Caleb Wilson, a fresh Bulls front office and renewed optimism in Chicago

IT'S AUG. 22 and Chicago Bulls fans pack the area surrounding the United Center. The team is hosting its annual two-day fan festival, Bulls fest, and fans are lining up for the chance to meet the 20-year-old who has not only provided a new, unfamiliar hope around the franchise this summer but someone to pull the franchise out of a decade of irrelevance. This is Caleb Wilson's introduction to Chicago. The lines for his meet-and-greet wrap around the atrium. The next event of the fest is a slam dunk contest in the parking lot, where Wilson is one of the judges. But first, he screams and sticks his tongue out for a hype video in front of a crowd of fans standing in front of the Michael Jordan statue. The image -- a juxtaposition from where the franchise once was and where it now plans to go -- is impossible to ignore. The anticipation has been growing for months, ever since the Bulls selected the North Carolina star No. 4 overall during the NBA draft in June. The Bulls hope Wilson is the new face of the franchise, a much-needed refresh for a team that has missed the playoffs in eight of the past nine seasons. The hype began to boil after Wilson's electric showing during his first in-game action at the Las Vegas summer league. Wilson finished his first professional game with 35 points, the second-highest total for a rookie debut in summer league history, and knocked down seven 3-pointers in the process. In his second game, Wilson soared over 6-foot-11 Jazz center Jonas Aidoo to throw down an emphatic dunk in one of the top highlight-reel plays of the summer. By his fourth and final game, Hall of Fame forward Kevin Garnett sat courtside to get a glimpse of the rookie to whom he started to draw comparisons. Both are 6-foot-10, wiry 215-pound players buoyed by elite athleticism. "I actually think his floor is Kevin Garnett," Warriors forward Draymond Green said on his podcast this summer. "And man, if that's your floor, oh my god. Do you know how great KG was? I actually think with Caleb Wilson, Kevin Garnett could be his floor. That's how special I think Caleb Wilson is." Teams are normally hesitant to make grand proclamations from summer league, but Wilson's performance stood out. "He looks," one team source told ESPN, "like we got a dude." The Bulls believe Wilson is yet another new pillar of an almost entirely new leadership structure. They hired a new head of basketball operations, Bryson Graham, who had a reputation for building through the draft and finding young talent. Graham then selected a new head coach, Tiago Splitter, who has a background of player development success stories. They selected Wilson and then rounded out the roster with veterans such as Norman Powell and Nic Claxton, but Wilson's development will be the franchise's top priority in the 2026-27 season. "We just want to see internal growth from our young guys and even from our veteran players," Graham told ESPN. "We just want to see a team that's going to go out there, represent this city well, play hard and obviously continue to grow and continue to develop." Though expectations are high for Wilson across the league, team sources said there is no pressure for the Bulls to compete for a play-in or playoff spot in a loaded Eastern Conference. After years of the Bulls trying to jump-start themselves back into relevance, the decision-makers in Chicago are preaching patience before a resurrection. For his part, though, Wilson has made his goals for his rookie season clear. "I expect to have Rookie of the Year, honestly," Wilson said. "I'm going to work hard. I'm going to do what it takes. I feel like the team is really good for me and how I envision to play." THE SUMMER LEAGUE debut was eye-popping in a smaller, but even more tantalizing, way. Wilson's seven made 3s were more than he made during his entire freshman season at North Carolina. Concerns about his shooting ability -- along with an injury that shortened his college season and kept him out of the NCAA tournament -- were the biggest knocks against him entering the draft and why he was ultimately selected behind AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer in the 2026 draft class. To explain and perhaps ease those concerns, Wilson pointed to the system at North Carolina, one that did not ask him to take 3-pointers (he averaged 1.1 attempts per game), but he also noted how he began working to improve his shot once the college season ended. "I'm glad I didn't shoot 3s in college," Wilson said after a practice this summer. "Because if I did, I wouldn't be here. I don't know where I'd be. I don't think I'd be a Bull." A broken thumb and left wrist fracture ended Wilson's college season in February, and he couldn't move his thumb while wearing a cast that kept the digit straight. But he could still hold a ball to practice his form, and he did so -- over and over, all summer. Wilson estimates he has been shooting between 2,000 and 2,500 3-pointers per day. For as much as Wilson's performance on the court generated buzz throughout the league, his work ethic has only heightened the excitement inside the organization. He cried before his