Bulls By The Numbers: 31-51, A Net Rating Underwater, Cap Room To Spare

31-51. The Bulls finished last season 31-51, their fourth straight year outside the playoffs. Splitter inherits that record, not the process behind it — Billy Donovan is gone, the roster is younger, and this number is the baseline everything in camp gets measured against.

Net rating, -5.3. Chicago scored 112.1 points per hundred possessions last season and allowed 117.4, a net rating of -5.3. Pace was 103.2, middle of the league. The problem wasn't speed, it was efficiency on both ends, and that's what Splitter's staff was hired to fix.

$161.5 million. Payroll sits at $161.5 million on 14 contracts, under the $165.0 million cap and well shy of the $200.4 million threshold. Giddey ($25.0M), Claxton ($23.1M), Powell ($21.5M) and Williams ($18.0M) carry the biggest deals. The room to work is real; it hasn't landed a center yet.

17.0 points, 9.1 assists. Josh Giddey averaged 17.0 points, 8.3 rebounds and 9.1 assists last season in 32.1 minutes, shooting 36.4 percent from three. Those are point-forward numbers on a losing team — proof he can fill a stat sheet, not proof yet he can move the record.

Plus-4.2, 13 games. The best five-man unit Chicago ran last season — Vučević, Huerter, Okoro, Giddey and Buzelis — posted a net rating of plus-4.2 across 13 games and 65 minutes. Three of those five are no longer on the roster, which is the catch with small-sample lineup data.

Own picks through 2030. The Bulls control their own first-round picks in 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030, with only a 2027 second owed to Oklahoma City. No cap crunch, no mortgaged future — the open question is what Giddey, Buzelis and Claxton turn into with that capital sitting behind them.