On June 24, 2014, Arturas Karnisovas' path to being the Bulls' head of basketball operations began.
No, not really. But he and the Bulls will be forever linked by that night. On it, the Denver Nuggets (for whom Karnisovas was assistant GM at the time) pulled off the draft-day heist of a lifetime at the Bulls' expense — flipping the No. 11 pick in the first round (with which the Bulls selected Doug McDermott) for picks No. 16 and No. 19, which turned into Jusuf Nurkic and Gary Harris, respectively.
All these years later, Nurkic recently revealed via Twitter that he was fully expecting to play for the Bulls before news of the trade reached him, saying he received a visit from the Bulls' director of international scouting, Ivica Dukan, just before the draft.