It is real deal roster rebuild time for Bulls front office lead executive Bryson Graham!Â
The 2026 NBA offseason is officially underway for the Chicago Bulls, who are in the closing stretch of a thorough pre-draft process for their upcoming 2026 NBA Draft selections. Subsequently, Bulls fans will get a broader glimpse of the Bulls’ front office priorities when the 2026 NBA free agency period opens negotiations with players across all 30 NBA franchises.
Surrounding both major offseason agenda items for the Bulls is their well-documented 2026 NBA offseason salary cap space, which is abundant at $69.6 million according to Spotrac. The salary cap number is large, and the decisions on how the Bulls should use this cap space should be evaluated in the context of time. Â
The number of years on contracts that eat into cap space, as well as how long the Bulls believe it will take them to build an NBA roster worthy of operating above the salary cap, luxury tax, and even apron thresholds, should factor heavily into the Bulls' salary cap planning for their roster rebuild.
New post on Third Apron:
— Yossi Gozlan (@YossiGozlan) June 14, 2026
The Bulls are expected to have the most cap space this offseason. How they'll utilize it is still unclear, but they should be able to absorb the most salaries in trades of any team this offseason.https://t.co/gsabwGS6S8
NBA salary cap analyst Yossi Gozlan published an excellent blog post on his Third Apron blog analyzing the Bulls’ salary cap sheet for the 2026 NBA offseason and explained how to calculate the Bulls' salary cap space number, which is a simple calculation of removing (or renouncing from a Bulls front office point of view) all salary cap holds from the Bulls’ total cap allocations. Â
Recent practical examples of NBA cap space teamsÂ
There are three noteworthy examples of NBA franchises that operated as a cap space team and subsequently built a title-contending roster. Â
These examples aren’t to suggest that becoming a cap space team is correlated to becoming an NBA title contender; instead, this point frames a best-case possibility of what can happen when an NBA team is effective in sequencing their decision to become a cap space team, followed by subsequent roster decisions well.
New York Knicks
The 2025-26 NBA champion New York Knicks operated as a cap space team during the 2020-21 NBA season, which created a path to acquiring guard Jalen Brunson in unrestricted free agency during the 2022 NBA offseason. Â
San Antonio Spurs
The San Antonio Spurs operated as a cap space team during the 2022-23 NBA season, which cleared the way to accomplish two roster moves core to their eventual run to the 2026 NBA Finals, signing 2023 NBA Draft number one draft pick Victor Wembyama to a rookie-scale contract and signing 2025-26 NBA Sixth-Man-of-the-Year to his second NBA contract.
Indiana Pacers
Finally, the Indiana Pacers also operated as a cap space team during the 2022-23 NBA season and subsequently put themselves in a position to acquire forward Pascal Siakam via trade during the 2024 NBA Trade Deadline and contribute to a prolific run to the 2025 NBA Finals.
The Bulls likely won’t put together an NBA Finals roster by the 2027-28 NBA season, so this underscores the importance of the Bulls making wise cap space decisions in the context of time because they may need multiple seasons of operating as a cap space team to get back to elite NBA competition.
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