The Chicago Bulls have found their new top executive.
The Bulls reached a deal to hire Bryson Graham as their new vice president of basketball operations on Monday afternoon, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.
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The Bulls are the second team in the league to hire a new top executive on Monday. The Dallas Mavericks hired former Toronto Raptors executive Masai Ujiri as their next team president on Monday.
Graham spent 15 years with the New Orleans Pelicans front office, where he first started as an intern before working his way up to general manager. He then joined the Atlanta Hawks last season as the team’s senior vice president.
Graham will take over in Chicago for Artūras Karnišovas, who was fired near the end of the regular season along with general manager Marc Eversley. Karnišovas was hired ahead of the 2020-21 campaign, but the team managed just one winning record and a single playoff appearance under his watch.
Head coach Billy Donovan parted with the team last month after six seasons, too. The Bulls went just 31-51 this season and missed the playoffs again. They’ve not won a playoff series since 2015, either, which was the final year of the Tom Thibodeau era.
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Karnišovas and Eversley were responsible for several trades or roster moves that didn’t really pan out, including trading DeMar DeRozan in 2024 and Coby White in February while not getting much in return. They released Jaden Ivey near the end of the season, too, after he went on several anti-LGBTQ rants on social media. Ivey was only acquired by the Bulls in a three-team trade in February.
With Graham now in place, he and the Bulls will now turn their attention to finding a new general manager and head coach. Once he gets that settled, he has plenty of room to work with. The Bulls have both their own lottery pick and an additional first round pick in the upcoming NBA Draft. They have about $60 million in cap space available, too. Graham hasn’t held this role before, but the Bulls clearly believe he’s the man capable of leading the franchise back to prominence after more than a decade of struggling in the Eastern Conference.
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