The first name to watch in the Chicago Bulls‘ veteran sort-out is Tre Jones. Rival front offices are keeping tabs on the backup point guard, and Sports Illustrated’s Elias Schuster expects him to be traded by the deadline if he is still on the roster when the season opens, a report relayed Wednesday by Da Windy City’s Ernesto Cova.
The appeal to contenders is easy to describe. Jones is not an explosive scorer, but he runs a second unit with very few mistakes, keeps the ball out of harm’s way and defends his position. Playoff teams pay real prices for that profile every February, and Chicago now employs it on a roster that has little use for it.
That is the direction question underneath the report. With a new front office and a new head coach in Tiago Splitter, Cova’s read is that everyone outside of Matas Buzelis, Caleb Wilson and Dailyn Swain is available at a reasonable price — a list that covers Norman Powell, Isaac Okoro and Patrick Williams along with Jones. Josh Giddey is the complicated case: he projects as the starter, so he would cost far more than a market-rate backup.
The summer has already shown where the minutes are going. Splitter’s Las Vegas roster has leaned on Wilson and the rookies, and Tuesday’s first Summer League win came with the offense running through the young perimeter group. If the front office follows that logic into the season, Jones is more useful as a trade chip than as insurance — and if Giddey is eventually moved too, the depth chart behind him belongs to the kids anyway. My expectation is that Chicago holds Jones into the season, lets contenders get desperate, and takes the best second-round-pick package on the table.
For fantasy purposes, Jones is a deep-league and dynasty watch whose value is entirely about his address. On the Bulls’ bench he is droppable; a trade to a contender would keep him in a low-minute caretaker role; the one path to standalone value is Giddey moving first, which would hand Jones short-term starter minutes with assist and steal utility. Track the order of the dominoes, not just the first one.
