Bulls sign Norman Powell, and that's the end of cap space
Signing a high-profile (relative to this offseason) free agent. Should they have?
On the morning after free agency began, reports came in that the Bulls have signed 33-year-old Shooting Guard Normal Powell away from the post-Giannis-acquisition-and-therefore-apron-crunched Miami Heat.
It’s a one year deal, plus a team option for 2027-28, with a starting salary likely around $23M, the remainder of cap space the Bulls (after re-signing Zach Collins, which I’ll get to later).
The Bulls, coming into the offseason with the league’s largest hoard of cap space, now only have the room exception ($9.4M) available to outright acquire players. Being very far under the tax, they can also can take back more salary in a trade of an outgoing player.
Between those shrinking options, and new Bulls lead decisionmaker Bryson Graham’s public insistence on counting roster spots towards players who don’t need to be retained (meaning 1 spot remains), we can infer that the Bulls are nearly done with their offseason already.
We have seen after recent CBA changes that ‘signing free agents from other teams’ is one of the least-used implementations of cap space. The league moved up free agency to early evening instead of midnight, but the relative scarcity of available players (most better ones either restricted or extended) has lessened the hype. Gone are the days where Cristiano Felicio re-signed a minute after midnight.
Powell is a great fit on the court next season for what the Bulls need around their young building blocks: high volume, pull-up shooting from someone who commands a lot of possession usage but isn’t a ballhog. This skillset isn’t needed so much to make the Bulls record better, but to help facilitate the development of this group of extremely young big men by providing spacing. To a lesser extent, Powell also has a solid locker room reputation and that can’t hurt what is a young (and likely very bad) team with a relatively-inexperienced Head Coach.
It’s very possibly the case that the Bulls, with this Powell signing, will have made the most significant free agency move in the league1.
That’s not too high of a distinction, of course. And this Powell signing, in isolation, is fine. But I’m a bit disappointed in how this with the other moves are now forming the larger context of how Bryson Graham is using his initial offseason to position his team for a long-term run at title contention.
As I said earlier, being in a rebuild is not advocating for a complete youth movement, instead you have a core of important players that you can help grow by acquiring competency around their skills and limitations. With loads of cap space and picks and being extremely (so extremely) far from relevance let alone title contention, Graham and the Bulls should be opportunistically in asset accumulation mode. While I praised lottery reform in part due to its killing galaxy-brain takes like ‘it’s good to purposefully sign sabotaging players because losing games is an important goal’, it should not change the overall motivation of a rebuilding team: to be young and have future assets2.
It’s not over, but in his first offseason Graham has been solid, but certainly not impressed me as some whiz-kid like he did to Michael Reinsdorf in the interview process. It would’ve been impressive if Graham found a way to target trade cast-offs and more modest value signings to help satisfy these somewhat-competing goals of player development through competent veterans and future assets. There are likely some major moves still to come where contending teams will look to move money and they may be desperate.
Instead, in acquiring Powell, Nic Claxton, and the truly-pointless-to-outright-bad re-signing of Zach Collins, the Bulls look to have struck early to pay market rate and gain zero assets. I’m sure it’s part of Graham’s plan to bank on the possibility of trading them for assets later3, but you’re taking a risk that they play to a level that adds value to their contract that you just set. And at their age and injury history, all three carry that risk.
Offseason isn’t over, and it’s a very long way to Graham’s first trade deadline. Plus there is a can-kicking element here where he very likely could have cap space next summer as well. But so far his first offseason has been kind of underwhelming. That degree of ‘whelm’ is dwarfed in praise if Caleb Wilson is a superstar, but given the team’s ownership limitations it is key for the front office to not only be capable4 but great. And this is not great.
Er…second-most after LeBron. He’s kind of in his own league
It’ll take years to find out, but I really don’t think lottery reform adding ‘the relegation zone’ - in that it’s bad to be in the very bottom three in the league - is something to motivate your team building. It’s more to counter team-destructing, including in-season shenanigans. And there are so many variables you can’t plan for (injury, traded picks, oh and it being game of chance after all - you’re not shut out of a top pick) that it’d be poor practice to put much emphasis on it
Due to Collins extending before free agency, he’s eligible to be immediately traded. And of course so are fellow expiring contract veterans in Okoro, Jones, Smith
Which the AKME regime was decidedly not
Sixers got a new GM too, and he managed to trade Paul George for Jaylen Brown
Part of my issue with Graham's strategy this offseason is that he didn't simply wait. There's now this Jaylen Brown fallout to go with the LeBron Decision2026 and who knows what else. And he was talking after the draft about wanting to be flexible. Punting space to next season should be a backup plan.