By Arthur Hill | at July 26, 2026 10:16 am
The Bulls selected Noa Essengue with the 12th pick in the 2025 draft, but he has to prove himself to a new front office and new head coach Tiago Splitter, who don’t have the same investment in the 19-year-old big man that the former regime did, Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times writes in a subscriber-only piece. Essengue only played two games last season before undergoing shoulder surgery, so he lost nearly a year of development time.
He didn’t make a strong impression at the Las Vegas Summer League, where Splitter briefly benched him in hopes of sending a message about the team’s expectations. Sources tell Cowley that the new coaching staff wants Essengue to be “less emotional and more tenacious” in his approach to the game.
“He’s got to maybe bring a little more force in everything he does,” Splitter said. “That’s something we’re working on.”
Cowley suggests that Essengue may start the upcoming season in the G League as he works to refine his skills and develop the intensity that he’ll need to become an NBA regular. With a deep roster of frontcourt players, the Bulls likely won’t have consistent minutes to devote to Essengue.
There’s more from the Central Division:
The Cavaliers‘ refusal to offer up Evan Mobley in a potential trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo or Jaylen Brown that could have made the team more attractive to LeBron James has put the former Defensive Player of the Year in a difficult position, observes Joe Vardon of The Athletic. Vardon states that if Mobley doesn’t develop into an elite player soon, he’ll wind up being blamed for the inability to make a franchise-changing move.
Even though negotiations with Jalen Duren have dragged on for nearly a month, the Pistons haven’t changed their minds about wanting to re-sign their starting center, Omari Sankofa II of The Detroit Free Press states in a mailbag column (subscription required). Rival teams are limited to offers of four years and $177MM for the restricted free agent, and no one was willing to make that commitment to Duren before cap space started to run dry. That left him with little leverage in his talks with the Pistons, whose current offer is short of the 25% max of $239MM over five seasons. Duren’s only alternative is to accept the team’s $9.6MM qualifying offer and become an unrestricted free agent next summer, but that’s a huge gamble that isn’t guaranteed to recoup the money he would be giving up. Sankofa notes that no player has ever turned down the security of a near-max rookie extension.
The Pistons remain committed to Ron Holland, Sankofa adds, even though his poor outside shooting has made it tough to give him major minutes in his first two NBA seasons. Sankofa states that the team is hoping he can improve that area of his game, along with his court vision on drives to the basket, and emphasizes that he’ll need to show improvement in year three to solidify himself as part of the future.
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