|
THE CHICAGO BULLS were closing in on their first win of the season as Josh Giddey brought the ball up the floor, looking to extend a nine-point lead over the Milwaukee Bucks. With 6:12 remaining in the Oct. 25 matchup, Giddey gathered the ball on the right wing as Zach LaVine slipped a screen and cut toward the basket, a misdirection created to shield Giddey's intended target. Giddey faked a pass toward LaVine as he broke toward the paint, successfully luring Bucks guard Damian Lillard to scramble after LaVine, leaving Coby White wide open in the opposite corner. It was just as Giddey had planned -- almost. During a dead ball moments earlier, Giddey had told White how the Bucks' defense would react to LaVine's screen, and that he would bounce the ball over to him open in the corner. Instead, Giddey delivered a rocket pass across the court that found White for an easy 3-pointer, Chicago's 20th in the game, more than the Bulls made in a single game at any point during the 2023-24 season, leading to a 133-122 win. "He and [Lonzo Ball] have a lot of similarities," White told ESPN. "They're already two steps ahead of the game." When the Bulls sent Alex Caruso, one of the league's most coveted role players, to the Oklahoma City Thunder in exchange for Giddey in June, it marked the first time in nearly three years that the Bulls made a trade involving a player. The trade was met with confusion and criticism around the league, primarily about Chicago's failure to get additional draft compensation. Sources told ESPN the Bulls were offered as many as two first-round picks for Caruso before the 2024 trade deadline. Meanwhile, on the court, Giddey had seen his role diminish, while off it, he'd been under investigation for an alleged improper relationship with a minor. But Bulls executives defended the one-for-one swap as an opportunity to acquire a still-21-year-old prospect with elite passing skills who could help reimagine the Bulls in an old image. Giddey would join a roster featuring White, Patrick Williams and Ayo Dosunmu, giving the Bulls four players under 25 years old whom they project to be a part of their long-term future. "My job is just to make these guys' life easy," Giddey told ESPN. "I'm trying to get Zach the ball, Coby the ball, get these guys easy looks and take the load off them. ... We spoke about how we want to play: Get up the floor, kick the ball ahead and run. Look at the wings that we have, Coby, Zach, these guys getting out in transition, it's going to make this team scary." It was a similar plan to the one Bulls general manager Marc Eversley and vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas tried to execute in 2021, when they acquired Ball -- another young, pass-first point guard who could ignite a fast-paced offense. The team was famously off to a 27-13 start with the fourth-best offensive rating in the NBA when Ball injured his left knee on Jan. 14, 2022, then missed the next two-and-a-half seasons. Chicago has been looking to recreate that form ever since. "[Giddey] plays exactly how we want to play," Eversley told ESPN. Both the Bulls and Giddey understand what's at stake in their newfound partnership. Giddey is searching for a place to prove his value as an elite young star in the league. He did not reach a contract extension with the Bulls before the start of the season, making Giddey the highest player selected in the 2021 draft (No. 6) without a contract extension. Meanwhile, the Bulls have made their way to the NBA's play-in tournament each of the past two seasons, only to lose, and are firmly positioned in the morass of the NBA's middle. They are hoping Giddey, and a young core built for speed, can help them avoid a full-scale teardown. Chicago is playing at the NBA's fastest pace and has attempted the 3rd-most 3s, a huge jump for a team that finished in the bottom five in 3-point attempts in each of the past two seasons. It's an intentional shift in how the Bulls wanted to remake their team during the offseason, when they moved on from veterans Caruso and DeMar DeRozan in order to prioritize younger players who could shoot more from the perimeter. And by acquiring Giddey, they had the first building block toward replicating the style Ball led three seasons ago. A few days after their victory over the Bucks, the Bulls set a franchise record for most made 3s in a game with 25 in a win over the Memphis Grizzlies. Giddey had 12 points and a team-high 13 rebounds and 8 assists. His plus-minus (plus-11) was second only to Ball's plus-16. "We don't run, we're done," coach Billy Donovan told his team before the season. "It's that simple. If we run, we'll have some fun."
