The 2023-24 NBA season just concluded, with the Boston Celtics finishing their season-long dominance by capturing the franchise’s record 18th NBA championship.
And the league wastes no time in moving on to next season.
The offseason calendar already kicks into gear Wednesday night, with the first round of the NBA Draft at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, beginning at 7 p.m. The league has made the draft a two-day event, with the second round slated for Thursday, beginning at 3 p.m.
The first round will be televised on ABC. Both rounds will be televised on ESPN.
The Chicago Bulls are among several NBA teams who ended last season “stuck in the middle,” going 38-43 and winning one Eastern Conference play-in game before losing their second to fall short of the playoffs.
Here are 5 questions surrounding the Bulls and the 2024 NBA Draft:
When do the Bulls pick?
Right now, the Bulls have the No. 11 overall pick in Wednesday night’s first round, which they found out in last month’s Draft Lottery.
Currently, that’s their only pick. They do not have one in Thursday’s second round, as of now.
But that could all change if the Bulls swing any draft-day trades.
Who will the Bulls draft?
Obviously, different sources will have different answers for who the Bulls might take with the No. 11 overall pick, should they keep it.
One name college hoops fans will know is Dalton Knecht, a shooting guard who starred at Tennessee. In its latest Mock Draft, Sports Illustrated has the Bulls taking Knecht at No. 11.
Yahoo Sports, meanwhile, projects the Bulls to take Ron Holland, a wing from G League Unite, at No. 11. Yahoo says Holland will fit well into Chicago’s young backcourt with Coby White and Josh Giddey, who the Bulls acquired in a trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder last week for Alex Caruso.
And the New York Post projects the Bulls to select combo guard Devin Carter out of Providence.
You can peruse dozens of mock drafts if you wish, and they all might give you a different answer.
However, NBA.com has put together a Consensus Mock Draft, which is a compilation of what it considers to be the 10 best mock drafts from around the web.
In its final one, NBA.com lists Carter, Holland and guard Robert Dillingham out of Kentucky as the three players most commonly projected to go to the Bulls at No. 11.
But for the top consensus pick at No. 11 — in other words, the best player projected to be left at that spot, based on other mock drafts — NBA.com lists Nikola Topic, a 6-foot-6 guard out of KK Crvena Zvezda in Serbia.
NBA.com’s description on Zvezda reads: “A tall guard with a deft passing touch and the ability to create opportunities for himself and others, the upside play here is a bet that his injured knee is stable and the outside shot comes around.”
Really, the point here is that the Bulls could go in a lot of directions with their first-round pick.
But it would appear a combo guard with size, or a wing, is the best bet, as the Bulls look to add another young piece to the backcourt tandem of White and Giddey, because the team clearly sees those two as its future right now.
Who drafts No. 1 overall?
That distinction belongs to the Atlanta Hawks, who defied the odds in the Draft Lottery. They had just a 3% chance to get the top pick, and they got it.
The Hawks will be followed by the Washington Wizards at No. 2, the Houston Rockets at No. 3, the San Antonio Spurs at No. 4 and the Detroit Pistons at No. 5.
Who will go No. 1 overall?
This year’s draft is not like last year’s, when Victor Wembanyama of France was already regarded as a generational prospect and the consensus No. 1 pick going into the draft.
So there were no questions about who the Spurs would draft No. 1 overall in 2023, and he subsequently went on to be the NBA’s Rookie of the Year in 2023-24.
There’s no player like Wembanyama in this draft, but it does appear a fellow countryman is projected to follow him as the top overall pick.
Zaccharie Risacher, a 6-9 wing from France, is projected to go No. 1 to Atlanta in eight of the 10 mock drafts listed in NBA.com’s Consensus Mock Draft.
Alexandre Sarr, a 7-footer from Australia, is the consensus No. 2 overall pick, followed by guard Reed Sheppard out of Kentucky at No. 3 and two UConn products, guard Stephon Castle and center Donovan Clingan, at Nos. 4 and 5, respectively.
When does free agency start?
Per the league calendar, NBA teams may begin negotiating with free agents at 5 p.m. on Sunday, June 30. Teams may then begin signing free agents at 11:01 a.m. on Saturday, July 6.
Teams can significantly reshape their rosters in free agency, building around their new first-round draft picks in some cases.
But as we’ve seen with the Bulls’ swap of Caruso for Giddey, significant trades have already begun, and the draft is always a likely time for more.
The Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks swung a big one, it was reported Tuesday, with the Knicks sending Bojan Bogdanovic, four unprotected first-round draft picks and one protected draft pick to the Nets for Mikal Bridges.
That’s a great example of one team (the Nets) trading a current piece for possible future pieces, and another team (the Knicks) doing the opposite.
The Bulls have been straddling that line for some time, it seems, with nobody quite sure which direction they’ll go.
They seem to be taking the long-term approach now with the Caruso-for-Giddey deal, and what they do during the draft will be another indicator of where they’re headed.
