SAN ANTONIO — Many times this season, Josh Giddey has struggled to hide his frustration.
He’s a bit of an open book on the court. And as the Bulls racked up double-digit losing streaks and stumbled out of playoff contention this season, Giddey found his patience wearing thin.
“I probably need to do a better job with hiding my emotion and frustration,” Giddey told the Tribune with a laugh. “That’s something I’ve probably got to work on. It’s hard, but I want to lead when things are hard.”
But after the trade deadline, things got harder. Giddey struggled to adapt to the new status quo in Chicago. He hated losing. He hated watching games from the sidelines while rehabbing a hamstring injury. And if he was honest, he missed his teammates. It was easy to embrace leadership with Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu at his side. It was much harder to do it all alone.
And it was much harder for Giddey to lead without a clear sense of where the Bulls were heading. The guard said he didn’t hear much from vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas in the weeks after the front office traded or cut eight former players from the roster. Confusion only fostered more frustration for Giddey, who is signed to remain in Chicago through 2029.
“Everyone wants to know what’s going on,” Giddey said. “We want to know what the strategy is going forward. If you look at the way this team’s put together now, I don’t know if we’re put together to win a championship this year or whether we’re going into a rebuild or a younger phase.”
Giddey expects to have a longer conversation with Karnišovas during his exit interview at the end of the season. He hopes that the meeting will offer better clarity toward the executive’s intentions for the roster, both for the 2026-27 season and in the longer term.
But even as one of the central building blocks of the current Bulls roster, the guard doesn’t expect to be keyed into the dealings of the front office this summer.
“That’s their job,” Giddey said. “That’s what they get paid to do. They never come to me and tell me how to play basketball. I try to do my job and trust them to put together a team who’s going to put us in the best position to win games.”
Giddey has become known for triple-doubles. He tallied his 29th career triple-double two weeks ago and now ranks 18th on the NBA all-time leader list in the statistic. But he’s not sure if that’s an accurate encapsulation of his identity as a player — or his goals on the court.
The triple-doubles make sense to Giddey. He’s a pass-first point guard who averages 9.2 assists per game, which accounts for more than a third of the Bulls’ total assists. He is also a uniquely tall guard on a team that is fairly poor on the boards, which means he ultimately shoulders a larger portion of rebounding responsibilities than a typical point guard.
“The way that I play, those things naturally just happen,” Giddey said. “It probably doesn’t capture the way I play. But I don’t try to think about it during the game.”
Still, Giddey feels this season has helped to define his identity as a player. The guard is averaging a career-high in points (17.4 per game) and assists. He’s still a preferred target for opposing teams on defense, still more turnover prone than he would prefer — but the core of his style of play in Chicago has been established.
While Giddey believes he can continue to improve as a player, he also trusts he has found a version of himself that will remain consistent throughout the rest of his career.
“I think I’m always going to be who I am as a player,” Giddey said. “You can always find pieces, always add to your game a little bit. But I’m not going to suddenly change my game and turn into Steph Curry or Victor Wembanyama. I am who I am.”
If the guard has solidified who he is for the Bulls, then what comes next?
Giddey still feels young — he’s only 23, which is young by both NBA and real-world standards — despite the fact that he’s five seasons and two teams into his career. But as both a veteran and a leader for this locker room, the guard isn’t content to keep his focus inward in future seasons.
“I’m at a point now where winning is — it’s always been important — but I’m putting more of an emphasis on winning now,” Giddey said.
This is a shared goal in Chicago. But the path to winning is still unclear — both for Giddey and for the Bulls.