Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Julia Poe: Bryson Graham era 'feels like a very fresh start' for Bulls

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Rahimi Harris and Grody. That sounds so crazy. 104.3, the score. Wow, I like that. Midday's 10 to 2 on 104-3, the score. We've got a lot, you know, obviously ahead of us. There are very, very good people and talented people in the building already. So as I hit the ground, you know, we're not starting from, obviously, ground zero.

I want to, you know, obviously bolster, you know, our staff. I want to add to, you know, our strategy space. add to our personnel space, I think that's necessary. But look, like, you know, we've got a long way, obviously, you know, to go. And there's a lot of, you know, decisions that are going to be made. But I think right now where we're, where we're at, I think we're in a good place. And I'll get started on that here pretty soon. That is a voice of Bryson Graham. The question was asked by our guest. She joins us on the hotline. She was at the press conference. Julia Poe, the Bulls and Sky Beat writer for the Chicago Tribune. Julia, thank you.

Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me on. What were your big takeaways from just hearing Bryson Graham and Michael Reinsdorf address the media? Yeah, I mean, I think the first kind of impression that I had was just this feels like a very fresh start, and it feels that way for a lot of reasons. Bryson is young. He is someone who is still really looking to prove himself in the NBA as a front office executive.

And I think all of those factors kind of brought. this very fresh energy, this very different feel, just kind of compared to what we've felt around the team and around the front office in past years. Julia, I know that there's no timetable that has been declared. I think a lot of things depend on what kind of reform we do when it comes to the draft and the draft lottery. But it was very clear that everyone knows they're in a rebuild and it's going to take time because he was very much emphasizing that it's going to be a while before this team is,

I guess, competitive. I mean, how did you feel about the way he laid things out from that standpoint? Yeah, I appreciated a few different aspects of how he approached that. First, something that I think is very frustrating for any of us in the media space and for fans as well is when executives refused to say the word rebuild. And that was a word that he was happy to say today. And I think that that is really helpful because it lets us get the semantic debate out of the way and just actually talk, planning nuts and bolts, what the future is going to look like.

Bryson was very clear that he does not expect the team to be in a place where a few good draft picks, a few good acquisitions mean that this team will be competing for, you know, playoffs championship in 26, 27. And I think that all of that very realistic, very pragmatic. And it's helpful because it allows fans to adjust their expectations and to just understand what is happening in this initial year. You don't want someone to come in and set one standard and then not be able to meet it. and I think the Bulls are kind of setting just a very realistic idea of the layering approach they're going to have to take here.

Julie, I'm glad you brought that up to because I think that the first time Michael Reinsdorf addressed the media after he fired Arturis Karna Chavez and Mark Eversley was that we didn't necessarily know how much of the direction of this team or possible lack thereof during the AKME period was from Michael Reinsdorf in the owner's chair or if it was from. from the front office. Did you, over time, either with that availability he had or anything future that was said today, get clear direction for yourself or just understanding upon that as well? Well, there's always kind of this dichotomy between what people say at a press conference and what they actually do when, you know, the going gets tough and you get into it. So I think there's always that dynamic. I will say there was a point in the press conference today where Bryson kind of said, you know, what Michael and I want in a head coach.

He starts a sentence that way. And Michael Reinstorff puts his hand on his shoulder, cuts him off and goes, no, I hired you. You're going and hiring the head coach. This is, you know, this is your team now. This is your decision-making from here on out. And I thought that was really telling at least in the signaling and kind of the front-facing facade, at least, that the Bulls want to put on. Only time will tell if that is actually accurate.

how the team is being run. But I really do feel that what Michael Reinsworth was trying to say today is that he feels very confident in the hire that he made here. And from there, he wants Bryson Graham to go out and make this team his own. There was a lot of emphasis on the resourcing that he is willing to provide, that the Bulls are willing to provide to this new front office. But I do think that ownership is at least trying to signal early that they want their decision maker to feel like he is kind of operating with a lot of agency in that way.

Julia, I got to ask a follow-up on that. Did you feel like I felt that that was a direct response to the reaction that he got when he basically said Billy Donovan can coach here as long as he wants? And if an executive has a problem with that, then he's probably not the right executive for us. Because I felt like he was trying to quell that before it could even get started. Like, yo, this is my guy. I won't be having the influence in the way that I was describing if Billy Donovan wants to stay here. Absolutely.

