Two Open Spots in Chicago and Brandon Boston: The Race Nobody Is Watching

At 9:12 in the morning, on a late-September day on Chicago's West Side, the media staff had not yet set up their tripods and the lights were still off. On the hardwood there was only one man. He shot. The ball bounced. He gathered it. He shot again. Three hundred attempts, maybe more — nobody counted. The only remarkable thing in that empty frame was his breathing: steady, slow, with none of the urgency of someone running a race.

In twenty-two years of sitting in sports studios in Chicago, I have learned one thing: the biggest stories of an NBA season usually begin in practices nobody bothers to attend. People will spend all of October talking about nine-figure contracts, about stars changing uniforms, about teams anointed as contenders. Then in April, those same people are surprised by a name they had never read.

Brandon Boston is standing in exactly that position: the position of a man shooting before anyone turns on the lights. The Chicago Bulls enter training camp with two open spots on the ledger — the 15th standard contract and the third two-way slot. It sounds small. But in a league where the margin between the sixth seed and the eleventh seed is four wins, the 15th spot is never small.

Chicago enters camp with two doors left open

Start with the administrative picture, because it determines everything downstream. A team in the regular season may carry up to 15 standard contracts plus three two-way slots. During training camp that ceiling rises to roughly 20 players, because the front office needs room to audition different archetypes before locking the books.

Chicago has exactly two vacancies at the end of two different lists: the 15th standard spot and the third two-way spot. They sound similar but operate on entirely different logic — and this is where almost all social-media commentary goes wrong.

The 15th spot is a seat on the varsity bus. That player travels on every flight, dresses for every game, and is listed on the official roster. He may not play a single minute, but he belongs to the team.

A two-way slot is something else. Two-way players are limited in the number of games they can be active with the parent club (currently 50 per season), spend most of their time in the developmental league, and earn half the rookie minimum. It is the cheapest door through which an organization can retain control of a talent while letting him play real basketball in a real setting.

For Chicago, leaving both open into camp is not negligence. It is a statement of method.

Three years of Chicago dismantling itself

To understand why the Bulls left two spots open, look back at the last three years at the United Center.

In 2026, DeMar DeRozan departed in a three-team sign-and-trade involving Sacramento and San Antonio. That same summer, Alex Caruso — widely seen as the defensive heart of the team — was sent to Oklahoma City for Josh Giddey. By February 2026, Zach LaVine left Chicago in an even larger three-team deal that sent De'Aaron Fox to San Antonio and returned a package of players and a first-round pick to the Bulls. In June 2026, Lonzo Ball was moved to Cleveland for Isaac Okoro.

Add it up: in less than two years, Chicago traded or moved nearly the entire spine of a roster that had reached the play-in repeatedly. What remains is a young group, a head coach on a long contract, and a front office trying to prove it can build through the draft rather than through big cheques.

The summer of 2026 marked a turning point: Matas Buzelis was taken 11th in 2026, Noa Essengue 12th in 2026. Josh Giddey was extended long-term. Coby White and Patrick Williams stayed. Nikola Vučević remains the anchor in the paint.

This is a roster neither strong enough to contend nor weak enough to be placed in the lottery conversation. It sits in the NBA's most dangerous zone: the middle, where every end-of-bench slot carries doubled meaning — both a contingency plan and a tradeable asset.

Which is why the 15th spot in Chicago this year deserves far more attention than a normal 15th spot.

The 15th spot is a financial decision before it is a basketball decision

Since the apron rules were tightened in the current collective bargaining agreement, every minimum contract has become a strategic chess piece. A team crossing the second apron absorbs a cascade of restrictions: no sign-and-trade access, no full mid-level exception, limits on cash in trades, and most importantly limits on aggregating salaries in deals.

For Chicago, a team trying to preserve future flexibility, every dollar at the end of the ledger must earn its keep. The 15th spot therefore serves two parallel functions.

First, it is a personnel contingency at the lowest possible cost. When injuries arrive — and in the NBA injuries are not a hypothesis, they are a schedule — a team without a competent 15th man is forced into the mid-season market, where prices double.

