After talking to his players collectively late Thursday and individually all day Friday, general manager John Paxson put off his postmortem with the media until Monday.
"We'd like to add some interior scoring and length and athleticism," coach Scott Skiles said, echoing Paxson's comments from the first day of training camp in October 2006.
Paxson declined to include Luol Deng in substantive trade talks for Memphis forward-center Pau Gasol in February, meaning the need must be addressed via the NBA draft, trade or free agency.
"We need a big man, somebody we can rely on to score in the post and demand a double-team," guard Ben Gordon said. "That would free up guys on the perimeter and take a little pressure off us."
Armed with only their midlevel salary-cap exception of approximately $5.5 million, the Bulls can't count on free agency to net them more than a journeyman answer.
"As long as it's not me," Gordon said, smiling. "We want to keep everybody, but it's probably not possible if you want to bring in another guy."
That the players are cognizant of this dynamic only confirms one of the certainties of sports: Change is inevitable.
"Because of contractual things, we're obviously going to have some spots open," Skiles said. "We're going to try to go get people. We're going to have some natural change for sure. How much depends on once we start meeting and get around draft time and go over our roster."