If you've been watching the Bulls for a while, then you know that time is an endless circle when it comes to this team post-Michael Jordan.
Seven seasons ago, Chicago was at a crossroads with a mediocre roster stuck in the middle. Big changes needed to be made, and the Bulls kicked those off by trading the heart and soul of their team, Taj Gibson, to a Billy Donovan-led Thunder playoff team. In return, Chicago received Cameron Payne, a former lottery pick they dubbed the point guard of the future.
Payne did not live up to those expectations. That trade instead issued in the bleakest rotating cast at that position in the franchise's history.
It's early, but there are plenty of parallels between the Payne and Josh Giddey trades. Both were flawed lottery point guards that Presti, one of the shrewdest executives in the league, was willing to move off, and both struggled in their Chicago debuts.
Giddey isn't quite the next Payne, but he's getting there.
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Inside Josh Giddey's stats with Bulls
The theory behind how Giddey might be able to succeed in Chicago was this: If he could develop into a capable wide-open shooter and play with the ball more in his hands than he did in Oklahoma City, he could become one of the better point guards in the league.
Those conditions have been met, but Giddey is still experiencing many of the same issues he had with the Thunder.
Giddey has gotten the Bulls running more in transition, cutting more and playing a more aesthetically pleasing brand of basketball. He's even shooting a very respectable 37.3 percent from 3. None of that has mattered much for a Bulls offense ranked 24th in the league.
Giddey started every regular season game last year, but close observers saw that the team played better with him off the floor. Thunder coach Mark Daigneault lost confidence in him toward the middle of the season, playing him off the bench in second halves and pulling him from the closing lineup.
Donovan has made the same calculus, and it's only taken him nine games to do it. Giddey has been conspicuously absent from Chicago's closing lineup in its last four competitive games, and he didn't start the second half in its loss against the Cavaliers due to a combination of foul trouble and disastrous defense.
This Giddey defense 😬 pic.twitter.com/kKoTYiXP5Y
— Steph Noh (@StephNoh) November 16, 2024
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Giddey was his own worst critic in that loss, telling CHSN's K.C. Johnson, "I wouldn't have played myself if I was Billy either. I was bad at both ends."
From afar, Giddey's self-evaluation seems overly harsh. He's averaging 12.3 points, 6.4 assists and 6.2 rebounds per game in his starting role. But those raw numbers mask what has been a rough year for him.
Let's start with Giddey's offense. Even though he's making his wide-open 3s, teams are still ignoring him when he doesn't have the ball. He's only taking 3.6 per game, and they will live with him making 1 or 2 of those every night. The rest of the time, they have an extra defender parked in the paint or draped over the Bulls' better scorers, sabotaging their team offense.
Giddey's drives at the rim have also been an issue. In previous years, he never got to the line, preferring to take a floater rather than trying to draw contact. He does deserve credit for changing that approach — his 3.1 free throws per game are almost double what he shot last year — but he still can't create enough separation on those shots.
Giddey is one of the league's most-blocked guards and he's only connecting on 48.0 percent of his shots from within three feet. That ranks 263rd out of 282 qualified players, which is even more concerning given his 6-8 positional size was supposed to be one of his greatest attributes. His effective field goal percentage of 47.4 percent ranks in the 27th percentile of NBA players, per Cleaning the Glass.
Defensively, Giddey is a solid rebounder, but he has been targeted because he struggles to stay in front of his assignment. He's not a rim protector either. Despite his height, he isn't athletic enough to get into position early enough to make plays on the ball. His effort is also baffling — he's quit on a number of plays this season after making a mental mistake, leading to easy runouts for opponents.
Giddey's intangibles paint the most troubling picture of all. His plus-minus ranks 465th out of 471 NBA players this season. The Bulls have been outscored by 111 points in his 383 minutes, which is an unfathomably bad rate.
Players on bad teams usually have bad plus-minuses, but the Bulls are only a truly bad team when Giddey is on the floor. In his minutes, the Bulls have a -12.1 net rating, which is 33 percent worse than last season's 14-win Pistons. When he's been on the bench, the Bulls' net rating improves to -0.6, which translates to a slightly below .500 team.
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Bulls history may be repeating after Josh Giddey trade
Cameron Payne was regarded as the tank commander during his time in Chicago. The Bulls are playing about 50 percent worse with Giddey than they did during Payne's minutes in his first full year after his trade.
Payne turned into a punch line while he was in Chicago, quickly growing into one of the team's most unpopular players and facing uncomfortably vicious backlash from the fan base. Some of that was not his fault. He didn't choose to be traded for a beloved franchise icon, and he was a late bloomer who took some time before turning into a serviceable backup point guard. He couldn't do that in Chicago because of the baggage around that awful trade.
Giddey is facing an even bigger uphill battle than even Payne did. Not only does he need to justify being moved in an even more lopsided trade for another fan favorite, but his off-court issues have led to him being booed by opposing fans whenever he touches the ball. That will eventually happen in the United Center if he continues to struggle.
Giddey has been open about how much of a mental hurdle his last season was. He's facing the same issues this year, admitting his defensive performance against the Cavs "kind of kills your confidence."
None of this is meant to dunk on Giddey. He has been bad early in Chicago but still has plenty of time to turn his season around. Fans never really gave Payne a chance to succeed, and hopefully, that won't happen with Giddey. He's set to be a free agent this summer, and the Bulls will have to decide what to do with him.
At worst, Giddey can be a serviceable backup point guard in this league. But like Payne, he's been set up with high expectations by a bad front office, and he's walking down that same path of disappointment.
