Playing the waiting game ultimately paid off for Josh Giddey.<\/p>\n
The veteran guard agreed to a four-year, $100 million contract to return to the Chicago Bulls, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania<\/a>. It’s a pretty good piece of business when a different restricted free agent, Cam Thomas, settled<\/a> on the one-year qualifying offer less than a week ago when his market was tighter than expected.<\/p>\n Assuming the deal is split evenly across the four years, Giddey will have the highest salary on Chicago’s roster for 2025-26:<\/p>\n Chicago Bulls 2025-26 Payroll<\/p>\n ESPN’s Bobby Marks provided a broad overview in terms of Chicago’s financial commitments and future assets:<\/p>\n The franchise was in a tight spot with Giddey, hence the front office finding some middle ground between a reported offer<\/a> of $22 million annually and the $30 million per year the player originally wanted<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Bulls don’t have a lot of young stars who can be building blocks for the future. Giddey will only turn 23 in October, and he had a solid first year in the Windy City. He averaged 14.6 points, 8.1 rebounds and 7.2 assists, and his three-point percentage (37.8) was a career high.<\/p>\n And while the sunk cost fallacy is real, it would’ve looked even worse for Chicago to trade Alex Caruso for Giddey in a one-for-one swap, only to let the Australian playmaker walk as a free agent the following summer.<\/p>\n The biggest questions are what comes next for both Giddey and the organization.<\/p>\n While the contract isn’t a major overpay, it’s based partially on the 6’8″ continuing to improve on the court. If that potential fails to materialize, then his salary will look more cumbersome.<\/p>\n The Bulls, meanwhile, still have a lot of work ahead to become a serious contender in the Eastern Conference. Should they continue to tread water, Giddey’s unrestricted free agency in 2029 will become a bigger factor.<\/p>\n Despite being in a big market, the Bulls aren’t a major draw for free agents, so they’re often left to double down on their internal options. <\/p>\n There’s certainly a possibility that re-signing Giddey proves to be a mistake given the flaws in his game. On the whole, however, this is a sensible gamble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playing the waiting game ultimately paid off for Josh Giddey. The veteran guard agreed to a four-year, $100…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-132045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}