 AS A 19-YEAR-OLD rookie, Giddey quickly established himself as one of the brightest young stars for a rebuilding Thunder team in 2021-22. He became the youngest player in league history with a triple double and matched Luka Doncic for the most triple doubles as a teenager in NBA history. Giddey helped Oklahoma City jump from 24 wins in his first season to 41 wins in his second in 2022-23, earning the Thunder a spot in the play-in tournament. He then collected 31 points, 10 assists and 9 rebounds to help Oklahoma City advance in the play-in before they were eliminated in the next game against Minnesota. "He's a guy you love to have on your team but hate to go against because he's a matchup nightmare," Williams told ESPN. "He's a 6-8 point guard who's able to read the floor." Last season, the Thunder claimed the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, the youngest team in league history to do so. But in November 2023, police in Newport Beach, California, conducted an investigation into allegations that Giddey was involved in an improper relationship with an underage girl. The allegations surfaced on social media in a since-deleted post from an anonymous user who said a girl seen with Giddey in videos and photographs was a high school junior at the time. Newport Beach police announced in January they were "unable to corroborate any criminal activity" and would not pursue any charges. The NBA concluded its investigation into the allegations in May and decided no disciplinary action was necessary. Giddey declined to comment on these allegations. On the court, Giddey struggled, averaging 12.3 points, 4.8 assists and 6.4 rebounds in 25 minutes per game, all career lows. His downturn on the court came as teammates Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who finished second in MVP voting last season, and Chet Holmgren were guiding the youthful Thunder roster to the top seed in the Western Conference ahead of schedule. "Last season, our team was popping, individual players were popping, and yet he got off to a slow start," Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said before a game in late October against the Bulls, Giddey's first matchup against his former team. "He had the off-court [issue] he had to navigate, and he had to deal with a lot of things on the court that were new for him and unfamiliar with him. In the context of the team, he had some headwinds." Before the Thunder entered the playoffs, Giddey said he and Daigneault met for a conversation about his role. Giddey had never come off the bench in his career. But the team had been discussing different lineups for the playoffs, and Daigneault wanted to prepare Giddey for the possibility that his role could change. The Thunder swept the Pelicans in the first round, and Giddey played well, averaging 12.5 points and shooting 50% from 3 and 47% overall in 26.5 minutes per game. But during the second round, Giddey's minutes dwindled, as the Dallas Mavericks used their centers to guard him, sagging off to clog the paint while he stood beyond the 3-point line. He couldn't make them pay for doing so, averaging just 6.2 points on 43% shooting (3-of-16 from 3) in 12.6 minutes per game. With the series tied heading into Game 5, the Thunder moved Giddey out of the starting lineup. As his role changed, he acknowledged his attitude did, too, sulking on the bench. "The first two games of that series, I was a bad teammate, to be honest," Giddey told ESPN. "I was just so caught up in myself, and it's, like, 'What does everyone think of this?' I'm not playing. I started the whole year and now I'm coming off the bench. I was so worried about external noise that I was probably, like, not being the teammate I should have been." Giddey pointed to two conversations that helped him. The first was with his father, who noticed Giddey's poor body language watching games on TV. "He's just like, 'People are always watching,'" Giddey recalled. "When you're sitting on the bench, pouting, everyone notices that. That hit home." For the remaining four games in the series, Giddey made an effort to get off the bench and cheer on his teammates. "I was like chill, 'This my area over here,'" Thunder forward Jaylin Williams, the leader of the Thunder bench mob, recalled with a laugh. "It was his first game not starting in like three seasons, but Gid's always been a great teammate." The second came from an unlikely source, a brief exchange with veteran Mavericks forward Markieff Morris on the court at the end of the series, one that stayed with Giddey even months later. "I knew he had a long couple months," Morris