The NBA offseason is here, and teams are wasting no time gearing up for the upcoming season.
The Chicago Bulls landed Josh Giddey from the Oklahoma City Thunder in exchange for Alex Caruso in the first trade of the offseason. Caruso is the last year of his current deal and in six month will be eligible for a four-year, $80 million extension. The Thunder’s goal in bringing Caruso in is to keep him for the long term, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
This might be the first trade this summer, but there are plenty more to come as teams look to solidify their rosters for next season, so stay tuned as we grade them all below:
Chicago Bulls get:
G Josh Giddey
Oklahoma City Thunder get:
G Alex Caruso
Chicago Bulls grade: C-
Let’s give the Bulls credit for acknowledging the reality of dealing Caruso ahead of the final season of his contract. This time last year, Chicago was hoping an 11-6 late-season run with Caruso in the starting five would translate to a return to the playoffs. Instead, after the Bulls lost in the play-in for a second consecutive year, they moved Caruso for a player who’s nine years younger and under team control on his rookie contract.
We can debate whether Giddey was the right target for the Bulls rather than adding draft picks or other young talent. Before the February trade deadline, ESPN’s Zach Lowe said, “It wouldn’t shock me if the Bulls ended up with two protected first-round picks” if they made Caruso available. Instead of multiple bites at the apple, Chicago is clearly hoping Giddey — the No. 6 pick in 2021 — gives them one special talent.
The jury is very much out on that kind of optimism three years into Giddey’s career. Last year’s playoffs overstated Giddey’s weaknesses, especially on a Bulls team that’s unlikely to worry about the crucible of deep rounds in the playoffs any time soon. Giddey hasn’t yet shown enough special skills aside from his preternatural talent as an inbound passer to convince he’s a star in the making, however.
The case for Giddey would rest on his sophomore season, when he averaged 16.6 points , 7.9 rebounds and 6.2 assists per game at age 20. Giddey showed considerable chops in creating shots at high volume, finishing 25% of the Thunder’s plays in addition to handing out 7.1 assists per 36 minutes. However, his .533 true shooting percentage was 8% worse than league average, per Basketball-Reference.com, and only improved marginally last season in a smaller role.
The fear with Giddey is his consistency with the ball in his hands on a regular basis and his lack of help in an off-ball role because of his limited shooting. He did up his 3-point shooting to a career-best 34% in the 2023-24 regular season, but the volume (4.4 attempts per 36 minutes, as compared to 5.9 for Caruso) and below-average accuracy wasn’t enough to concern defenses. It’s also telling that Oklahoma City, which has had success developing players since adding famed shooting coach Chip Engelland as an assistant, chose to move on from Giddey.
On the plus side, Giddey won’t turn 22 until just before next season. He’s younger than seven players projected to go in the first round of next week’s NBA draft, including likely top-10 pick Dalton Knecht. Shooting and playmaking tend to develop late, and there’s a chance Giddey can evolve in the same fashion as Bulls guard Lonzo Ball, a 31.5% 3-point shooter in two seasons with the Lakers who improved to 39% the next three seasons. With his size and passing, Giddey brings some of the strengths that made Ball an excellent fit in Chicago before a knee injury sidelined him for 27 months and counting.
I like the idea of pairing Giddey with Coby White, a score-first guard who is an excellent shooter (38% from 3 on a robust 7.0 attempts per game last season). Both players bring good size to the perimeter, though the Bulls will have to find a stopper to play alongside them. I’m less enamored by Giddey’s fit with unrestricted free agent DeMar DeRozan, who often functions as a de facto point guard in the Chicago offense and requires more floor spacing than Giddey would provide at his best.
The other issue for the Bulls is that although Giddey might be young enough to be in this year’s draft, he doesn’t come with four years remaining on his rookie contract. Chicago will have to decide by opening night whether to extend Giddey ahead of possible restricted free agency next summer. Either way, Giddey is ticketed for a considerable raise, an issue for a Bulls team that might already be in the luxury tax this season if DeRozan returns and won’t get considerable cap relief until 2026-27.
As compared to moving forward with Caruso, whose trade value might have diminished ahead of the trade deadline in the final season of his deal, I much prefer Chicago trading for Giddey. Whether the Bulls chose the best possible path in a Caruso trade will depend on how well they can develop Giddey.