professional debut, five months to the day since the end of his college season, because he said he had been waiting for that moment for so long. The other top picks in his class were shut down from action after two or three summer league games, but Wilson pushed to keep playing, texting Graham to ask to play on the second night of a back-to-back in Chicago's third game of the summer. Wilson averaged 23.5 points, 7.3 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 2.5 blocks in four summer league games at and was named to the all-summer league first team. When informed that his 35-point debut was one of the highest-scoring debut performances in the history of the event, Wilson shrugged it off because his team lost. Outside of his time in Las Vegas, Wilson has been a mainstay in Chicago since the draft. He works out at the team's practice facility in the morning and then returns around 8 or 9 p.m., along with fellow first-round pick Dailyn Swain, who was selected No. 15 by Chicago in June, for workouts that routinely approach midnight. "Everybody highlights his athleticism, which is generational," Swain said. "But he can do a lot of things. He's really good facing up at the elbow, jab. He has a really good midrange shot. He's been knocking down 3s, so he's widening his arsenal." GRAHAM'S FIRST MAJOR hire as the team's head of basketball operations was to bring in Splitter, a coach whose vision Graham touted as close to his own. As an interim coach last season, Splitter led the Portland Trail Blazers to a surprise playoff appearance as the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference, but during his introductory news conference in Chicago, neither Splitter nor Graham focused on repeating such an unlikely jump. Graham touted Splitter's player development credentials, from helping Deni Avdija become an All-Star in Portland to his days as an assistant coach, guiding Jarrett Allen as a member of the Brooklyn Nets' player development staff in 2019 or a young Alperen Sengun as an assistant with the Houston Rockets in 2023. "The first thing you do is connect," Splitter said. "That's the foundation of everything you do, especially at this level. If you don't have that, it's really hard to demand and make them respect you. The foundation is [to] connect with the players in different ways." Splitter started his bond with Wilson early this summer. It began with a shared interest in music and with Splitter being surprised at Wilson's range in music tastes. The 19-year-old began learning the guitar in his spare time this summer and has played everything from hip-hop to classical to country. "Very interesting young guy," Splitter said. "You see how his brain functions and the variety of things he can have a conversation about." Splitter also stepped in to coach the Bulls at summer league for the team's first two games in Las Vegas. He said he wanted the opportunity to establish a culture with his young players. For a young coach still finding his identity, it was good practice for the challenge of taking over a franchise starved for a winner with newfound expectations of the future. "He's really detailed," Wilson said. "He knows what he wants you to do and he's pretty serious. Most coaches, you have coaches that are joking around and stuff like that. Tiago's pretty serious and he knows what he wants. "I'd rather have someone who's serious and straightforward with me, so I know what I can do better." Wilson functioned as the team's point guard and primary ball handler for most of the summer -- something that wasn't featured in Garnett's Hall of Fame career -- but those duties will lessen by the start of the season when he's surrounded by Josh Giddey, Powell and third-year forward Matas Buzelis, who will help run the offense after starting 77 games last season. "It builds a healthy environment," Graham said. "It gives the younger guys confidence, too, because they know that, when it is going bad, they have some guys that have done it, some guys that have won and had success and they can learn. It's just really important for the overall development of our younger players and the health of our team." In his previous experiences as a head coach, Splitter has been malleable in his style of play. He coached in France and led Paris Basketball, a club in the first division of French basketball, to the EuroLeague playoffs with a fast-paced offense. With the Blazers a season ago, defense became the calling card. Chicago represents his first chance to shape a young roster in his own image. "You have to adapt your system to the players you have," Splitter said. "Yes, I have a vision. I have a certain way I want to play, but you also have to explore what they do best. That's what we're going to do here." It's what Splitter was hired to accomplish -- to help nurture and guide Chicago's roster while its young players develop. In what has become an annual tradition, Bulls players convened in Miami last week for a player-run minicamp a few weeks before training camp. And as the hype for Wilson continues to rise, the Bulls rookie remains focused on his ultimate goal. "I do expect to win," he said. "Whatever it takes to win is what I'm going to do."