Sports
Bulls Winners and Losers from 2023 NBA Free Agency – Bleacher Report
A busy 2023 NBA offseason for the Chicago Bulls resulted in…well, a roster that frankly bears a striking resemblance to their 2022-23 iteration.
There were a few tweaks along the way, of course. They traded into the draft’s second round to add athletic, defense-first swingman Julian Phillips. They also brought in a couple of defense-first reinforcements in Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig.
By and large, though, the summer winds didn’t exactly bring a slew of changes to the Windy City.
Even still, though, it’s clear there were a couple of winners and one notable loser who surfaced along the way.
Entering free agency, Nikola Vučević’s earnings potential seemed uncertain. While he’d had a mostly productive two-plus-season stint in Chicago, it was unclear how the market would react to a 32-year-old center with fairly severe defensive limitations and a so-so outside shot.
Yet, the Bulls seemingly felt he was enough of a flight risk to prevent his free-agency venture altogether and instead hand him a three-year, $60 million extension before the market opened. Had he hit free agency, it’s hard to imagine he would’ve done any better. It’s possible he would’ve done worse, so that’s a win in itself.
Beyond that, though, he picked up another win with the fact that Chicago otherwise left its center rotation untouched.
Andre Drummond picked up his player option, but he wasn’t a major threat to Vučević’s floor time this past season. In fact, the Montenegrin logged more minutes than he had at any point of his Bulls’ tenure (33.5 per game). He has no obvious reason to expect to see a reduction this time around.
Give most folks access to a time machine, and they might have a tough time figuring how far back they’d want to go.
Give one to Derrick Jones Jr., though, and he might already have an exact date and time he’d revisit. Looking back, his decision to decline his $3.3 million player option seems like a big swing and a miss.
Granted, in the NBA’s larger-than-life economy, $3.3 million might not be a massive sum, but it sure looks richer than any deal he’s likely to find at this point. Cap space has largely dried up around the league. So, too, have most realistic chances at cracking a rotation.
Jones might find minimum money yet, and it’s possible with his bounce, energy and defensive versatility, he could play his way into at least a semi-regular role. But he could have a tough time matching the 893 minutes he logged this past season, never mind collecting the $3.3 million he could have had with Chicago in the upcoming one.
For the second time in as many years, Jevon Carter hit the open market this summer. But his outlook looks far brighter coming out of it than it did the last time.
His wallet got significantly fatter, too.
In 2022, Carter locked himself into a likely reserve role upon inking a two-year, $4.6 million pact with the Milwaukee Bucks that included a player option on the second season.
After opting out of that deal this summer, the plucky point guard signed a three-year, $20 million deal with Chicago that includes a decent (or better) chance to crack the starting lineup.
While the 27-year-old will have competition for the role—namely from Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu—he seems the most capable of replacing the indefinitely injured Lonzo Ball.
Carter is by far the best defender of the bunch, and he should serve a Ball-like role on the offensive end as a low-maintenance playmaker who can consistently convert catch-and-shoot threes, of which he connected on 43.9 percent this past season, per NBA.com.