Second, it is a trade asset. A minimum contract for a young player, especially with non-guaranteed language, is the perfect salary filler in larger deals. A front office that understands this will never fill the 15th spot with a glossy name just to please the audience.

What stands out: Chicago left this spot open all summer instead of signing a veteran early. That approach signals they want a genuine competition, with direct comparison and data gathered in practice and preseason games — not a decision based on a résumé.

When an organization chooses the more time-expensive path over the cheaper decision, it is a sign that an evaluation system exists. And once an evaluation system exists, players without big names suddenly become the most closely examined people in the building.

The third two-way slot: the most undervalued door in the NBA

The media talks endlessly about the 15th spot because it is easy to narrate. The third two-way slot is the more interesting story.

Teams once carried only two two-way slots. Raising it to three changed how organizations run their developmental pipeline. Three slots mean a team can simultaneously test three different prototypes: a pure scorer, a versatile defender, and a long-term project who needs a year to adjust to professional pace.

For a rebuilding team like Chicago, the third two-way slot is precisely where you audition archetypes that traditional scouting models ignore: players with one NBA-level skill who are missing another piece of the profile.

Here is the crux: a two-way slot is no longer a parking lot for players who are not good enough. It has become the cheapest tactical laboratory in the league.

A two-way player can be tested in roles no team would dare test with a standard-contract player, because the cost of failure is a few dozen developmental-league games. If it works, the team can convert the contract cheaply. If it fails, nobody loses anything but a roster line.

Chicago left the third two-way slot open. That is a deliberate vacancy.

Who Brandon Boston is inside that ecosystem

According to public draft records, Brandon Boston came out of Kentucky and was selected 51st overall in 2026 by the Los Angeles Clippers. That is a position from which most players never reach a full NBA game, let alone a career.

But Boston belongs to a strange subset of second-rounders: they have already passed through the period of being most underestimated before entering the league. They no longer entertain illusions about being handed an opportunity. They know that if an opportunity exists, it must be picked up by hand.

Within Chicago's roster context, a player like Boston can be read in two opposite directions.

Reading one: he is a reserve wing scorer, the kind of player who can log eight to twelve minutes a night, generate points when the primary attack stalls, and avoid breaking the team defensive structure. For a team lacking bench scoring options, that is genuine value.

Reading two: he is a two-way project, someone who needs time and will spend most of the season in the developmental league refining his decision-making under pressure.

Both readings are reasonable. And because both are reasonable, the story is interesting. It forces Chicago to answer a question every middle-tier team must answer: are we building for this season, or for three seasons from now?

The biggest blind spot: people are measuring the wrong thing

This is where I want to slow down, because it concerns how an entire industry evaluates players.

For years I sat in studios listening to analysts present advanced-stat tables as if they were final verdicts. They offered estimated impact metrics, usage rates, efficiency numbers. Those things have value. They are not meaningless.

But they carry one lethal limitation: they measure players in conditions where they have already been trusted. For a 15th-man player who has never been trusted, the numbers do not reflect ability. They reflect opportunity.

A player who goes 4-for-12 in the final four minutes of a decided game is not a bad player. He is a player placed in a position where success was impossible, against a defence already in rhythm, alongside four teammates also trying to score for themselves.

So when a team like Chicago decides to leave the 15th spot open into camp, it is implicitly admitting that current statistical systems cannot evaluate players at the edge of the roster. They need to see it with their own eyes. They need to see how a man reacts when pushed out of the main group. They need to see his running rhythm when the ball is not on his side.

That is information that lives in no spreadsheet.

What people do not see when they watch a practice

Twenty-two years of covering this league taught me an odd skill: watching the players without the ball.

When you watch a practice, your eye is pulled automatically toward whoever is holding the ball. That is instinct. But everything that determines whether a player survives in the NBA sits behind his back.

A player who survives knows where to stand when a teammate drives. He knows to slide back into position before the opponent releases the pass. He knows that moving half a second early can create a gap nobody records in a box score.

A player who does not survive is someone who is only good with the ball.

