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Skimming the bottom of NBA rosters for Bulls talk

By your friendly BullsBlogger

Interesting article from DraftExpress today (begrudging handshake to Fanhouse for the find), showing that despite what Danny Ainge may be percieving, there are plenty of players left on the Free Agent market that aren't collecting social security.

Some (current and former) Bulls bits to be found:

12 unrestricted who agents who should be extremely likely to sign with someone as long as they are willing to sign for a reasonable price: (James Posey, Ruben Patterson, Troy Hudson, Earl Boykins, Dikembe Mutombo, P.J. Brown, Chris Webber, Marc Jackson, Brian Skinner, Adonal Foyle, Melvin Ely)

9 players who have established themselves as legit rotation guys and should be able to find a spot for themselves somewhere (Devin Brown, Derek Anderson, Malik Allen, Dahntay Jones, Jeff McInnis, Corliss Williamson, Calvin Booth, Dale Davis, Jumaine Jones)

28 players off the NBA's free agent list who are severely on the fringe and might want to either start taking those calls from agents like Mario Scotti and Nick Lotsos offering big money from European teams, or if they are washed up, retire: Keith McLeod, Michael Olowakandi, Alan Anderson, Andre Barrett, Esteban Batista, James White, Hassan Adams, Zarko Cabarkapa, Mike Sweetney, Mike Wilks, Junior Harrington, Rafael Araujo, Michael Ruffin, Rawle Marshall, Slava Medvedenko, Jamal Sampson, Dwayne Jones, Aaron Mckie, Cliff Robinson, Bo Outlaw, Alan Henderson, Jalen Rose, Vitaly Potapenko, Danny Fortson, Jake Tsakalidis, Kevin Willis, Kelvin Cato and Darrick Martin.

Once again, Mike Sweetney gets shortchanged. And my post about his qualifying offer becomes even less relevant. What an outrage!

But the 'big' news from this article:

#49 pick Aaron Gray can rest easy knowing that he got an unprecedented two year fully guaranteed contract from Chicago despite being selected near the tail end of the draft. Andre Barrett, Thomas Gardner and Justin Cage will fight it out for Chicago's last roster spot.

(That's the kind of roster battle where everyone loses. I'd rather sign a grizzled vet (not a Grizzlies vet, that's different) to the minimum)

2-years fully guaranteed for Aaron Gray? Well, they gave 3 years to Adrian Griffin, so...what the hell. The benefit to a 2 year deal is that the club then gets some cap leeway after Gray becomes a 'low post scoring threat who commands a double team and frees up our jumpshooters and solves world hunger' over the next two years, and then needs big money.

Update: Also relevant to the end-of-bench situation, according to Sham Sports (no primary source named, and thus My Man Sam wins again), big Marty Andy Vicious is about to sign in Spain.