The 2017 Jimmy Butler trade suddenly is coming back to haunt the Bulls

It was an interesting debate in the 2017-18 season.

The Bulls were thrilled with the Jimmy Butler-for-Zach LaVine, Kris Dunn and Lauri Markkanen trade they had pulled off months earlier to jump-start their rebuild. On the other side, the Timberwolves had acquired Butler in an effort to end a 13-year playoff drought.

It looked to be a win-win situation.

But fast-forward to Saturday, and the only clear-cut winner in that trade appears to have been Butler.

The list of mistakes the Bulls’ front office has made in the last decade is long. The two most critical, however, were its inability to learn to coexist with former coach Tom Thibodeau and never understanding the vision Butler had for the organization.

Butler wanted to stay with the Bulls to help build a roster he thought could make a deep playoff run. The Bulls, however, didn’t want to pay the high cost of keeping him and certainly didn’t want to cede some of their power to a player.

In their eyes, landing LaVine, Dunn and the draft rights that brought them Markkanen would more than compensate for Butler’s talent. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Dunn is a bench player who doesn’t have much of a future with the Bulls. LaVine can score 20 points in his sleep but still has defensive issues. And Markkanen has been benched in crunch time in back-to-back games by coach Jim Boylen, with Thaddeus Young getting his closing minutes.

‘‘We’re going to finish games with guys that we need to finish games with, whether you’re a starter or a bench guy or whatever,’’ Boylen said of the Markkanen-Young decision. ‘‘And you play those minutes. And one night it will be your opportunity, and maybe the next night it will be somebody else’s opportunity. It’s not a dilemma for me if you want to have a good team.’’

But here’s what the Bulls no longer can ignore: Dunn is a defensive specialist they can put on an opponent’s best wing player and little more. LaVine is a scorer first and everything else second. Markkanen spaces the floor and is an outside threat but suddenly isn’t playing down the stretch.

The three combined can’t match the overall play Butler provided on both ends of the court, not to mention the kind of real talk in the locker room the organization now wants.

It’s no coincidence the last three Butler-led teams (Bulls, Timberwolves and 76ers) have made the playoffs, and the Heat is off to a 4-1 start this season.

Meanwhile, unless the Bulls can fix Markkanen and get him heading back toward a superstar trajectory, this rebuild is going nowhere. The entire foundation of it was built on LaVine and Markkanen. If one pillar falls, it all falls.

‘‘He’s watching what’s going on and maybe in the moments before he comes out . . . they raise their energy level, raise their effort level, raise their awareness, raise their focus,’’ Boylen said when he was asked what he hopes Markkanen has learned from the last two games. ‘‘Whatever that moment is, that teachable moment.

‘‘It was not punishment to have him sit there. We are trying to develop and win. And it’s very difficult, but that’s what we’re trying to do.’’