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Jamal Collier
Multiple Authors
The Chicago Bulls got a new face of the team’s latest rebuild, landing North Carolina forward Caleb Wilson with the No. 4 pick in Tuesday’s NBA draft.
Wilson, a 6-foot-9 forward, averaged 19.8 points on 58% shooting and 9.4 rebounds this season in college and is considered perhaps the best athlete with one of the highest upsides in this year’s draft class. However, Wilson did not have the same body of work as the three players selected ahead of him after he broke his thumb in early March and missed the NCAA tournament.
Nevertheless, his leap in productivity at North Carolina, along with his quickness on the floor and strong motor, made him a strong bet to be a high-impact NBA player and made this selection an easy one for Chicago, which has a guard-heavy roster and need for an impact player in the front court.
“I feel great and I feel like that happened for a reason,” Wilson told ESPN about his thumb injury. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to play in the NBA, and I feel like if that would’ve never happened, I wouldn’t be in the position that I’m in now.”
The Bulls got some franchise-changing luck when they moved up into the top four during the draft lottery in May, cashing in on just 20.3% odds to land the No. 4 pick. Chicago was widely expected to take whoever remained from the stacked top four players in this year’s class — BYU forward AJ Dybantsa, Kansas guard Darryn Peterson, Duke forward Cameron Boozer and Wilson — although the Bulls worked out a variety of players in Chicago ahead of this selection.
Wilson becomes the first draft pick of new vice president of basketball operations Bryson Graham, who was hired after the season as the new lead executive to run the front office. Graham has a chance to leave his imprint on the Bulls right away this summer. He hired former Portland Trail Blazers interim coach Tiago Splitter as head coach in Chicago, and the Bulls have an additional first-round selection at No. 15 with salary cap flexibility to build the team this summer.
Six years ago, the Bulls were in an almost identical situation. They had just hired a new head of basketball operations and a new head coach and moved up in the draft lottery to the No. 4 selection.
But Chicago is hoping to have better results than they did in the Arturas Karnisovas era, which produced one playoff appearance in six seasons and which began with the team selecting Patrick Williams fourth overall in 2020. Williams showed flashes early in his career of being a solid role player, but he never lived up to the franchise-changing expectations his draft position warranted, a mistake that was only exacerbated by a five-year, $90 million extension awarded to Williams in 2024.
