TORONTO — Nikola Vučević knows the signs of when a team and a player are headed in opposite directions.
It’s happening in Chicago. The Bulls are building toward the long-term future, eyeing draft picks and shopping their top talent in the process. This pivot is hardly unexpected after a failed attempt to build their roster into an Eastern Conference contender ended with last summer’s departure of DeMar DeRozan.
But in his 14th NBA season, Vučević knows exactly what he wants — and it isn’t another rebuild.
“I’m getting closer to the end of my career,” he told the Tribune. “I would like to be somewhere that’s in win-now mode.”
This isn’t new for Vučević. The veteran center is intimately familiar with the feeling of watching a team’s future diverge from his own.
Vučević was the Orlando Magic’s cornerstone for nearly nine years, earning two All-Star selections while leading the team to a pair of playoff runs in 2019 and 2020. But by the start of the 2020-21 season, the roster had stalled out. Vučević knew it.
Leaving Orlando was always going to be an emotional blow after spending nearly a decade there and building a deep relationship with the community. But months before the Magic dealt him to the Bulls in March 2021, he could tell the end was near.
“From a basketball perspective, it was clear that it was going to happen — even if it didn’t happen then, it was going to happen sometime,” Vučević said. “That team had run its course and they were going in a different direction. So it made sense to do it.”
Although it took less time, Vučević has reached a similar stalemate in Chicago. Now, however, the Bulls are having a harder time finding a trade partner.
While the Golden State Warriors have shown consistent interest in Vučević ahead of next Thursday’s deadline, the Bulls are having a hard time getting any team to cough up their preferred return of a first-round pick — an almost necessary asking price after the Bulls bungled opportunities to acquire picks in prior trade negotiations for Alex Caruso and Andre Drummond.
How Chicago Bulls center Nikola Vučević is blocking out the trade noise to sustain his career-best shooting season
Vučević became difficult to trade last season as his 3-point shooting sunk to an all-time low, adding to the wariness for teams already uncertain about picking up a 33-year-old center on a (likely overpriced) three-year, $60 million contract.
He erased some of that trepidation by opening this season on a heater, shooting 47.3% from 3-point range in November. But Vučević is regressing rapidly to the mean at the absolute wrong time, plummeting below 27% behind the arc in January.
With only four games left before the deadline, the Bulls and Vučević no longer have time to reverse the effects his sudden cold snap might have had on his overall trade value.
“It’s been frustrating,” Vučević said. “I’m trying not to overthink it too much. That’s normally where I get stuck is thinking too much about it and letting the misses kind of take over everything.”
Even as he remains bluntly realistic about the future, Vučević isn’t pushing for a trade.
This season has been a marked improvement from past years with the Bulls — his role is better defined, his teammates are finding him more consistently and his output has improved consistently. And even before training camp began, Vučević felt invigorated by the opportunity to help his young teammates reach the next stage of their development.
Vučević isn’t content with losing, but he feels comfortable with his current standing in Chicago.
“For now, I’m good where I’m at,” Vučević said. “Obviously the team has to be better. We understand that. But at this point, (leaving Chicago) is not something that I’m thinking about. In a year and a half when I’m a free agent again, we’ll see.”
Still, it’s clear to both Vučević and the Bulls that the end is near. Whether the front office can glean value — primarily a first-round pick — from that parting will be a crucial question.
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