As part of a suite of organizational updates that set the stage for the Chicago Bulls' 2026-27 training camp, on Thursday, the Bulls announced a final slate of front office staff hirings reporting ultimately to Bulls lead front office executive Bryson Graham.
Building out the rest of the staff 📋 pic.twitter.com/56cQRBHwDE
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) September 24, 2026
Brian Hagen assumes the role of senior vice president of player personnel. Dionne Calhoun fills the role of assistant athletic trainer. Alex Kaufman joins the franchise as senior manager of basketball operations and general manager of the Windy City Bulls.
Jarrett Sutton slotted in as a scout and intelligence coordinator. Justin Irwin is due to serve as the franchise’s assistant strength and conditioning coach. Finally, Noah Fax will fill the role of coordinator of basketball operations.
Since the NBA is well known to be a league of relationships, it’s worth pointing out the common denominator within a few of Graham’s latest staff hirings. The New Orleans Pelicans.
Given the majority ex-Pelicans representation in the Bulls’ front office hiring update, it’s reasonable to conclude that something in Bryson Graham’s career history in New Orleans is compelling him to reunite himself with a collection of his former Pelicans front office staffmates in Chicago.
The backstory on Graham’s final staff hires
Brian Hagen was a Pelicans colleague early in Graham’s front office career in New Orleans during the 2010-11 and 2011-12 NBA seasons, before embarking on a 15-year career with the Bulls.
Fun trivia fact: there was a Pelicans rookie on the franchise’s 2010-11 season roster who also carved out a career stop in the Bulls organization and will make their return to the franchise during the 2026-27 NBA season - Quincy Pondexter.
Alex Kaufman and Jarrett Sutton are more contemporary ex-Pelicans brethren with Graham, as they both entered the Pelicans organization back in 2019 and worked in a variety of roles predominantly focused on scouting.
There are two ways this can work out
The biggest concern one might have about Graham stocking his Bulls front office full of Pelicans alumni is that he may be prioritizing cronies over competence in his staff hiring. It doesn’t take a battery of data analytics queries to know the New Orleans Pelicans are historically bereft of fielding winning basketball teams.
In the Pelicans’ franchise period in which Hagen and Graham overlapped, one season resulted in the Pelicans making an NBA playoff appearance (2011), and the other season resulted in a 21-45 win-loss record for the 2011-12 NBA regular season.
As for Kaufman and Sutton’s Pelicans overlap with Graham, the franchise only notched two NBA playoff appearances out of six NBA seasons (2022, 2024).
In isolation, Graham and his Pelicans contemporaries scored a few scouting hits, drafting players like Dyson Daniels or Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
Ultimately, the Bryson Graham front office is either going to prove that extenuating circumstances muted the full potential of the competitive strategy and scouting vision Graham and his buddies cooked up in New Orleans, or Bulls fans may be in for a frustrating Bulls front office evolution if Graham’s NOLA front-office reunion, wrapped in red and black, looks a lot like the actual New Orleans Pelicans.
