The Bulls are bolstering their depth in the back seat with a new veteran addition. Chicago will sign former NBA baseman Goran Dragic on a one-year deal, according to Jordan Schultz of the Pull Up Podcast (Twitter link).
Dragic, most recently with the Nets, will earn $ 2.9 million, the veteran’s minimum, next season, tweets Shams Charania of The Athletic.
Dragic, who has an All-Star season and an All-NBA season on his resume, played a crucial role during the Heat’s NBA Finals on the Orlando “bubble” campus in 2020. The Guardian’s production Slovene fell to the ground the following season amid injury issues and eventually dealt with the Raptors in the signing and trade deal that led Kyle Lowry to the Heat in the low season of 2021.
Last year, Dragic played just five games with Toronto before reaching an agreement to leave the club because he was looking for a suitable change. The 36-year-old was sent to the Spurs and negotiated a purchase with San Antonio, then hooked up with the Nets as a free agent.
In 16 games with Brooklyn, including six starts, Dragic averaged 7.3 PPG, 4.8 APG and 3.2 RPG, while posting shooting distributions of .376 / .245 / .739. Although his numbers of assists and rebounds were in line with his career averages of 4.8 APG and 3.1 RPG, his efficiency in scoring 25.5 MPG for Brooklyn was far from the his 14-year career average of 13.7 PPG to .460 / .362 /. 767 tir.
The incorporation of Dragic marks Chicago’s fourth free agent deal this offseason. The team agreed to re-sign All-Star shooter Zach LaVine with a maximum deal, recovering deep bench reserve striker Derrick Jones Jr. and will add Officer Andre Drummond’s reserve center to increase his rebound.
As Yossi Gozlan of HoopsHype notes (via Twitter), thanks to Dragic’s minimum wage deal, the Bulls are now about $ 1.7 million below the luxury tax this season, with a projection of 15 players with guaranteed contracts. Gozlan adds that Chicago has about $ 7 million left to use from its mid-level non-contributory exception.
It seems more likely that any further changes to the Bulls list will occur through trade than free agency. Opening a site to the list now to add another free agent would require negotiating or giving up a current Bull with a guaranteed salary. The team also has a $ 5 million commercial exception that will expire after July 7th.
If the Bulls make a deal, it could involve the depth of their backfield. The team joins a group of guards that already includes Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso, Ayo Dosunmu and Coby White, although Ball’s health for next season remains a question mark.
NBC Sports Chicago’s KC Johnson reports that the team anticipates that this current roster will be intact for the training camp in the fall, although it acknowledges that the team appears to have a surplus of guards.