The Chicago Bulls currently have an open roster spot and the room mid-level exception starting at $9.4 million next season. They were connected to a few free agents for that final roster spot, and Bennedict Mathurin was one of them.
On Wednesday, ESPN's Shams Charania reported that Mathurin was signing with the New Orleans Pelicans instead. After seeing that it was only a two-year, $16 million deal, some Bulls fans may have wondered why it wasn't their team that made the signing.
It is a team-friendly contract, to be sure. Mathurin has a chance to outplay that deal. He could have helped the Bulls as a competent scorer off the bench.
But the Bulls made the right decision by not pursuing him.
Bulls won't regret not signing Bennedict Mathurin
Even though Mathurin could have helped Chicago, this deal has little upside. Mathurin has a player option for the 2027-28 season. This means that if he plays well this season, he would almost certainly opt out and ask for a new contract. If he doesn't play well, then he opts in, and you have a negative-value contract on your end.
The real concern for the Bulls, however, was the on-court fit. Mathurin is a good scorer, but everything else in his game is still a work in progress. He is a below-average shooter, having hit 32.9% of his threes over the last two seasons. After joining the Clippers at the trade deadline, he hit 20.7% of his threes.
This would have been a serious problem for a team that's already low on shooting. The Bulls don't have enough elite shooters on the roster outside of Norman Powell. Mathurin only exacerbates the spacing concerns, making things harder for Matas Buzelis and Caleb Wilson.
Plus, the Bulls already have enough mouths to feed offensively. Buzelis and Wilson need to explore the studio space. Josh Giddey will have the ball in his hands a lot. Norman Powell is coming off an All-Star season. Adding a score-first shooting guard into that mix would have made things more complicated for Tiago Splitter.
Chicago could use an offensive engine, but that player has to be better than Mathurin. The 24-year-old swingman has no passing or playmaking chops. He can only create shots for himself, and those are usually not even high-efficiency shots. That is not the type of player this iteration of the Bulls needs.
If this were a real bargain of a deal for multiple years, then the Bulls could have been more aggressive in pursuing it. If they could have gotten Mathurin to sign for this average annual salary for two or three years of team control, this would have given them some upside. They could have an excellent trade chip that they could flip at a later date. It's unclear whether Mathurin would have been interested in signing such a deal.
For this type of contract structure, however, the Bulls made the right decision by letting him sign elsewhere.
| More Bulls on DaWindyCity |
Add us as a preferred source on Google