Chicago Bulls: 4 restricted free agents worth spending lavishly on

The free agent market will be a lot more important to the Chicago Bulls‘ plans this offseason than it was last fall. Executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley weren’t very busy in free agency last offseason. Most of the attention was paid to the configuration of the roster around the young core, and the drafting of the former Florida State Seminoles forward Patrick Williams.

With the Bulls having traded away their first-round draft pick to the Orlando Magic at the trade deadline in the deal that landed them star center Nikola Vucevic and veteran forward Al-Farouq Aminu, free agency will play a bigger role in the team’s plans this summer. There are not many other routes that Karnisvoas and the Bulls can take to find answers to their issues in 2021.

Important restricted free agent decisions for the Chicago Bulls front office

The Bulls do have an impending restricted free agent of their own that they need to decide the future on this summer. Fourth-year power forward Lauri Markkanen might be on his way out of Chicago this summer, given the plethora of other suitors he could have in restricted free agency.

This front office might also want to use that cap space they would need to re-sign Markkanen this offseason to fill other rotational/positional needs. Letting Markkanen walk could open up more valuable cap space for Karnisovas and Eversley this summer.

Here’s a look at four potential restricted free agent targets for the Bulls that would be worth spending lavish amounts of money on.