told ESPN's Tim MacMahon. "But I see that allowed him to affect how he played the game. "Once you get here, you got to learn how to separate the things that's happening on the outside and put everything into what you got going on right now." After the Thunder were eliminated from the playoffs, Giddey had an exit meeting with Daigneault and Oklahoma City general manager Sam Presti before he flew home to Australia. In it, the head coach and GM laid out a vision for a reserve role going forward, a plan they believed would use his skills as an offensive creator but also hide his deficiencies as a shooter. Giddey said he went back and forth with the Thunder decision-makers for a few days, and he appreciated their transparency about his future with the team. But as much as the Thunder brass tried to sell Giddey on the idea of coming off the bench, Giddey had hopes of returning to a role leading an offense. He called Presti and asked about the potential for being moved somewhere that could happen. "There were no hard feelings to them, but it's like, as a player, you want to be able to maximize yourself," Giddey said. "I just thought it wasn't going to be able to happen there. That's more of a compliment to them. They had so many good players, and it was hard for me to find a role in that team where I could be me. "I'm a point guard. That's kind of what I've been my whole life." About a month after the Thunder's season ended, Giddey was traded to the Bulls, a team he believed would help unlock his potential. "This is somewhere I wanted to be," Giddey said. "I'm very grateful that [Presti's] the person he is and got me to a great spot." Giddey spent a few days in Chicago after the trade before traveling to Paris for the Olympics. He found comfort playing for Australia and was given the keys to the offense, averaging 17.5 points and 6 assists while knocking down 47% of his 3s. "It was fun to just get back to that aspect of my game," Giddey said.
 THE DAY AFTER he arrived in Chicago, Giddey received text messages from White and Williams to meet up at a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Training camp wasn't slated to begin for a few weeks, but the trio spent more than two hours talking about basketball, life, their expectations and excitement for the upcoming season, as White crushed a quesadilla and Williams scarfed down a handful of tacos. "We just wanted to get to know him," White said, "make him feel welcome. We [lost Caruso], so I can see how that is like -- [he] got traded for a guy who was the heart and soul of the team. We wanted to make him feel welcome. Let him know we had his back and we were excited to have him." Bulls players have rallied behind this new direction of the team, hosting a player-driven minicamp in Miami in August, more than a month before they had to report to training camp. Giddey ruptured a ligament in his ankle at the Olympics, so he did not attend the camp in Miami, but he returned to Chicago with nearly the entire roster weeks ahead of the start of the season, when the Bulls began scrimmaging with a 14-second shot clock, forcing players to push the pace and make quick, decisive decisions. "That kind of play style is best for most of us," Williams said. And Giddey's at the center of it, starting each of the Bulls' seven games; averaging 14.1 points, 6.3 rebounds and 6.3 assists; and knocking down a career-high 43% of his 3s. Still, the Bulls are 3-5, in eighth place in the crowded Eastern Conference standings. Earlier this week they lost 135-126 to the previously winless Utah Jazz and were outscored by 18 points in Giddey's 30 minutes. Giddey did not have substantive extension talks with the Bulls ahead of the season, sources told ESPN, and will enter restricted free agency this upcoming season. But the veteran holdovers on the roster, LaVine and Nikola Vucevic, are reaping the benefits of his passing ability -- much as they did in their abbreviated time playing with Ball in 2021-22. LaVine has started the season shooting 49.5% from the field, his best mark in four years. Vucevic is shooting 55% from the field and 48% from 3, both career highs. Chicago is still expected to explore trade options for both LaVine and Vucevic later in the season, sources told ESPN, but the focus now is for both players to rebound after disappointing 2023-2024 seasons. "We've got pieces," Giddey said. "It's not like we're starting from scratch. It's a really talented group and whether that's the first week or the 15th, or somewhere in between, we'll be where we're meant to be. "We are all buying into what we're trying to do here."
|
