Chicago Bulls: 3 players most likely to be cut before free agency

3) Chicago Bulls that could be cut before free agency: Cristiano Felicio

There is a lot of criticism that constantly falls on the shoulders of the 6-foot-10 and 270 pound 28-year-old Brazilian power forward/center Cristiano Felicio. It’s obviously nothing against Felicio personally, but there’s so many Bulls fans that likely want to see the overpaid and unproductive big man see the door in the Windy City.

At 28 years of age, Felicio is likely done really improving his game. And what he’s showed since he receive that oversized four-year contract extension, worth around $8 million per year in base salary, is anything but confidence-inspiring. Felicio still has one year remaining on his current contract, but it could definitely be worth buying him out before next offseason.

Since Felicio’s contract was mostly front-loaded, he’s due around $1 million less next year than he was on average over the course of the last two seasons. Buying him out doesn’t seem like the worst move to upgrade the frontcourt rotation, or fill another depth need on the roster, for Karnisovas and Eversley.

Felicio has now played in 234 career regular season games over the course of five years with the Bulls (starting in 20 of them). It’s hard to know how he’s managed to stick around for that long beyond that overpaid contract extension he got back during the 2017 offseason.

In those more than 230 career regular season games played with the Bulls, he averaged 4.5 points per game, 4.1 rebounds, 0.7 assists, 0.3 steals, and 0.2 blocks. And he shot 57.2 percent from the field and 67.9 percent from the free-throw line. His efficiency and all-encompassing advanced metrics actually got worse over the course of the last two seasons.