Which is why I believe a player of Boston's archetype — if he truly has those qualities — is in a far more favourable position than the ledger suggests.

The sleeping giant

I have used that image many times in my career, and I know how easily it is abused. It only has value when there is evidence of something moving slower than the required rhythm.

In Chicago this season, that sign exists — but not where people usually look.

It is not in Boston. A player without a guaranteed contract cannot be a sleeping giant; he is a man knocking on the door.

It is in Chicago's decision-making apparatus itself. For three years the Bulls have lived in a half-state: not decisively selling, not decisively buying, not decisively committing to one direction. Every summer they make a big move, then declare they are competing, then finish the season in the middle.

Leaving two roster spots open into camp may be the sign of a front office that has woken up, that understands value lies in evaluation rather than in signings. But it may also be the sign of a front office still waiting for something better to appear — and about to end another summer with nothing changed.

The difference between those two scenarios will reveal itself within three weeks.

Three things I could be wrong about

People often ask why I always reserve the end of a column for my own potential errors. The answer is simple: I have been wrong many times, and I have learned that a prediction without self-examination is just a declaration.

First: I assume Boston has enough offensive skill to be considered for the 15th spot. But I do not yet have detailed efficiency data on his recent seasons. If his true shooting is genuinely low, his real door is the two-way slot — and everything above remains structurally correct while being wrong about the person.

Second: I assume Chicago has an evaluation system good enough to find value at the edge of the roster. Their recent history does not fully support that assumption. A team that has repeatedly made half-decisions may keep making half-decisions.

Third: I assume the third two-way slot is a strategic asset. But if Chicago lacks a strong developmental programme at the lower level, that slot is just an empty seat with a name on it.

All three could break my conclusion. I accept that. What I do not accept is pretending they do not exist.

The most notable thing is not who gets picked

There is a powerful temptation in this profession: turning every sports story into a story about one individual. Who will shine, who will fall, who will be saved.

That reading is seductive, but it hides the structure.

What matters in Chicago this season is not whether Brandon Boston survives. What matters is that an organization has decided to use its final two roster doors to search for value rather than to buy peace of mind.

If that is true, the consequences are far larger than one player's fate.

Every fallen giant is a slap in the face of those who collect names instead of collecting people. And in the NBA, one of the most efficient places to collect people is the 15th spot — where there is no spotlight, no glory, and no illusion either.

What to watch over the next three weeks

There are three concrete signals I will be tracking, and anyone wanting to test this column can track them too.

First, Boston's minutes in the preseason. If he appears in the early part of the third quarter with the main rotation, that is a sign the coaching staff is testing him in a real role. If he only appears in fourth-quarter garbage time, his real door is the two-way contract.

Second, the assignments he is given on defence. A trusted player is matched against real opponents. An untrusted player is parked in the corner where there is least to do.

Third, whether Chicago fills the third two-way slot before the season begins. If they leave it open until forced to close, they are waiting for someone. If they fill it with a familiar name from the developmental roster, they are choosing safety.

There is no metric behind these three signals. No predictive model generates them. They exist precisely in the gap that data analysis cannot touch.

A sixty-million-dollar player is not guaranteed to make more difference than a timid kid at the academy who knows how to watch

I wrote that line years ago and I stand by it.

Across my career I have seen every kind of expensively acquired player fail, and every kind of last-resort option survive a decade. The difference is rarely talent. It is whether a man is willing to do the small things nobody applauds.

Which is why I still attend practices nobody attends: because that is the only place where those qualities can still be seen with the naked eye.

Conclusion

In a season when the giants keep pouring money into proven names, Chicago left two spots open. Those two spots will not necessarily produce a good player. But they create a condition that fewer and fewer places in the NBA dare to create: a fair competition that ignores the résumé.

If Brandon Boston seizes it, he will not merely win a roster spot. He will force an entire industry to answer the question it keeps dodging: how many good players have been buried not because they were not good enough, but because nobody turned on the lights so they could shoot.

I will be at Chicago's first preseason game, sitting low in the stands, counting which quarter Boston enters. That is my prediction, and it is verifiable.