On June 24, 2014, Arturas Karnisovas' path to being the Bulls' head of basketball operations began.
No, not really. But he and the Bulls will be forever linked by that night. On it, the Denver Nuggets (for whom Karnisovas was assistant GM at the time) pulled off the draft-day heist of a lifetime at the Bulls' expense — flipping the No. 11 pick in the first round (with which the Bulls selected Doug McDermott) for picks No. 16 and No. 19, which turned into Jusuf Nurkic and Gary Harris, respectively.
All these years later, Nurkic recently revealed via Twitter that he was fully expecting to play for the Bulls before news of the trade reached him, saying he received a visit from the Bulls' director of international scouting, Ivica Dukan, just before the draft.
A brief summary of that history:
- McDermott was gone from the Bulls before his rookie contract expired, and is now on his fifth team in the last four seasons.
- Harris inked a four-year, $84 million extension with the Nuggets in Oct. 2017. Though he's endured a down season in 2019-20, he remains the team's starting shooting guard and a core piece.
- Nurkic, the Nuggets flipped to the Portland Trail Blazers in Feb. 2017, where he had blossomed into an automatic 15-10 and defensive boon before suffering a severe leg injury in March 2019. He figures to jump back in as a key contributor there after signing a four-year, $48 million extension (which he had turned into a bargain) in the summer of 2018.
And of course, the Nuggets snagged Nikola Jokic with the No. 41 pick in that same draft — his emergence was part of the rationale behind parting with Nurkic.
NBA
That 2014 draft is one of the first things mentioned when recounting Karnisovas' successes as a talent evaluator and team-builder in Denver. Apparently, it hasn't left Nurkic's mind either.
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