Here’s a list of five obtainable free agents for the Chicago Bulls to target this week in free agency.
Let me say off the bat that I don’t care entirely about fit.
The way I see things with this current Chicago Bulls roster, the Bulls have four good players under contract next season that are absolutely worth keeping: Jimmy Butler, Taj Gibson, Cristiano Felicio and Denzel Valentine.
Gibson is on a deal that is going to become incredibly cheap once the insanity that is the start of the NBA’s free agency begins and thus stands as primo trade bait.
He was one of my favorite Bulls of the Rose Era, and I would hate to see him leave, but objectively speaking, the Bulls could get the highest return for him among any of their trade chips.
But I digress.
Point being, I’m not going to focus entirely on need, because the Bulls honestly need pieces all over the floor. I would be more than happy if the Bulls offloaded every other roster player under contract outside of the four I mentioned.
All U Can Heat
Outlets like the Chicago Sun-Times and CSN Chicago seem to think the Bulls will be shooting for mid-tier free agent options, but why aim for the middle class when you can probably afford at least one member of the … upper-middle class?
And, with aggressive trades, maybe two?
Youth should be a priority; unless the Bulls somehow sign Mike Conley and Al Horford, it’s hard to see them legitimately competing in the Eastern Conference.
So, it makes sense to add some cost effective, roster additions on the right side of 30, who have room to improve and then get ready for next season’s free agent boom.
Which non-franchise players do I think are totally off the table?
Pau Gasol (been there), Dwight Howard (not exactly a high-character guy) and Al Horford (he’s too tight with Joakim Noah — more on #13 later). It sadly seems to go without saying that franchise-level guys LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki and even DeMar DeRozan aren’t coming to the Bulls.
Even though, you know, KD totally could if GarPax got a little creative. I don’t see Chicago paying anybody an outright maximum contract, even though they certainly could with some moves.
Thus, none of the players we’ll focus on will be guys who are expected to command a full maximum salary.
As a Bulls fan, I’m personally wary of injury-prone guys, so I’m going to avoid guys like Bradley Beal and Chandler Parsons.
Next: 5. Harrison Barnes
5. Harrison Barnes
We all know Barnes’s disappearing act in the NBA Finals was pretty awful.
He shrank in the moment and had three consecutive miserable games to close out the series when the Golden State Warriors needed someone, anyone to step up.
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The flip side of that coin: the Warriors as a whole were thrown into disarray when Draymond Green was suspended and outside of Shaun Livingston, Leandro Barbosa, Andre Iguodala and Green himself, none of their rotation players had particularly great games after Game 4.
He’s only 23, can play both forward positions, can shoot and score and as a higher-usage player, would be a great contributing piece.
And after that Finals performance, his stock is manageable for the Bulls. He would require a bit of an overpay to avoid his rumored landing spot: the Los Angeles Lakers.
I don’t think anyone (outside of, say, Sacramento) is going to offer him the $22.1 million maximum annual salary allocated for players with his experience.
The Bulls could certainly swoop in and try to wrest him away from the Dubs on something in the range of a four-year offer at $18 million per year.
Next: 4. Bismack Biyombo
4. Bismack Biyombo
Any time a 23 year-old power forward grabs 28 rebounds against LeBron James and Tristan Thompson in a playoff game, you sit up and take notice.
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Biyombo had himself a postseason this past season.
The 6’9”, 255 pounder can’t shoot a lick yet, so he wouldn’t be a great spacing fit with Lopez, but he could play some small-ball five and even in lineups with Lopez, he could block everything in sight, gobble up boards and use his athleticism to outmaneuver the opposition in offense for easy putbacks and dunks.
I’d stagger their minutes and maybe even bring Lopez off the bench and start the sure-to-be-higher-paid Biyombo at the five spot (with a freakish 7’7” wingspan). He’s just oozing raw potential and that’s why locking him up now is quite a tantalizing prospect.
I don’t necessarily see Lopez as a key cog in the Bulls’ future when they do start to contend again, but Biyombo is another matter.
Next: 3. Kent Bazemore
3. Kent Bazemore
The 27 year-old Bazemore improved his shooting stroke during a contract year, effectively becoming a less injury-prone version of his positional predecessor on the Hawks: DeMarre Carroll.
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He’s definitely going to get paid on the higher end of the spectrum, but again probably won’t be maxed out since his ceiling on a championship squad is probably being the fourth or fifth starter. He’d get plenty of usage as a 3-and-D Bulls wing and would immediately become their second-best perimeter player after Jimmy Butler.
There’s also reason to think that Bazemore has room to improve, as last season was his first with starter-level minutes. He could most likely be had for something in the $16-18 million range.
Al Horford should be the Hawks’ top re-signing priority and it’s tough to figure the Hawks will have enough space to match the going rate for Bazemore.
The 6’5”, 201-pound from Old Dominion shot 44.1 percent from the field, including a solid 35.7 percent from three.
Next: 2. Marvin Williams
2. Marvin Williams
People hype Ryan Anderson as this summer’s optimal stretch-four but he’s hurt more than almost anybody not named Eric Gordon (poor Anthony Davis has had some injury-prone teammates) on the New Orleans Pelicans roster.
