Chicago Bulls fire vice president Artūras Karnišovas, general manager Marc Eversley
After missing the playoffs for the fourth year in a row, the Chicago Bulls have fired their top two executives, vice president Artūras Karnišovas and general manager Marc Eversley.
"Artūras and Marc have led with a deep commitment to the Chicago Bulls. These decisions are never easy, especially when they involve people we respect both personally and professionally. We are grateful for their dedication and the work they've put in over the past six years. At the same time, we have not had the success our fans deserve, and it's my responsibility to go in a new direction. This move is about positioning our team for sustained success moving forward," Bulls president and CEO Michael Reinsdorf said in a statement.
Karnišovas and Eversley have run the team's front office since April 2020. During that time, the Bulls went 224-254, a .469 winning percentage, and the team made the playoffs only once, losing in the first round to the Bucks in 2022. They reached the play-in tournament in 2023, 2024, and 2025, but lost all three times.
"I want our fans to know that I hear you and understand your frustration. I feel it as well. I know this will take time, and I am fully committed to getting this right," Reinsdorf said. "At the Chicago Bulls, our focus remains on building a team that can compete at the highest level and ultimately contend for championships. We are committed to taking the necessary steps to move the Bulls forward in a way that makes our fans proud."
The Bulls gutted their roster before the trade deadline, shipping off Ayo Dosunmu, Julian Phillips, Nikola Vucevic, Dalen Terry, Coby White, Kevin Huerter, and Dario Saric in trades.
As of Monday, with four games left on the season, the team holds the No. 9 spot in the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery, with a 4.5% chance of landing the top pick. They also potentially will get the Portland Trail Blazers' first-round pick if that selection falls between No. 15 and No. 30. They also have two second-round picks.
The Bulls more or less have been in the wilderness since former head coach Tom Thibodeau's relationship with the franchise deteriorated more than a decade ago. Karnišovas and Eversley inherited a roster that had gone 22-43 the previous season under coach Jim Boylen, and their first move was one of their best: replacing Boylen with Billy Donovan. They followed that up, however, by using the No. 4 pick in the 2020 Draft on forward Patrick Williams, a decision that, to put it charitably, has not worked out for the franchise. The five-year, $90 million extension Williams signed four years later wasn't exactly a home run either.
In fairness to Karnišovas and Eversley, they have had some hits. Alex Caruso was an awesome signing in 2021, the same summer that they nabbed guard Ayo Dosunmu with the No. 38 pick in the draft. Matas Buzelis, drafted No. 11 in 2024, looks like a keeper. The jury is out on Noa Essengue, drafted No. 12 in 2025. Generally speaking, though, the Bulls of the last few seasons serve as a cautionary tale. The Nikola Vučević trade at the 2021 deadline was the first in a series of win-now moves that turned a bad team into, ultimately, a sad and mediocre one.
The Karnišovas-Eversley era peaked in December of 2021. Caruso and Lonzo Ball wreaked havoc defensively, Zach LaVine was a terror in transition and DeMar DeRozan made just about every jumper he took in crunch time. After Ball's knee betrayed him, though, the team was never the same. Chicago was not sturdy enough to withstand Ball's absence, and the next few years saw Karnišovas continually bring up this setback in press conferences while failing to reimagine the roster.
Eventually, the Bulls pivoted. Caruso, LaVine, DeRozan and even Vučević are now gone. They took way too long to move on, though, and didn't get nearly as much in return as they could have. Dosunmu and Coby White, two success stories for their player-development staff, were moved at this year's deadline too, and Chicago didn't get a single first-round pick back for either of them.
To the Bulls' credit, they've spent the last year and a half making future-focused moves and no longer seem content to make the Play-In every year. The teardown was long overdue, though, and the execution hasn't been particularly impressive. It makes sense that the team would want a new front office to build this thing back up.
The Big question now is what does this mean for head coach Billy Donovan's future with the organization? The team is said to want him to stay, whether he remains head coach or takes on another role. Donovan's name had been prominent in the North Carolina coaching search, but instead, on Monday, they hired former Nuggets coach Mike Malone.
