The Chicago Bulls have found their new top executive.
The Bulls reached a deal to hire Bryson Graham as their new vice president of basketball operations on Monday afternoon, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.
The Bulls are the second team in the league to hire a new top executive on Monday. The Dallas Mavericks hired former Toronto Raptors executive Masai Ujiri as their next team president on Monday.
Graham spent 15 years with the New Orleans Pelicans front office, where he first started as an intern. He then joined the Atlanta Hawks last season as the team’s senior vice president.
Graham will take over in Chicago for Artūras Karnišovas, who was fired near the end of the regular season along with general manager Marc Eversley. Karnišovas was hired ahead of the 2020-21 campaign, but the team managed just one winning record and a single playoff appearance under his watch.
Head coach Billy Donovan parted with the team last month after six seasons, too. The Bulls went just 31-51 this season and missed the playoffs again. They’ve not won a playoff series since 2015, either, which was the final year of the Tom Thibodeau era.
With Graham now in place, he and the Bulls will now turn their attention to finding a new general manager and head coach. While Graham hasn’t held this role before, the Bulls clearly believe he’s the man capable of leading the franchise back to prominence after more than a decade of struggling in the Eastern Conference.
This post will be updated with more information shortly.
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