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What I’m hearing about the Bulls’ plans four weeks from the trade deadline

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Intel from across the NBA to hone in on what the Bulls might do at the deadline.

For the past 18 months, Arturas Karnisovas has worked to position the Chicago Bulls roster for flexibility. Seven players with a combined $90 million in expiring contracts set the team up for significant space this summer.

With 2026 free agency expected to be underwhelming, the Bulls face a crossroads at the February 5 trade deadline. After another up-and-down start to the season, the Bulls (17-20) don’t appear to be making a surprise postseason run. Do they act now to get ahead of key decisions, or wait and risk losing contributors in free agency? Do they prioritize adding younger players with upside, or continue investing in the present at the expense of their future?

I canvassed sources across the NBA to gauge how the league views Chicago’s roster, starting with the team’s biggest decision: what to do about Coby White.

Coby White

The biggest decision facing the Bulls is White’s impending unrestricted free agency. Sources confirmed other reports that the Bulls tried to keep him last summer, when they offered him the maximum allowable extension, roughly $80 million over four years. White outplayed that number and rejected the offer to remain in line to become an unrestricted free agent in 2026.

With more teams projected to have cap space in 2026, and without being able to wield the power of matching rights as they were in Josh Giddey’s restricted free agency, the Bulls have less leverage to bring him back at a palatable number. With that in mind, sources expect that the Bulls will try to move White ahead of the deadline.

Any team in the market for White knows they will be signing up to pay him in the offseason. However, his bird rights still hold meaningful value to any team trading for him because they can exceed the salary cap to re-sign him. This especially applies to salary-impacted contenders. Given that White is making less than the mid-level exception, it will be easy enough to come up with salary matching, making him a desirable asset at the deadline in spite of his lingering calf issues.

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The question becomes, what will the Bulls consider to be a sufficient return? One source suggested the ballpark of a mid-tier contract and a prospect in return. Another source said a late first and salary filler, and didn’t think a high-upside first would be available.

Some of the speculated destinations included Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, and Portland as sensible potential landing spots.

Ayo Dosunmu

Whereas people around the league anticipate that the Bulls will try to move White to avoid the risk of losing him for nothing, Ayo Dosunmu is considered a player Chicago will hold onto.

One league source pegged Dosunmu’s market value at or below the mid-level exception — projected to be roughly $15.1 million in 2026-27. That figure limits his trade appeal in a way that White’s does not. Because every team below the luxury tax will have access to the full mid-level exception, Dosunmu’s Bird rights carry far less weight in a trade context; teams won’t need to use bird rights to sign him. They can simply do so using the mid-level.

League sources view Dosunmu as a positive-value player, with the most optimistic theoretical return suggested was a late first-round pick.

While any additional draft capital would benefit Chicago’s future, that dynamic helps explain why most around the league expect the Bulls to keep Dosunmu. Unlike White, there is no urgency created by leverage, cap mechanics or a looming market squeeze. Absent a surprising offer, the prevailing expectation is that Dosunmu is viewed as a player the Bulls can retain at a more modest price rather than a primary trade chip.

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The rest

Beyond White and Dosunmu, league sources continue to describe the Bulls’ direction as difficult to pin down. With seven expiring contracts on the books, Chicago has theoretical flexibility, but teams are no longer prioritizing cap-space creation, instead focusing on retaining contributors on team-friendly extensions. To get off of expiring salaries, teams have to be willing to take back longer-term money while acquiring draft compensation. But the Bulls don’t seem to value doing that, one source said.

As a result, sources said there is limited appetite for Chicago’s remaining expiring deals. Kevin Huerter ($18 million), Zach Collins ($18 million), and Nikola Vucevic ($21.5 million) are largely viewed as salary ballast rather than positive assets. There was some optimism around the league that Vucevic’s market might reopen in the 2025 offseason after Chicago’s unsuccessful efforts to move him at last year’s deadline, but sources do not expect that to materialize ahead of the 2026 deadline.

If the Bulls were intent on prioritizing draft capital and looking beyond this deadline, league observers pointed to Tre Jones and Jalen Smith as more plausible value pieces. Both have fans around the league and are on team-friendly, medium-term contracts.

Even so, there is little expectation that Chicago would move Jones, in particular, given his standing with Billy Donovan.

Donovan recently offered insight into what the organization values in a Bulls player, which helps explain why certain pieces are retained.

Said Donovan: “From my perspective, when you’ve got players that are inside your organization, and you get a chance to see them every single day… We’ll have to continue to say, ‘Okay, what does a Bulls player look like? What do we want out of a Bulls player? Who are those guys?’ Because some of these guys could represent all those things that we value as an organization, and you may want to bring them back.”

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“I’ll give you an example, just he’s already signed, but Tre Jones embodies all that,” Donovan added. “He’s a winner, a competitor, a great team guy, a locker-room guy, a really good worker. He’s got great relationships. There are certain things, DNA-wise, that you want to have inside a player. You certainly can evaluate them in between the lines, but you want to accumulate people, quality people.

“The talent part, you certainly want to elevate talent, but you also have to look at the cost to do that. Sometimes, if you have players inside your organization that are free agents and embody everything you want to be about, you have to look to bring them back if it benefits the organization long term.”

That perspective may help explain why Patrick Williams has fallen out of favor. Fan sentiment has shifted toward a change of scenery in his sixth season. League sources were blunt about the cost of facilitating such a move, saying it would likely require attaching multiple first-round picks to offload his contract, and therefore not worth doing for Chicago.

While Williams’ $18 million annual salary is not prohibitive in isolation, his on-court production has lagged well behind that number, and increasingly rigid cap planning has made those types of bets far less appealing. Even conceptually pairing Williams with White in a deal designed to absorb unwanted money from another team was described as counterproductive.

After the 2025 trade deadline, Karnisovas said he was positioning the Bulls for flexibility. Chicago is on track to have significant cap space heading into 2026, but the free-agent class and the broader usefulness of cap space as a team-building tool have waned considerably. That may change in future cycles, but the current leaguewide expectation is not of a sweeping sell-off, rather a far more limited outcome centered primarily on White.

That possibility raises questions about what flexibility ultimately means for Chicago. With the 2026 free-agent class widely viewed as thin, league observers note that clearing space alone is unlikely to produce meaningful upgrades. The realistic avenues are narrower: pursuing a restricted free agent via an aggressive offer sheet, returning free agents and waiting for opportunistic trades, or an overarching change in philosophy such that taking on bigger salaries and draft picks becomes an appealing method of team building.

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