Bulls' summer league injury wave hasn't quieted down

A week ago I noted the injury list was getting long. It hasn't gotten shorter. As of early August, Giddey and Claxton are still day-to-day, joined at various points by Wilson, Okoro, Jalen Smith, and a handful of depth pieces. That's a lot of names for what's supposed to be low-stakes summer ball.

The timing matters. Claxton was the centerpiece of the June trade with Brooklyn, brought in specifically to give this team a defensive anchor it never had last season. Giddey averaged 8.9 assists per game when healthy but played only 59 games. Both were supposed to arrive at training camp as solved problems. Right now they're open questions.

The honest answer is that most of this is probably fine — summer league day-to-day designations are often load management dressed up in medical language. But this roster doesn't have much margin. Last year's 31–52 finish was partly a depth problem; the front office spent the summer fixing it. If Wilson, Claxton, and Giddey are all managing something real when camp opens, the new-look rotation never actually gets to practice together before the games count.

Training camp will tell us what we actually have. Until then, the Bulls are in the same holding pattern they've been in all July — a roster that looks better on paper than last year's, with an injury list that keeps giving you reasons to hedge.