Bulls free agents, salaries, cap space for 2021 offseason

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After a disappointing 2020-21 season that finished 31-41 and outside of the playoff picture, the Bulls have a busy summer ahead.

“We will continue being aggressive in our efforts to make this team better, whether that’s through trades, free agency or the draft,” executive vice president Artūras Karnišovas said at his end-of-season press conference. “We will not settle for mediocrity here. We have an important summer coming up.”

Here’s a rundown of the Bulls’ salary and cap situations, and some key dates to watch for (salaries courtesy of Basketball Insiders unless otherwise indicated):

Bulls’ Fully Guaranteed Salaries for 2021-22

  • Nikola Vučević: $24,000,000
  • Zach LaVine: $19,500,000
  • Al-Farouq Aminu: $10,183,800 (player option)
  • Patrick Williams: $7,422,000
  • Coby White: $5,837,760
  • Troy Brown Jr.: $5,170,564

Bulls’ Partially Guaranteed Salaries for 2021-22

  • Thad Young: $14,190,000 ($6 million guaranteed)
  • Tomáš Satoranský: $10,000,000 ($5 million guaranteed)

Bulls’ Options

Team/Non-Guarantee: Ryan Arcidiacono ($3,000,000)

Bulls’ Free Agents

Restricted

  • Lauri Markkanen: $20,194,524 cap hold; $9,026,852 qualifying offer
  • Javonte Green: $1,897,476 qualifying offer/cap hold
  • Adam Mokoka: $1,669,178 qualifying offer/cap hold
  • Devon Dotson: $1,489,065 qualifying offer/cap hold (via Spotrac)

Extending a one-year qualifying offer grants a team match rights on any offer sheet their restricted free agent signs. If the qualifying offer is accepted, the player is granted a no-trade clause for that final season, then enters unrestricted free agency the next offseason (as Denzel Valentine is now).

RELATED: Markkanen plans to test waters in restricted free agency

Unrestricted

  • Cristiano Felício: $14,305,138 cap hold
  • Daniel Theis: $9,500,000 cap hold
  • Denzel Valentine: $8,821,320 cap hold
  • Garrett Temple: $5,720,400 cap hold

Cap holds serve as salary placeholders until a team either re-signs their free agent in question, another team signs the free agent in question, or the original team renounces their bird rights to that player clearing the cap hold off their books, but stripping them of the ability to go over the salary cap to re-sign them.

Bulls’ Draft Picks

First Round: The Bulls retain their 2021 first-round pick only if it lands in the top four of this June’s draft lottery; if not, it goes to the Orlando Magic as part of the Nikola Vučević trade.

The Bulls finished the regular season in a three-way tie with the New Orleans Pelicans and Sacramento Kings for the eighth-best odds, giving each team a 20.3 percent chance of jumping into the top four and 4.5 percent chance of winning the No. 1 overall pick.

Second Round: The Bulls have a second-round pick this year, but the precise location of it is TBD. If interested in how it will be decided, see below:

The three-way tie in the Nos. 8-10 slots between the Bulls, Pelicans and Kings will be broken with coin flips. Those coin flips have no bearing on the lottery odds themselves — which, again, are split evenly between the teams — but if none of those teams reach the top four, the tiebreaker decides which team picks eighth, ninth and tenth. If the Bulls fail to jump to the top four, they owe their first-round pick to the Magic, but their second-round pick would be the inverse selection of their first (i.e. if they got the tenth pick in the first round, they'd get the eighth pick in the second).

Oh, but one more thing: The Bulls also own the right to swap seconds with the Pelicans as part of the Nikola Mirotić trade from 2018. It's enough to make your head swim.

If all that’s too confusing, here’s an example: Say the Bulls don't jump into the top four and land eighth in the three-way tiebreaker with the Kings ninth and the Pelicans tenth. That means the Bulls would hand their first-round pick to the Magic, and get the tenth pick in the second round (40th overall) — the inverse of eighth in the first. But then, because of those swap rights, they would jump up to the Pelicans’ 38th overall pick — eighth in the second round.

Simply put: Because of the swap opportunity, the Bulls' second round pick will ultimately either be 38th or 39th overall.

Key Dates

  • May 25, 2021: Coin flip tiebreaker day (via Jonathan Givony)
  • June 22, 2021: Draft lottery
  • July 29, 2021: NBA Draft 
  • Aug. 1, 2021: Deadline to decide on Arcidiacono’s team option
  • Aug. 1, 2021: Deadline to decide on qualifying offers
  • Aug. 2, 2021: Deadline to either fully or partially guarantee Young and/or Satoranský’s contracts
  • Aug. 2, 2021: Free agency begins
  • Aug. 5, 2021: Moratorium is lifted, meaning free-agent signings can be made official

Editor's note: Arcidiacono's team option deadline was originally written as Saturday, and Young and Satoranský's as Sunday, but were later corrected.

Extension-Eligible Bulls

  • Zach LaVine
  • Troy Brown Jr. (deadline to agree is the day before the start of the 2021-22 season)

RELATED: Bulls' Zach LaVine wants what he deserves in potential extension

Cap Space Projection

The Bulls’ cap space possibilities are almost limitless this offseason, depending on how they handle Satoranský and Young’s partial guarantees, their own free-agents’ cap holds, Arcidiacono’s team option and whether or not they keep their first-round pick.

But here are their two paths to significant flexibility:

  • If the Bulls renounce all their free agents (including Markkanen’s restricted rights), decline Arcidiacono’s option and waive both Young and Satoranský, they could clear roughly $24 million in space, and be left with six players on the roster.
  • If, on top of that, the Bulls then waived and stretched Aminu’s $10.2 million salary and both Satoranský ($5 million) and Young’s ($6 million) cap hits over the next three seasons, they could get to approximately $36.9 million in space this offseason (though that would be less if they wind up retaining their first-round pick). But those waive-and-stretches would take up around $7 million in space over each of the next two offseasons, and would leave the Bulls with just five players on the roster.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story said the Bulls could get "approximately $35 million in space" under the latter scenario, but that has been updated.

It’s a lot. And again, there are countless other possibilities. The Bulls could also choose to operate as an over-the-cap team, which would leave them unable to outright sign free agents, but unlock the mid-level exception (projected for a starting salary of $9.5 million). Finding a sign-and-trade partner for Markkanen is always possible in that scenario as well.

All of which is to say, stay tuned. With the stakes  and variables  high, the Bulls’ work is cut out for them.

NBC Sports Chicago's Kevin Anderson contributed to this report.

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