Breaking: Bulls re-sign Josh Giddey to immediately untradeable contract
details to come on how much the Bulls screwed themselves
Our long mostly-ignored nightmare is over: Josh Giddey is no longer a free agent, returning to the Chicago Bulls on a 4 year, $100M contract. We don’t yet know the particulars in guarantees, options, or raises1, but KC Johnson did helpfully report that “the Bulls were confident they could reach a deal”
And why wouldn’t they be? They were willing to pay Giddey much more than any other team would and thus it currently has negative trade value. Credit to Giddey and his representation for simply waiting, and in the absence of any real rumors it the consensus was bubbling to rationalize ‘well, the Bulls are technically in the NBA, so Josh Giddey is a starting point guard’, so he should be paid what better players than him have been paid in a more favorable free agent market.
This was destined to happen, as predicted when the offseason started. The delay in signing to where it was September already seems to have given the Bulls no advantage.
There is a bit of doubling down in all of this. Remember: the Bulls are run by people who are in over their heads and should be fired. They already received their contract extensions, but their personal sales job is never ending because it’s easier than making the Eastern Conference playoffs: they have to sell to one useless billionaire’s son that their acquisition of Giddey was a smart move. And have to sell that the team’s post All-Star break performance, fueled by improved play from Giddey, was legitimate and projectible.
These motivations should have been decoupled from this contract negotiation. But we can likely assume they weren’t, because the Bulls front office is awful at valuing talent and negotiating contracts so they likely did bring in these biases to undercut the leverage of having matching rights and very few teams with cap space.
It’s just another loss in a long series of them: essentially since Lonzo Got Hurt (ding) the Bulls have only avoided dumb decisions by deciding not to do anything for long stretches of time.
And that half-active sorta-rebuild phase over the past year has actually raised their esteem in some circles, as if the absence of bad contracts supersedes lack of good players. They did move off of Zach LaVine’s remaining contract at the trade deadline, but now for the second straight offseason they have added a bad contract to their books. For as much hype as how flexible the Bulls will be in the summer of 2026, they’re going to have over $72M committed to Giddey, Patrick Williams, Isaac Okoro, Jalen Smith, and Tre Jones.
Currently none of those players are above average on both sides of the ball. Yet all have varying chances of improvement due to their age, though the many years of experience affecting those chances is truly a fascinating debate especially in the case of Giddey.
Giddey is somewhat emblematic of this front office, so it makes sense they wanted to stay together. And if Giddey proves the skeptics wrong, it will go a long way in the entire Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley regime doing the same thing.
I don’t think it makes much of a difference, unless there are wildly outsized incentives and 3 team options?
Immediately untradeable is a bit excessive - it’s just not an instantly valuable contract, which is what restricted free agency should yield since the team has match rights. He will be making 4th best player on a great team money, which is fine in a vacuum, but whether he’s as good as the fourth best player on a great team is up in the air.
4/90 versus 4/100 does not matter for a team with no upside and no ambitions. If you wouldn’t sign Giddey at 4/90, you don’t want him on the team, at all. As always, it’s the same reality that the Bulls fan base is chock full of idiots who think slightly below mediocrity is enjoyable and a miserly owner who is happy to take their money.
I will admit saying 'untradeable' is a bit inflammatory and not entirely accurate. If he plays well they won't want to trade him either. It's more accurate that this is already 'bad money', after months of hearing how clean their books are.