Team context: Chicago Bulls · Research cutoff: July 18, 2026.
Role and baseline
Jones averaged career highs of 14.1 points and 5.4 assists with 3.1 rebounds and 1.2 steals in 27.0 minutes across 65 games. He shot an exceptional .553 from the field, .841 from the line, and committed only 1.4 turnovers per game. Bulls season review · Basketball-Reference
Elias Schuster forecast Jones as Chicago's sixth man on July 2. The projection makes sense because he is the only proven second organizer, but Powell's arrival and Swain's development minutes reduce last year's scoring opportunity. Sports Illustrated, July 2, 2026
2026-27 projection
| GP | Min | FG% | FT% | 3PM | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 70 | 24 | .515 | .835 | 0.5 | 11.6 | 2.8 | 4.9 | 1.1 | 0.1 | 1.2 |
Base rotation allocation: 24 of Chicago's exactly 240 minutes.
Fantasy fit
- 9-cat: picks 135-175; efficient assists, steals, and low turnovers are the appeal.
- Points: picks 120-165, with large handcuff upside behind Giddey.
- Dynasty: high-floor depth without a star path while Giddey is present.
- Weaknesses: low threes, rebounds, blocks, and likely usage regression.
Range and triggers
- Floor: 18 minutes and streamer-only production if Powell runs more second-unit offense.
- Ceiling: 28 minutes, 13 points, six assists, and 1.3 steals—near top-110 value.
- Watch: whether Jones closes games, shares the floor with Giddey, and retains last season's unsustainably high FG%.
Career record
Pre-NBA: Duke, two seasons (2018-19, 2019-20). Freshman year was 36 games at 34.2 MPG for 11.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 1.9 steals on .414/.262/.758 — elite point-of-attack defense attached to a broken jump shot. As a sophomore he went 29 games, 35.4 MPG, 16.2 points, 4.2 rebounds, 6.4 assists, 1.8 steals on .423/.361/.771, and swept both ACC Player of the Year and ACC Defensive Player of the Year, plus third-team All-America. The 10-point jump in three-point percentage was the swing skill scouts doubted, and correctly so. Draft: 2020, second round, 41st overall by San Antonio.
| Season | Age | Team | GP | MPG | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | 3PM | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | 21 | SAS | 37 | 7.3 | 2.5 | 0.6 | 1.1 | 0.2 | 0.0 | 0.1 | .474 | .895 | 0.4 |
| 2021-22 | 22 | SAS | 69 | 16.6 | 6.0 | 2.2 | 3.4 | 0.6 | 0.1 | 0.1 | .490 | .780 | 0.7 |
| 2022-23 | 23 | SAS | 68 | 29.2 | 12.9 | 3.6 | 6.6 | 1.3 | 0.1 | 0.7 | .459 | .860 | 1.6 |
| 2023-24 | 24 | SAS | 77 | 27.8 | 10.0 | 3.8 | 6.2 | 1.0 | 0.1 | 0.8 | .505 | .856 | 1.5 |
| 2024-25 | 25 | SAS/CHI | 46 | 19.7 | 7.2 | 2.5 | 4.2 | 0.8 | 0.2 | 0.4 | .538 | .821 | 0.8 |
| 2025-26 | 26 | CHI | 65 | 27.0 | 14.1 | 3.1 | 5.4 | 1.2 | 0.2 | 0.6 | .553 | .841 | 1.4 |
| Career | 362 | 22.6 | 9.4 | 2.8 | 4.8 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 0.5 | .503 | .840 | 1.1 |
The 2024-25 row is combined: 28 games in San Antonio at 16.1 MPG for 4.4 points and 3.7 assists on .484, then 18 games in Chicago after the February 3, 2025 three-team trade (with Zach Collins and Kevin Huerter) at 25.3 MPG for 11.5 points and 4.9 assists on .572. The Chicago half is the better predictor of what followed. He re-signed with the Bulls on June 30, 2025 for three years and $24M.
Fantasy history: Season-end nine-cat ranks are not verifiable from the sources checked, and I am not going to estimate them. What the raw lines support: 2022-23 and 2023-24 were his first two genuinely rosterable seasons on assist volume (6.6 and 6.2) plus a steal rate above 1.0 in the first of them, and 2025-26 was his most valuable year in category leagues because the assists held while field-goal percentage went to .553 on real scoring volume. The category shape is narrow and specific — assists, steals, FG% and low turnovers — with essentially nothing in threes (0.6 per game), rebounds (3.1) or blocks (0.2). Points-league value is materially worse than category value: 14.1 points with 0.6 threes and no defensive-stat premium is a thin points-format profile, so the dossier's read that points leagues are the better home for him is backwards on the evidence.
Durability: 37, 69, 68, 77, 46, 65 games. The 46 in 2024-25 was role and trade churn in San Antonio rather than injury. The 17 missed games in 2025-26 were injury: a three-game absence for an ankle sprain in November/December 2025, then a left hamstring strain that cost him roughly 11 straight games through February 2026 and the All-Star break. Neither is a structural concern, but the hamstring is the kind of soft-tissue injury that recurs, and he had never previously missed a double-digit block of games for medical reasons.
Trajectory: Jones has had exactly two step changes and both were opportunity, not skill. The first came in 2022-23 when San Antonio's teardown handed him 29 minutes and the offense — 12.9 points and 6.6 assists, and note the turnovers spiked to 1.6, the price of real on-ball load. The second is 2025-26. The tell that this one is different is efficiency: .459, then .505, then .538, then .553 across four seasons, a monotonic climb that is not noise. It is also not sustainable at .553 — that is a top-of-league mark for a guard, and it comes from an extreme shot diet (0.6 threes made per game, almost everything at the rim or in the paint) that produces high percentages on low volume and collapses if defenses make him shoot. He is 26 turning 27, at the flat top of the aging curve, and the per-minute story is honest: his 2025-26 per-36 scoring is up on 2023-24 but so is his usage in a Bulls offense that lost creation. For 2026-27 the assists and steals should hold if the minutes do; the FG% should regress toward .510-.520, and with Giddey, Powell and Dillingham all wanting reps, minutes are the live risk rather than production per minute.
Career sources: ESPN career stats, StatMuse season-by-season, Wikipedia — Duke, draft, transactions, NBA.com Bulls injury update
Open questions
- Is he truly the sixth man or only the backup point guard?
- How much of the .553 FG% survives?
- Does Chicago entertain trades if Dillingham or Swain demands more creation reps?