not trying to play GM on Monday but made it clear that he wants the front office to stay the course and see how this plays out.
The second-year forward called the invite to the Rising Star’s game an “honor” but explained why he had to pass on a second attempt at the Dunk Contest.
That remains the unknown as the NBA trade deadline is only weeks away. Karnisovas used a 20-game sample size last year to carry his offseason, and now that the Bulls have picked it up in the last month, will he do the same on Feb. 5?