Oklahoma City Thunder grade: A
Watching the NBA Finals had to be an interesting experience for the Oklahoma City Thunder, who came the closest of any West team to knocking off the Dallas Mavericks before they lost to the Boston Celtics in five games.
Like Oklahoma City, Boston was able to contain Dallas’ star duo of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving. However, the Celtics accomplished that task without helping aggressively off the Mavericks’ role players. The Mavericks averaged just 16.4 catch-and-shoot 3-pointers during the Finals, according to Second Spectrum tracking, as compared to a whopping 25.3 during their 4-2 series win over the Thunder.
Those open looks for Dallas’ supporting cast ultimately led to Oklahoma City’s demise. The Mavericks hit them at a 41.5% clip in the series, as compared to 36.5% in all other playoff games. And while Boston was able to hold Dallas to more difficult attempts, the difference was marginal.
According to Second Spectrum’s quantified shot probability metric, which incorporates the location and type of shot, distance of nearby defenders and shooter ability, shot quality accounts for about one-fifth of the gap between how well the Mavericks shot against the Celtics and the Thunder.
To some extent, then, Oklahoma City can reasonably blame bad luck for what happened against Dallas. But instead of resting on that, the Thunder are also being proactive in trying to replicate the perimeter defense that helped Boston contain Doncic and Irving one-on-one.
Already boasting three starters who received All-Defensive votes last season (stopper Luguentz Dort, league steals leader Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and rim protector Chet Holmgren), Oklahoma City now adds All-Defensive second-team pick Caruso, who finished second behind Herb Jones of the New Orleans Pelicans among perimeter players in the voting.
A first-team pick the year before, Caruso is the rare guard whose defensive impact matches up with the league’s best interior defenders. Caruso leads all players in the three-year version of luck-adjusted RAPM from Krishna Narsu, which attempts to isolate an individual’s impact on defensive rating while adjusting for teammates, opponents and shot-making variance. Of the next eight players in this metric, seven are big men.
If Caruso replaces Giddey in the Thunder’s starting five, it’s hard to find a weakness for opponents to hunt. That would leave Jalen Williams, a solid individual defender in his own right, as Oklahoma City’s only starter — or, perhaps more importantly, finisher — who did not receive All-Defensive votes, similar to the formula the Celtics rode to the title.
Of Boston’s five starters, the only one not to receive any votes was Kristaps Porzingis, who was ineligible. Other than the Celtics and Thunder, the Minnesota Timberwolves were the only other team to have more than two players receive multiple All-Defensive votes.
So far, we’ve focused on defense, but swapping Giddey for Caruso solves an offensive problem for Oklahoma City, too. After all, Giddey logged just 12.6 MPG in the Thunder’s loss to the Mavericks because Dallas so aggressively helped on him, shrinking driving lanes for Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams. Caruso hit a career-high 41% of his 4.7 3-point attempts last season, and he’s more comfortable playing in the dunker spot as a de facto big man than Giddey.
At 30, Caruso isn’t necessarily the long-term fit alongside Oklahoma City’s starters whom the team is still seeking. If the Thunder had decided Giddey wasn’t that player, however, now was the right time to move on — he will be in the final season of his rookie contract. And Caruso’s versatility should allow him to remain valuable into his 30s so long as he remains healthy. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported the team could initiate extension talks when extend-and-trade restrictions expire six months after this trade is complete.
Better yet, Caruso’s bargain $9.89 million salary in the final season of his contract — somehow just $3 million guaranteed through June 30 — doesn’t take much out of Oklahoma City’s cap space. The Thunder can still create nearly $30 million below the cap, more than enough to make a run at a second-tier free agent such as New York Knicks center Isaiah Hartenstein.
Down the road, Oklahoma City has some spending limitations to consider with Holmgren and Williams due extensions in 2026-27 and Gilgeous-Alexander poised to start a supermax extension the following season. The length of a Caruso extension in years may be far more important than his salary, which is limited to starting at 140% of the estimated average player salary — approximately $17.6 million, per ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
For now, adding Caruso strengthens the Thunder’s case as the favorites to win the West next season. They played Dallas to a draw last regular season, and they replaced their biggest liability in that series with a massive defensive upgrade. Oklahoma City will want to limit Caruso’s role during the regular season given his past durability issues — last season’s 71 games and 28.7 MPG were both career highs — but come playoff time, head coach Mark Daigneault will likely rely heavily on Caruso.