CHICAGO -- The Chicago Bulls announced Wednesday that they have purchased an NBA Development League team that will being play in 2016-17 in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. The new franchise will be the 22nd in the D-League and the 13th that will be fully owned and operated by an NBA team.
"It's big because we'll have control over staffing the basketball part of it," Bulls executive vice president John Paxson said. "And so you expect to have symmetry between our organization and that organization. As time goes on, we'll have a new collective bargaining agreement in a few years, the hope is at some point even if you don't have guys on your NBA roster, then you'll have some control over a number of players on that [D-League] roster where you truly can kind of grow and develop and maybe find a diamond in the rough so I think it has great value.