Chicago Bulls guard Josh Giddey ended the regular season on a tear, and it sounds like the team wants to re-sign him when he becomes a restricted free agent this summer.
“I think he fits really well here,” Bulls executive vice president Artūras Karnišovas told reporters during his end-of-season media availability on Thursday, “and I hope to see him here for the next years to come.”
Karnišovas added: “I feel really good about Josh and his future here.”
This is not exactly a surprise. Chicago traded Alex Caruso for Giddey last June, and the 22-year-old guard is coming off the strongest stretch of his career. Even if you account for his increased minutes down the stretch, his late-season surge was remarkable:
| PPG | RPG | APG | FG% | 3PT% | TS% | USG% | |
| First 50 games | 15.1 | 9.0 | 8.1 | 44.6 | 33.7 | 53.8 | 20.0 |
| Last 20 games | 22.1 | 10.9 | 9.5 | 50.0 | 47.1 | 62.4 | 24.3 |
Karnišovas said that Giddey was trying “to fit in” at the beginning of the season and “found a completely new gear” after the All-Star break. Giddey said essentially the same thing during his end-of-season media availability, telling reporters that he was able to “play freely and be me” after the trade deadline.
In a vacuum, there’s nothing particularly notable about Karnišovas signaling that the team wants to keep Giddey around. The Bulls wouldn’t have traded Caruso for him if they weren’t interested in re-signing him, and the arc of his season was encouraging.
In context, though, it’s interesting, and for some Chicago fans, a bit scary. The downside of Giddey putting up these numbers late in the season is that re-signing him could be much more expensive than initially projected a few months ago. Last summer, the Bulls signed forward Patrick Williams to a five-year, $90 million deal that looks like a massive overpay. Could a 20-game sample get Giddey a max contract?
It shouldn’t, especially since the Brooklyn Nets are the only team set to have significant cap space this offseason. But it’s unclear where Chicago will draw the line. And while Giddey has played himself into a big raise, overpaying him would represent everything that is frustrating about the Bulls’ current situation.
On Wednesday, for the third season in a row, Chicago’s season ended with a loss in the play-in. “I think we are on the right path,” Karnišovas told reporters Thursday.
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Repeatedly, Karnišovas said that they were trying to “shrink the timeline” of what he called the “transition” phase. Yes, they’ve traded Caruso, DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine in the last calendar year, but the goal is to have a “faster turnaround,” he said, because, instead of bottoming out, they’ve “targeted young players with experience.” This includes Giddey, who saw his minutes shrink in last year’s playoffs with the Oklahoma City Thunder. For all of his gifts as a playmaker in the open court, he is still not treated as a pull-up or spot-up threat in the halfcourt.
Right now, there is nothing easier for an NBA front office to do than build an Eastern Conference play-in team. The Bulls fans who fear Giddey’s next contract are worried that it will doom them to more of the same mediocrity, especially if the front office plans to build around a backcourt of Giddey and Coby White. (White is extension-eligible this summer, but Chicago can’t offer him more than a four-year, $89 million deal.) Based on recent history — and Karnišovas’ comments — these fears are well-founded.
