IN AUGUST 2024, more than a month before the start of training camp, a group of Chicago Bulls players gathered in Miami for a player-driven minicamp.
For years the Bulls had talked internally about their desire to play a different style of offense, and that summer they finally began making changes to their roster to do so. They had already moved on from DeMar DeRozan, who was traded to Sacramento earlier that summer.
Two weeks before that, in a sign of the changing priorities within the team's front office, the Bulls traded defensive stalwart Alex Caruso to the Oklahoma City Thunder for then-21-year-old guard Josh Giddey.