And I think it's a hard needle to thread. The thing that I will always say to anyone in a front office or ownership position is that the more that you talk to the media, the easier it is to kind of thread this needle. Because we can ask follow-up questions. We can turn this into more of a dialogue rather than just having to have, you know, a press conference once a year where you try to explain many, many diverse decisions that you've made over time. I definitely think that in that press conference that you're referencing right after the firing, Michael Reinsdorf hit really heavy and hard. hard on a couple of concepts, the idea that he was going to be a little bit more hands-on, kind of how hard he went on backing Billy Donovan when they were trying to get him to stay. I think that there was a certain amount of maybe overshooting in either the way that those

concepts were articulated or just how fans interpreted them. Sometimes you say what you think is the perfect thing and then people read it and they go, I'm going to interpret it this way or, oh, that sounds bad to me. You know, it's a difficult thing to kind of accomplish, and I do understand that. But yes, to answer, that's a long answer to a short question. Yes, I do feel like that was reactionary to kind of what you're describing. Well, and I feel like that's what we're doing is trying to answer questions the best way we know how and trying to have as much background as we can to know what other questions to ask next.

Is there anything still on your mind question-wise that maybe wasn't addressed, you know, in the past two press conferences that we've just mentioned? Well, I think there's so many questions that we have at this point in time. It was hard, you know, in this press conference you could even see both men kind of struggling with trying to answer questions because we're asking, okay, how are you hiring a coach? What is your timeline going to look like? How are XYZ things going to go? And they simply don't know.

He's still figuring out, you know, how to get from one office to another, very new to Chicago, has a lot of work ahead of him. So I think I have a lot of kind of those more, my... minutia questions, a lot of those more detail-oriented questions that hopefully will get answered in the coming weeks. I think my big picture thing that I kind of worry about with the Bulls is that what we saw with the last kind of regime was that hire was strong at the start. Arturis came in with a really good resume.

People felt very highly about him throughout the NBA. And his first moves were bold. He took some big swings. he tried some interesting things. I really think that those first six months, that first year, were very interesting from that perspective. And then it just kind of died on the vine. And I think the big question for the Bulls is how do you pivot?

How do you become a team that is adaptable? How do you fail and then learn from that failure and get better? Because there's going to be a lot of failing in the next year and the next five years. And the only way that this team gets better is that you don't hit on a draft pick and you figure out how to learn from it and move on. you don't hit on a trade and you figure out how to learn from it and move on. And I just don't think that it has been proven in a very, very long time that this team and this franchise can do that. So that's kind of my biggest picture question.

It is that part of it. She is Julia Poe. She covers both the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago Sky for the Chicago Tribune. And she is with us here on Rahimi Harris and Grotie. And Julia, I love what you just said because my whole thing, whether the AK era or not, is can you have the optionality? Can you pivot and be nimble and be ready to adjust? What I liked about his answers was the fact that he talked about they had different paths. They could take this off season because of the cap space, because of the availability of all their future first round picks.

And I know they're going to take a slower road to competing, but it seems like he's a guy who would be able to pivot quickly. Did you get that sense from the way he was talking about having different options from a front office standpoint? I definitely did. I think that's always my biggest. I always wonder if a young executive versus an older executive with more experience, I always wonder which is better at pivoting. Because someone with more experience will maybe just have more of a sense of, okay, here's how we do, XYZ, here's how, you know, I've messed up before, here's how I handled this in the past,

here's how I'm going to handle it again in the future. But it can also be difficult for a more veteran executive to pivot. Like that's just something that gets harder, the longer that you've been in. a role or been doing something. So I think that the exciting thing with having, you know, a 39-year-old executive come in who's really at the start of everything is he's going to have a lot of ideas and not be, you would expect, not be as set in his ways. And so I think that a lot of what he was articulating today was that willingness to try things, you know, to maybe do something that you look back on and you go, man, that looks stupid. But I stand by it because I felt good about

the decision. I think the big test for him is still going to be, okay, all of that is great in theory. How do you handle things when something actually goes wrong? How do you handle a really devastating injury or a draft pick that just does not pan out? How do you react from those things? And so I think, again, this is not the most helpful answer, but I think time will tell. He's definitely saying all the right things. It's just really difficult to kind of analyze how that's going to look on basically his first day on the job. Julia, I think you and Marshall are both spot on here. I mean, If we look back at what happened, Arturis Karas Chávez was most aggressive in the beginning of his tenure, as you mentioned.

