Bulls are the less-heralded winners of first play-in night

The Chicago Bulls weren't in the NBA's play-in tournament for the first time in four seasons. That doesn't mean they didn't have something to root for.

The Portland Trail Blazers' 114-110 victory over the Phoenix Suns put Portland into the NBA playoffs. It gave the Bulls a long-delayed first-round pick from a 2021 trade that failed to convey at the last four drafts.

The Bulls finally got a first-rounder in trade

Back in August 2021, the Bulls traded forward Lauri Markkanen to the Cleveland Cavaliers in a three-team deal that involved the Blazers. The Bulls got forward Derrick Jones Jr., along with a conditional second-round pick from the Cavs and a lottery-protected first-round pick from the Blazers.

But the conditional Cavaliers pick never conveyed, and the Blazers missed the playoffs every season since 2021. When Markkanen became an All-Star with the Utah Jazz, the Bulls' minimal return looked especially bad. They went on to trade veterans like Nikola Vucevic, DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Alex Caruso, receiving only one first-round pick in all the deals, save getting their own 2025 pick back.

Now they'll finally see a return, landing Portland's 2026 pick, which is likely to be No. 15 overall. Coupled with their own lottery pick, which has a 4.5 percent chance of landing at No. 1 and a 20.3 percent chance at being a top-four selection, the Bulls will have draft capital to start their rebuild.

Bulls' old front office won't reap the benefits

The man who made the Markkanen deal five years ago won't be around to see the fruits. Chicago fired Arturas Karnisovas a week before the end of the regular season, coming after a six-season tenure that saw the Bulls struggle to develop young players. The one exception, guard Coby White, won a play-in game with a different team Tuesday.

One reason was the Bulls' lack of draft capital, having sent away two selections that turned into lottery picks when they acquired Vucevic. Karnisovas seemed disinterested in draft picks, not picking up any in the Bulls' fire sale at this year's deadline, nor when trading Caruso to the draft-pick-heavy Oklahoma City Thunder.

In what looks to be a strong 2026 draft, having two top-15 selections is quite valuable to the Bulls, who have only Josh Giddey and Matas Buzelis as definite building blocks going forward. It also might tempt a front-office candidate who might otherwise be wary of working for the Reinsdorf family.

It's a shame that the Bulls were three-time play-in losers in the Karnisovas era. Perhaps they needed to cut ties with their former general manager completely in order to finally get a win from the play-in tournament, even if their team still didn't advance.