Marvin Williams is a better Anderson and everyone seems to have forgotten him.
He’s just 29 and is a great role-playing ‘tweener forward who can start at the four, but guard either position. He shot 45.2 percent from the field last season, rocking an awesome 40.2 percent from deep.
In just 28.8 minutes a night while starting 81 games, Williams had 11.7 points, 6.4 rebounds and a block. His per-36 numbers are quite serviceable for a second or third option: 14.6 points, eight rebounds and 1.2 blocks.
The Bulls could probably snag him for a decent non-max deal (right in that $16-20 million range), after the bigger mid-tier players get picked.
I think Al Horford is getting a long-term, $30 million per year ultra-max offer from somewhere and I think with his injury history, he is definitely not worth that.
Williams is not the better player, he’s just way, way more attainable, since Charlotte has three key free agents this summer and Williams is their second priority after Nicolas Batum.
Batum had a stellar near-All Star season last year for Michael Jeffrey Jordan’s Hornets (aka the HornBobcats), and stands a decent chance of getting a maximum offer. The Frenchman, then, is sadly off the table for our hypothetical purposes.
Next: 1. Hassan Whiteside
1. Hassan Whiteside
Yes, he’d require something very close to a maximum contract and promises of more touches to be pried away from Miami.
Yes, he’s a wild child whose volatility can be tough to reign in.
Yes, Chicago prefers “high character” guys.
Blue Man Hoop
Yes, the Bulls already have the immortal Robin Lopez on what is now a great below-market contract.
But here’s the thing: Whiteside is just 27, he’s a two-way monster in the paint, and he’s just coming off his first full NBA season (i.e. his legs are remarkably fresh for his age).
In his first season as the Bulls’ head coach, Fred Hoiberg struggled to hold his players accountable and get them to play in his desired pace-oriented offense.
Well, hey, how about giving him a trial by fire with a player who’s actually been stigmatized with the dreaded “difficult” tag?
Whiteside is terrific, quite possibly a franchise-level center and can get even better. He’s also in real danger of missing out on the full max, due to the aforementioned wild child antics. If the market cools on him a bit, he is exactly the kind of high-upside piece that could be pried away from Pat Riley by a hard-charging team.
As GarPax just proved last week, they actually are amenable to taking risks this summer. Whiteside’s youth is also imperative for another reason: the Bulls, even with a Whiteside-Butler core and space for little else, wouldn’t be much more than a low playoff seed in the East.
But Whiteside wants money. The title contention can come later. He’s got time.
Max this guy out and see what he can do.
Next: Bonus free agent option!
Joakim Noah
This is almost guaranteed NOT to happen (hence the non-ranking) from the overtures made through Joe Cowley to the Bulls’ trading for a Noah Lite in Sideshow Rob(in Lopez).
Daily Knicks
That being said — I don’t care about Robin Lopez.
His $13.2 million contract this year is about to become an absolute below-market steal this summer, so he can very handily be flipped after waiting the requisite two months for the dust to settle on the GarPax-mandated Derrick Rose exodus.
To be fair, that has about a 0.001% chance of happening (if the Bulls had a more trade-happy GM like Daryl Morey, the odds would change).
Lopez is three years younger than Noah (31-28), has been very healthy for the duration of his career to this point and I would love him as a backup.
It’s hard to discern what exactly the market value is for an league-average starting center this summer, but it appears that early predictions for mid-tier starting centers Bismack Biyombo and Ian Mahinmi are somewhere in the $16-20 million range.
Of course, Enes Kanter was given a maximum extension last summer and metamorphosed into a crucial sixth man for the Oklahoma City Thunder last year. It can happen.
Lopez is basically a shoddy Noah without the passing, leadership or (when healthy) speed. With the Bulls continuing to revamp their medical staff, I think a big comeback season is in Noah’s future.
Especially after the Rose deal, though, it would take two big things from the Bulls’ side to even have a SLIGHT chance of happening:
- The Bulls would have to make a significant overpayment, in the $22 million range (an absolute max for a player with Noah’s years in the league this season would be $26.6 million, which seems far-fetched).
But, if it’s overpaying by that much it could be on a one-year deal with a player option for the second season. It would be an audition on both sides, as the Bulls see what Noah can contribute during (hopefully) a full season of health, and Noah can work his tail off to get a longer-term, near-max when the salary cap balloons again in 2017.
Next: Report: Pau Gasol to decline player option, will become free agent on July 1
With Noah’s injury history, this two-year contract with a one-year opt-out feels highly unlikely. But I can dream, can’t I?
- Noah would need a guarantee, probably written into the contract, that he would be the starter. This doesn’t happen in the NBA as far as we know, but I wouldn’t trust a GarPax “handshake deal” if I were Noah, so I think it’d be a necessary evil for the Bulls.
Fred Hoiberg made two massive mistakes at the jump last season — his first was forcing Noah into a bench role, his second was pretending that Noah suggested it.
The Bulls have an opportunity to rectify that wrong.
Noah has been the Bulls’ workaholic heart and soul since about Game 6 of the 2009 Bulls-Celtics series. Why not keep him around, maximize his strength and populate the rest of the starting lineup with shooters to cover up his weaknesses?
The Bulls locker room needs a leader with proven success and Noah is that guy.