Bulls are awarded the No. 4 pick in NBA draft lottery, landing their first top-5 selection since 2008

The steps the Chicago Bulls have taken the last few months toward remaking their organization — hiring new leadership and expanding the front office, firing the coach and launching a search for his replacement — are beginning to create optimism that their meandering rebuild could be trending upward.

Their collection of young, often-injured players is also set to receive another lottery pick in this year’s NBA draft, which is scheduled for Oct. 16. On Thursday, the Bulls were awarded the No. 4 pick in the league’s first virtual draft lottery.

They entered the day with the best odds of picking eighth at 34.1% and a 32% chance at leaping into the top four but only a 7.5% chance at the No. 1 pick.

The Minnesota Timberwolves landed the No. 1 pick, followed by the Golden State Warriors and Charlotte Hornets.

Arturas Karnisovas, the team’s vice president of basketball operations, served as the Bulls’ representative for the lottery, an event held in Chicago the last two years. It was pushed to television and computer screens by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Bulls finished with the seventh pick in back to back years and entered Thursday with the seventh-best odds to the get the No. 1 pick, a nod to just how stagnant the franchise has been recently.

They have gone 71-158 the last three seasons, and despite entering 2019-20 with dreams of a playoff berth, weren’t even close enough to the top of the standings to receive an invitation to the NBA’s restart in Orlando, Fla.

Karnisovas was hired in April in part because of his track record of finding talented players throughout the draft. During his time as the Denver Nuggets general manager, they drafted Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr. and Malik Beasley and traded for Jusuf Nurkic and Garry Harris (from the Bulls) — all while the Nuggets never selected higher than seventh. The Bulls are hopeful that draft success will carry over to Chicago.

Opinions surrounding this year’s draft vary, but it is generally considered to be one of the weaker classes in recent memory. Georgia guard Anthony Edwards, Memphis center James Wiseman and LaMelo Ball, who forewent college to play in Lithuania and Australia, are considered the top prospects in a wide-open field. It’s the first draft without a consensus No. 1 pick since, perhaps, 2013, when the Cleveland Cavaliers took Anthony Bennett first.

Karnisovas, however, did not share such a pessimistic view about this year’s draft class back in June.

“I disagree with some of the opinions out there,” he said during a teleconference with reporters. “I think it’s going to be a pretty good draft, and we’re going to get a good player.”