CHICAGO — Coby White, clad in Charlotte Hornets purple, inched toward the other bench, squinting down the sideline at what remained of the Chicago Bulls he blossomed with. What he saw was unrecognizable.
His former Bulls teammates were scattered at the deadline, many of them swapped for a band of repurposed former lottery talent that’s stumbling down the standings and spiking Chicago’s lottery odds. Three weeks ago, White was the longest tenured Bull, the final trace of the GarPax era. That kind of seniority typically commands a postgame mob, or something remotely familial. After a few hugs, it dawned on him how much the nucleus he knew depleted at the trade deadline.
“It’s not weird, because I’m one of the ones that’s gone,” White said, chuckling after helping hand the Bulls a 131-99 loss, their 10th straight, on Tuesday. “It’s just different. Being out there, seeing a whole new different team than when I was there. But that’s the business of it. That’s the nature of it, right?”
White’s smile widened. He beamed from inside the United Center’s visiting locker room, a postgame setting that buzzed at a volume that the home locker room down the hall seemingly hadn’t reached all season. LaMelo Ball, his new Hornets teammate, taunted him from the corner. Miles Bridges had ad-libs for the scrum. White could be heard gushing over rookie Kon Knueppel, calling him one of the two best shooters he’s ever played with.
These are the sounds of a team that’s won 12 of its last 15. The vibes of a group that’s molding its own fate. One that boasts useful youth and a distinguishable direction. That aura cloaked White, bubbly as he broke down his 10-point, 16-minute Hornets debut.
White leaped to be part of it, to play again, so thirsty he forgot to remove his leg braces when he first checked in.
“You go to a different team, a good — a different situation, right?” White said. “You want to play. The one thing I learned from (Chris Paul) is, him being one of my mentors, no matter what you’ve done on this team, when you go to a different team, you still gotta prove yourself to these guys. You still gotta show these guys that you could hoop, too.”
Naturally, White’s new mission began in the building that incubated his game. Role changes, shifts in expectations, a trek from rotational player to franchise pillar.
April 2025, despite little relevance for the Bulls’ hopes, seemed to portend hope for White. That such an eruption perhaps marked the crystallization of a potential star in Chicago. Then calf injuries eroded valuable stretches of his contract year. And then his Bulls were dismembered, stuck as Play-In threats, before he was ever asked to deliver in a playoff series.
On Tuesday morning, he told reporters that he and the Bulls had discussed extending their future together earlier this season.
“But, you know, things change,” White said. “The way the season was going, (we) wasn’t really stacking enough wins consistently.”
Nikola Vučević and Kevin Huerter’s fates, dealt a day earlier, only sealed White’s. He felt it in his gut. “You kind of read between the lines of what’s going on,” he said.
White, long rumored to be a trade asset considering his impending free agency, was dealt to Charlotte for Collin Sexton, Ousmane Dieng (subsequently moved to the Milwaukee Bucks) and three second-round picks. The Hornets amended the trade upon delivery to retrieve one of the second-round picks after determining White arrived with a strained calf — a blemish on a desperate deal and a fine depiction of White’s final half-season in Chicago.
“I’ve been dealing with calf stuff all year, and then sometimes it would just get tight,” White said, aiming to, in his own words, clear the air. “That’s all it was. So, it had nothing to do with (the Bulls’ medical staff). When that whole thing went down, everybody can have their opinions, but the medical staff always, I feel like, had my best interests here.
“If I would have never got traded, I probably would have never even said anything about it, just because I thought it was just tightness. They didn’t know, I didn’t know that it was a calf strain. That’s just kind of how I played out. It was nobody’s fault. It was never hindering me from playing. The medical staff always did right by me.”
The duration at which White’s Bulls pushed the same buttons, year over year, eliminated most what-ifs. No matter how defiant those involved might’ve been, those teams lasted long enough for ideas about their future to turn stale. They repeatedly hit their heads on their ceiling.
He witnessed direction-altering injuries, changes of the guard and a youth movement. White morphed into the kind of player craved by a team practicing a postseason push, with the kind of ambition that transcends the Play-In tournament.
Four games separate the Hornets and Bulls in the standings, though the gap in direction feels wider. With Charlotte’s progression, White has inherited new stakes. His rise in Chicago should help him savor that. Among his acquired attributes: the stomach required to shapeshift as much as he did for the Bulls; the delusion required to chase wins with some of his rosters; the trust he felt to play the roles he did.
“Through the ups and the downs, I had a lot of fans that never gave up on me and I appreciate them for that,” White said. “And a lot of people in this arena, in terms of the staff and front office, never gave up on me, and I appreciate them giving me an opportunity, even when they didn’t have to. It could have went so many different ways. I just give them a lot of credit for sticking with me.”
After an era marred by mediocrity, stunted by shortcomings, White asked that the tombstone of his time in Chicago make note of his development. He wants to be remembered for his improvement. He hopes he proved not every fruit withered around these parts.
“I think I want to just be an inspiration to guys who, early on, didn’t pan out like everybody thought they would, and then you prove a lot of people wrong,” White said. “Some guys come in the league and they’re good their whole career. I had to develop, and I had to really work, and (I played) so many different roles.
“When everybody counts you out, you still got time to always change the narrative.”
It seems he has the time and scenery to further shape that narrative. To perhaps eventually be remembered for playoff runs. To ditch the what-ifs that defined his Bulls teams.
He’ll never need to ache over what life for his Bulls might’ve felt like without him. He looked down the sideline to see that they dissipated around the same time he did.