BRYSON GRAHAM'S OFFICE is nearly empty. There's a family portrait of his wife and three children on the desk along with a new nameplate.
An air purifier hums. He has been the Chicago Bulls' vice president of basketball operations for two months, but he hasn't had much time to decorate.
There is, however, one item he has made sure to prominently display. Anyone who walks by can see it in a display case.
It's the envelope that contains the Bulls' logo, from May 10 -- his first week in his new job -- when Chicago jumped five spots in the draft lottery to secure the No. 4 pick.
The Bulls used it to select Caleb Wilson , a North Carolina forward who draft experts say has as high of a ceiling as any prospect in the class. Wilson scored 35 points in his first summer league game last week, the second-highest-scoring game for a rookie debut since the event began two decades ago.
"To land that pick," Graham told ESPN, "it is a great foundational piece that's needed." "It was a good day." For six weeks, Graham stacked 10-hour days, organizing the staff and analytics department to create scouting reports for the draft and free agency, bringing in players for predraft workouts, and hiring two front office staffers. He did this all while interviewing 12 head coaching candidates over video calls and having four in-person interviews before hiring Tiago Splitter, who spent a season as interim coach with the Portland Trail Blazers .
The Bulls hired Graham, a 39-year-old former Atlanta Hawks executive and New Orleans Pelicans general manager, after firing their previous top front office decision-makers, president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley, on April 6 after another dismal season. It was a signal of a new era as much as a condemnation of a past one.
The task -- turning around a franchise that for nearly 30 years has struggled to emerge out of the shadows of dynasties past -- is daunting. The Bulls have missed the playoffs in eight of the past nine seasons, including the past four.
They have won a single playoff series in the past decade and have made the conference finals only once this century. And they have not made an NBA Finals since 1998, when they capped a run led by Michael Jordan with six titles in eight years.
"We have a chance to come in and establish a team identity, establish a culture and try to make sound decisions that can bring this organization back to what it once was," Graham said. "We're going through the tough times right now, but we're building something.
I think we're going to build something special." If they do, and resurrect this dormant but still-iconic franchise, it could change the balance of power in the East. "Everyone thinks you're handcuffed and have bad ownership," an executive with a rival team told ESPN.
"But if you succeed, you've saved Bulls basketball and become a legend there." UNDERSTANDING HOW STEEP the task is for Graham to do so, however, requires an understanding of the stasis of the past six years under Karnisovas and Eversley. Interviews with more than 20 sources, current and former employees and others with intimate knowledge of the team's operations, describe the franchise as riddled with top-to-bottom poor decision-making, misguided loyalties and an insular culture that exacerbated both.
Bulls CEO Michael Reinsdorf believes Graham is the man to solve all of it. "He understands what it's going to take to build a winning organization," Reinsdorf said at Graham's introductory news conference.
Still, for as promising as Graham's arrival might feel, and for all the early platitudes, it also feels eerily familiar. Six years ago, the Bulls also hired a well-regarded front office.
Six years ago, they also hired a new, respected coach. And six years ago, they also found lottery luck and moved up to No.
4 in the draft. "One of the most important steps I had to take was to find the right person to lead our organization," Reinsdorf said in April 2020 while introducing Karnisovas.
Reinsdorf, the son of team chairman Jerry, was handed the keys to the organization in 2010 as the team's president, before gaining full control of the franchise in 2020. Karnisovas and Eversley were his first hires.
"Ownership is responsible for hiring the right person to lead the basketball team and then should step to the side and let the basketball people do their work," Reinsdorf said then. "If we pick the wrong person," Reinsdorf said, "it could take years to recover."