It has been 6½ years since Talen Horton-Tucker helped Simeon win a third consecutive Public League title. Now his feet are firmly planted in Chicago again.
Horton-Tucker always hoped this moment would come. But when he made the opening-day roster for the Chicago Bulls on Monday — earning the final spot — he was surprised by how quickly his childhood dream had come to life.
“It’s a great feeling,” Horton-Tucker said. “I dreamed of this as a kid … I never thought it would come this soon in my career.”
Horton-Tucker is a quintessential Chicago hoops product. He started attending Bulls games when he was 7 and grew up idolizing the play of Derrick Rose and Jabari Parker, both fellow Simeon alumni. He developed a relationship with Nazr Mohammed when the Kenwood graduate returned home to play for the Bulls from 2012-15, a crucial stage of Horton-Tucker’s development before he began playing high school ball.
He credits this upbringing for his success, often saying he wouldn’t play the same way if he was from anywhere else.
“You’ve got to be tough to play here, have a great grind, be able to play through anything,” Horton-Tucker said. “I feel like the way I play kind of shows that — playing hard, going out there and giving my all.”
Though only 23, Horton-Tucker is entering his sixth NBA season after declaring for the draft following one year at Iowa State. A second-round pick by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2019, he played mostly in the G League as a rookie before rising into the regular rotation over the next two seasons. He averaged 9.9 points, 3.1 assists, and 21.7 minutes from 2020-21 to 2022-23 with the Lakers and Utah Jazz, but he fell out of the rotation in Utah last season.
Horton-Tucker won a training camp battle against a slew of other guards, including two-way player Onuralp Bitim, whom the Bulls waived Saturday. Although he doesn’t have expectations to crack the nine-player rotation that coach Billy Donovan prefers to utilize, Horton-Tucker said his ability to get downhill and provide offensive versatility on and off the ball were key focuses throughout the preseason.
“I give him credit — he didn’t really expect anything,” Donovan said. “He went out there every day and competed every day and was a good teammate and picked things up on offense and defense really, really well. He’s young enough that it probably was an incredible learning experience all the way around.”
Horton-Tucker’s inclusion in the final roster was not a given — due in part to the competition of making an NBA team and in part to the lopsided nature of the Bulls roster.
Eight of the 15 players on the opening roster are listed as guards, and only three are 6-foot-9 or taller. Donovan has repeatedly hammered an emphasis on playing fast to offset the team’s lack of size.
But even with these roster deficiencies, the Bulls opted to stick with the 6-4 Horton-Tucker as their final addition.
“Sometimes it’s not even about the size,” Donovan said. “It’s about having another playmaker, a guy that can put it down, get into the defense, spray it out. He’s obviously a really good scorer, can attack the paint. He gives you an extra ballhandler out there — and I know we have a lot of them, but he’s different from Zach (LaVine) or from Josh (Giddey) or Coby (White) or Ayo (Dosunmu).”
There’s one last challenge for Horton-Tucker after making the roster: figuring out how to obtain as many guest tickets as possible for Saturday’s home opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Although he expects to have plenty of friends and family in attendance at the United Center, Horton-Tucker said he doesn’t worry about turning down unwieldy requests floating in from former classmates and long-estranged friends. He just lets his mother, Shirley Horton, sort them out.
“I send ‘em straight to her and she’ll shut ‘em all down,” he said with a laugh.
2024-25 Chicago Bulls opening roster
- 0 Coby White, 6-5 guard
- *00 DJ Steward, 6-2 guard
- 2 Lonzo Ball, 6-6 guard
- 3 Josh Giddey, 6-8 guard
- 5 Jevon Carter, 6-1 guard
- 7 Jalen Smith, 6-9 forward/center
- 8 Zach LaVine, 6-5 guard
- 9 Nikola Vučević, 6-10 center
- 11 Ayo Dosunmu, 6-5 guard
- 13 Torrey Craig, 6-5 forward
- 14 Matas Buzelis, 6-10 forward
- 15 Julian Phillips, 6-8 forward
- *21 Adama Sanogo, 6-9 forward
- 22 Talen Horton-Tucker, 6-4 guard
- 25 Dalen Terry, 6-7 forward
- 27 Chris Duarte, 6-5 guard
- *32 E.J. Liddell, 6-6 forward
- 44 Patrick Williams, 6-7 forward
*two-way contract
