Nic Claxton came back and Jalen Smith kept the start, which settles the Bulls' center question for now

The manager who added Jalen Smith when we made the case for him at the end of October has been waiting for one game, the one where Nic Claxton came back from his left hamstring strain, and it arrived on Sunday. Pregame reports from ClutchPoints and BasketNews said Claxton would come off the bench in his Chicago debut on a limit of roughly 16 to 20 minutes, and that is what happened: he played 18 minutes for four points, four rebounds, four assists and two blocks. Smith started for the ninth time in nine games and played 30 minutes, his joint high for the season, with 17 points on 7-of-11 shooting, two threes, eight rebounds and four blocks in a 127-121 loss to Philadelphia that the Associated Press recap on ESPN described as Chicago's seventh straight defeat, dropping the Bulls to 1-8.

One game under a minutes limit does not tell us where the rotation settles once the limit is gone, but it does tell us the order Chicago chose when both men were available, and it was Smith first. That matters more on a 9-cat roster than on a points one, because Smith's value is built from categories that do not need many touches: threes from a center, blocks, a good field-goal percentage on modest volume and very few turnovers. Our 9-cat board moved him from 109th to 76th after Sunday, against an analysts' consensus of 193rd, a gap that has only grown since we first wrote about him.

Every player in this story is on the fantasy basketball rankings and the 2026-27 projections, and the NBA depth charts show where each one stands in his team’s rotation tonight.