The Chicago Bulls Are About to Screw Up the Josh Giddey Deal—Here’s Why
The restricted free agent guard wants to get paid. And that's understandable—after all, lesser players are cashing in.
LET’S GET THE OBVIOUS out of the way:
This off-season, the Chicago Bulls screwed the pooch. Again.
Admittedly, their pooch-screwing wasn’t as screwy as off-seasons past:
They didn’t overpay an aging center (we’re talking to you, Nikola Vucevic).
They didn’t trade their best player for a pile of whatever (DeMar DeRozan, anyone?).
They didn’t let any beloved locker room vets walk in free agency (sure would’ve been nice to keep Andre Drummond and Patrick Beverley in the building, eh?).
For that matter, they even made a couple of less-than-bad moves, sending health-challenged Lonzo Ball to Cleveland in exchange for a 24-year-old defensive beast in Isaac Okoro—a trade that nobody other than I seemed to like—and inked near-starting-level 25-year-old point guard Tre Jones to a surprisingly team-friendly deal.
Far from needle moving, but also far from incompetent, so let’s call it a wash.
Now let’s avert our eyes and go to the pooch-screwing portion of our program:
They drafted French forward Noa Essengue—a super-raw teenager who plays more-or-less the same position as last year’s first-round pick Matas Buzelis—who won’t be a serious contributor for at least two seasons.
They didn’t draft Derik Queen, an NBA-ready big who both fills a need and could have slid right into the starting lineup.
They couldn’t find a trade partner with whom to offload Nikola Vucevic or Patrick Williams, neither of whom fits into the Bulls’ future plans. (I know, I know, Vooch is 34 and overpaid, and Williams is a bust and overpaid, thus few, if any NBA teams would be interested. But still.)
And the Bulls are currently in the process of blowing it with Josh Giddey.
“JOSH GIDDEY, I’m going to say, I said this on SportsCenter, in the last 10 years, we’ve had five players sign qualifying offers. And what the qualifying offer does is it’s a one-year contract, and then you become an unrestricted free agent next offseason. Because it’s a one-year contract, you have full authority on any trade. So you have veto power on trades. The problem is that if you approve a trade and you are traded to that team, you will lose your bird rights…I made a joke during our production meeting, that they’re about the Gulf of Mexico apart.”
So said ESPN’s Bobby Marks, a legit insider who knows way more about this stuff than any of us do or ever will. And it’s makes perfect sense as to why Giddey wants to stay on his side of the Gulf—there are NBA bench dudes who have inked the same sort of deal that the Bulls are likely putting on the table.
Witness Jabari Smith Jr.
The Houston Rockets’ big just signed an extension to the tune of five years and $122 million, which, the Chicago Sports Stuff abacus tells us shakes out to about $25 million per season.
Upon first blush, that seems like a batshit-crazy contract for a sixth (or seventh) (or sometimes eighth) man, but The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov busted out an abacus of his own—an abacus that insists the Smith signing might someday be viewed as a steal:
“If it is a flat contract and Smith makes $24.4 million in each year of it, he will be making just more than the non-taxpayer midlevel exception in the fifth year (assuming 10 percent increases in the cap every year, which is no guarantee). If it’s a decreasing deal, he might be making less than the non-taxpayer MLE by the final season.
“That is wild, because he would be making around $20 million in that scenario. Next season, the MLE will be about $14.1 million. That kind of contract usually goes to a helpful starter or rotation player. Smith could be just that over the course of his contract. Or, maybe, he emerges into something more and reaches the vast potential the Rockets saw when they took him third in the draft three years ago.”
So if Smith evolves into Chris Bosh—to whom he was comped back in the day—we’re looking at a slick bargain basement move.
Giddey’s management team likely reads The Athletic, and is well aware that the Smith contract is the low-end of the 22-year-old Aussie’s value; the general consensus is that the guard should take in about $30 million a year, a deal similar to that of Orlando Magic guard Jalen Suggs’.
Considering Giddey’s and Smith’s respective contributions in the 2024-25 seasons, that seems about right:
Giddey averaged virtually the same minutes as Smith—30.2 as opposed to 30.1—but the SLOB Wizard out-rebounded, out-shot, out-eFG’d%, and, well, out-everything’d the 6’10” forward. So it would stand to reason that Smith should get out-paid.
Therein lies the rub.
Right now, the league’s salary cap situation is such that no team other than the Brooklyn Nets could give Giddey his theoretical four-year, $120 million deal. But the Nets have a Bulls-ian total of six point guards on their roster—three of whom are on rookie deals—so they’d have no interest in Giddey. (Or at least they shouldn’t. But it’s the Nets, so anything’s possible.)
That being the case, it’s far from shocking Chicago’s bean-counters—who have proven to be lousy at counting beans—would try to lowball Giddey. Who knows, maybe they’re convinced that Giddey’s inexperienced Australian agent, Daniel Moldovan—who, as of right now, has a grand total of two notable NBA players on his client list (Giddey and Dyson Daniels)—can be taken to the cleaners.
If the impasse keeps up—if this Gulf of Mexico thing remains a thing—here’s the inevitable outcome, as prognosticated by ever-prescient NBA expert Alan Goldsher:
Giddey will bet on himself, while the Bulls will bet they can underpay him.
Because Giddey has balls, and the Bulls don’t.
DOES GIDDEY BOAST the oomph and zhuzh to drag a team to a championship? Nah—he’s a solid complementary player with a ceiling of, say, Toni Kukoc or Ricky Rubio, neither of whom were ever a first-option for an elite team.
Now if Matas Buzelis evolves into Giannis Antetokounmpo—as predicted by his Bulls teammate Ayo Dosunmu—Giddey is exactly the guy you want running the point: A willing distributor, a solid finisher, and a pest in the paint. Yeah, he needs to work on his D and outside shooting, but he’s only 22. He’ll get there.
Which begs the question, is a willing distributor, a solid finisher, and a pest in the paint worth 30 mil?
Based on Jabari Smith’s shiny new paycheck, absolutely.