Patrick Williams and the Bulls agreed to terms on a five-year, $90 million contract, per The Athletic’s Shams Charania. Here are my quick thoughts on the deal.
I had written on what I thought the Bulls should do (pre-Josh Giddey trade) last week. As a short summary, he’s been worth around $12 million by impact stats due to a combination of unavailability and not doing much on offense. He can easily hit an $18 million average valution with some minor improvements.
After the Bulls traded for Giddey, the need to bring Williams back became even more of a necessity. Starter-quality 3-and-D wings don’t grow on trees, and the Bulls are going to have to surround Giddey with those types of players in order to make him look good. Williams will be making less than average starter money through the entirety of his deal.
I was very worried that the Bulls were going to go into the $20-25 million range to bring Williams back. Arturas Karnisovas has been criticized by me and many others for his poor negotiating skills, so give him some credit here for holding the line on his summer negotiations.
The Bulls’ focus will now shift to trading Zach LaVine and what to do with DeMar DeRozan. I usually have a very good feel of what the Bulls will do in a summer (I nailed all of their signings, along with how much they’d give each player a year ago).
This year, I have no clue what will happen. There's speculation that DeRozan will go to the Clippers. When you look into the cap mechanics, it’s a tricky sign-and-trade to pull off that will require cooperation from multiple parties (making it less likely to occur).
There aren’t a ton of other teams that make sense. I wouldn’t be shocked if DeRozan ends up somewhere that no one has talked about yet, or if he returns to the Bulls with the intention to move him mid-season.
I’ll have more Bulls offseason thoughts as they come. Thanks as always for reading!