And then we saw him just, I think at times get frozen when it came to transactions. The NBA saw three years where the Bulls didn't make a trade at the deadline. They were the only team, as you know, over that span to do so. Then I saw, I think, a retreat to similar scouting processes or scouting banks, you know, markets that he knows when it came to the draft. Then doubling down on players like Patrick Williams in the contracts, I even wonder about how the extra money given to Josh Giddy affects this new office moving forward.

And if that makes him not as movable, you know, these are things that I think about because that lack of action is going to lead to a slower process now that he's not here. Definitely, definitely. And I think that something that actually really impressed me over the course of this press conference is modest de Zellis was sitting in the back of the press conference for the entire thing. He actually made everyone clap when Bryson Graham walked in, which was very on brand for that young man. And I thought it was really interesting. In that setting, you've got your young star in eyesight while you're being asked this question. Bryson was asked if any players on this

roster are untouchable. And he did a really good job articulating the answer, which is no. Like, there really aren't untouchable players anywhere in the NBA. And he talked through his mindset of why and how you hear out offers and you have conversations about and you remain flexible on players so that you can always be making a team better, also realizing that that never means that you don't value or care about a player as an individual and as a person. And I just thought that that specific answer was really deaf.

That is an awkward thing, quite frankly, to be asked when you have you know, one of those star players in the room with you. It's a great question, but it puts an executive in an uncomfortable spot. And I just think that having that mentality of knowing, clearly no one on this team is talented enough to be untouchable or this team would be competing in the playoffs. You know what I mean? And so he gets that and he seems to understand the level of flexibility

that's going to be required to, as he described it, get the team out of the mud. And I think that all of that is a really positive sign. least at the beginning of something. Last one for you here. He said he was trying not to strike fear on the players in the roster. I am curious, though, the size-linked athleticism, physicality moniker that he used, the acronym, excuse me, slap.

Does that fit Josh Giddy? Because I don't think it does, but I could be wrong as far as defense-first guys that he was describing. Right. He really, really emphasized the importance of two-way players. And I think that there is a version of a team where you surround. Josh Giddy with two-way players, which includes maybe a modest Bezellis, maybe a Noah Sange, those types of guys who do fit the majority of that slap acronym.

I think that there is a version of that that could make sense. This has always been the question, though, for kind of Josh's future, not just with the Bulls, but in the league, is how he fits his version of kind of that one-way all-offense play into a team that actually wins basketball games. So no, I don't necessarily know how that fits with it. I also don't know what the Bulls do in terms of whether they feel that they can or should anchor themselves to Josh when they're going through a rebuild like this. There are other plays on the roster who absolutely fit that mold. I just don't know if Josh Giddy is really going to be able.

He's certainly not going to be able to change his game to fit into it. So he would need to become the type of player who can make all of those slap players, as they're kind of calling them. can make them look good. If it makes you feel any better, Julia, when Marshall asked me this question about point guard, I immediately thought of Yuki and Trey Jones, who were 5-8 and 6-1, respectively. So I thought he was trying to point out the shorter point guards. No offense to them. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Hey, Yuki's got size, you know, in terms of the way that he passes the ball. He's got a lot of, you know, he makes himself bigger, right? That's what they kept telling themselves last season. Wow. Julia, this has been great. Also, I'm really looking forward to talking to you about the very new look Chicago Sky Team soon. Keep up the great work on the courts, plural in town. Thanks, Julia.

Definitely. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. That is Julia Poe, who asked a lot of questions in the press conference today. And, yeah, always offers really good insight whenever she is on. She's great. She is. We love Julia. Highly valued. She is. Highly valued. Yes. I don't know that we have a non-value. I just think we need to tell people they're valued more.

I'll work on that. We all need to work on that. LeBron James is also struggling with value, but it's not in the same way. I think he's reached peak dad. You'll know it when you hear it next.