Bulls are rebuilding, getting younger, so unloading LaVine remains No. 1 priority

All eyes are on Bulls guard Zach LaVine.

Whether it’s watching how he’ll navigate a tumultuous relationship with coach Billy Donovan, how he’ll decide between getting his shots vs. helping his young teammates develop or just the way he carries himself through a continued cloud of trade rumors, LaVine won’t be able to escape the spotlight.

At least until he’s not in Chicago anymore.

That remains goal No. 1 for the Bulls’ front office: Do what it can to rebuild LaVine’s stock, then send him off after the first legitimate offer.

That’s easier said than done — as the Bulls have found out for almost two years. There are still three years and nearly $138 million left on the contract of the two-time All-Star, and there have been no takers without the Bulls adding draft picks in the package.

For a team that is trying to rebuild on the fly, picks are the only currency that matter. Continuing to send them out would be counterproductive.

This is the predicament that the organization finds itself in as fall camp starts this week.

To their credit, both sides have done the right amount of damage control this summer. The Sun-Times reported last month that Donovan flew to Los Angeles to spend some time with LaVine — like he does with all of his players every offseason. Meanwhile, LaVine has told the organization that he is hell-bent on playing the game the right way.

A win-win for both sides? If it gets LaVine to a different zip code, yes.

This is not about what LaVine has done or has failed to do in his seven seasons with the franchise. This is about the direction that executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley have decided to steer.

The emergence of Coby White, the trade of veteran Alex Caruso for 21-year-old Josh Giddey, the contract extension of 23-year-old Patrick Williams, the sign-and-trade to move veteran DeMar DeRozan and the decision to let rebounding machine Andre Drummond walk in free agency for nothing, it all screams youth movement.

But Karnisovas wants to play pretend that this is still a competitive team despite no longer having its best defender, clutch shooter and rebounder.

What it still has, however, is LaVine.

That’s the high wire the Bulls will attempt to walk throughout 2024-25. In a stacked 2025 draft class — headlined by Cooper Flagg — the Bulls will have to forfeit their first-round pick to the Spurs unless they finish in the bottom 10.

That means getting stellar LaVine performances but not stellar wins.

Without Caruso, DeRozan and Drummond, maybe that’s a given, but this could come down to just a few games in the standings, considering the handful of teams looking to have a ticket in the Flagg sweepstakes. LaVine is still talented enough to put on a cape and single-handedly win a few games. If that happens in November and December, fine. But if it’s happening after the trade deadline in February, well, something went very wrong in the planning.

“We’re going to try to win every game,” Karnisovas said in a radio interview last week when asked about holding on to the top-10 protected pick.

Hopefully, it’s just the executive doing and saying what he can to keep butts in the seats at the United Center.

If it’s something more than executive-speak, if it is the actual plan for Karnisovas & Co., then the Bulls have much more serious issues than LaVine lingering on the roster. They have a leadership issue, one that has no sense of reality.