Tuesday, the Chicago Bulls announced they exercised team options on forwards Matas Buzelis and Noa Essengue. In Buzelis's case, the Bulls picking up his team option is largely an administrative bookkeeping exercise.
As for Essengue, getting his 2027-28 team option picked up by the Bulls feels more like a stay of career execution given the tumultuous 2026 summer league outing he had for the Bulls.
To Essengue’s credit, he remained resilient going into Bulls training camp and displayed enough improvement in his 2026-27 Bulls preseason minutes to earn the modest reward of having his third-year team option picked up by the franchise.
Essengue will avoid becoming a 2027 NBA unrestricted free agent and enter his third NBA season (2027-28) with a guaranteed salary of $5.97 million, according to Spotrac.
The final season (2028-29) of Essengue’s rookie-scale contract is another team option that is worth $8.2 million in non-guaranteed salary until the option is exercised. So while the Bulls have picked up Essengue’s third-season team option, for practical purposes, the French forward is really playing on a two-year contract, and he has a significant workload ahead of him to prove he has a long-term place in the NBA.
Essengue needs to lock-in
By no means should Noa Essengue become comfortable now that he’s earned another season of guaranteed money from the Chicago Bulls.
At this point in his career, Essengue has three phases of NBA progress checkpoints he’s playing for: getting his final season team option picked up, ideally earning a rookie-scale contract extension, or, worst-case scenario, creating a viable justification for earning a second NBA contract through NBA restricted free agency.
Where Essengue’s focus should start in the 2026-27 NBA season, as it relates to securing and sustaining his NBA career, is within the Chicago Bulls' defense. An optimal glimpse at what Essengue can be as an NBA defender was on display when the Bulls faced the Milwaukee Bucks in their fourth 2026-27 NBA preseason game.
Essengue needs to consistently leverage his length to attack opposing offenses on drives to the basket and by filling passing lanes as a help defender to create deflections. As a defensive wing tag team partner with Leonard Miller, Essengue may finally have an opportunity to settle into a role that allows him to become a consistent contributor to, hopefully, a Bulls defensive renaissance.
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