Chicago Bulls: Shaquille Harrison will become a free agent

Another pretty surprising move by the Chicago Bulls front office on Nov. 16 as they don’t extend guard Shaquille Harrison a qualifying offer.

It looks like the lone qualifying offer that the Chicago Bulls will be extending on Nov. 16, on the start of what is sure to be a chaotic week around the NBA landscape, goes to 27-year-old shooting guard Denzel Valentine. A report from ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski on his Twitter timeline on the night of Nov. 16 showed that the Bulls are not planning to extend a qualifying offer to the impending free agent combo guard Shaquille Harrison.

At the conclusion of the shortened 2019-20 regular season, in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the two most promising impending free agent guards for the Bulls looked to be Harrison and point guard Kris Dunn.

But now Harrison and Dunn are the two impending free agent guards that Karnisovas and Eversley likely won’t be bringing back heading into next season.

Some of the moves that were made by the newly hired executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley on the restricted free agent market didn’t make a whole lot of sense on the surface on Nov. 16. But maybe there is a plan in store for the Bulls heading into the fourth year of the rebuild.

Let’s at least hope so.

Since the Bulls won’t be extending Harrison a qualifying offer this week, he is reportedly set to become an unrestricted free agent. Harrison likely did enough in a breakthrough 2019-20 season that he can at least land in another decent NBA role out of free agency this offseason.

Harrison played in 43 games during the shortened 2019-20 regular season with the Bulls (10 of which he started in). And he averaged 4.9 points per game, 2.0 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 0.8 steals, and 0.4 blocks. Harrison shot an impressive 46.7 percent from the field, 38.1 percent from beyond the arc, and 78.0 percent from the free-throw line.

Moreover, Harrison actually posted a team-high and career-best 2.8 box plus/minus rating, 0.6 value over replacement player rating, .153 win shares per 48 minutes, 55.9 true shooting percentage, and 17.8 player efficiency rating, during the 2019-20 season.

Last season, Harrison made just under $1 million with the Bulls. They signed him to a one-year contract last offseason, and got a pretty efficient 2019-20 campaign for him for an absolute bargain price.