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 .

It was Giddey, the team believed, who could be the engine of a new era of Bulls basketball -- faster, more egalitarian.

Coach Billy Donovan knew it was

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