The Chicago Bulls have shifted their focus from the present to the future this summer. They have finally embraced the rebuild and will try to build a sustainable winner from the ground up.
This requires making savvy financial decisions when it comes to player contracts. In a salary-cap league, the contracts you give out to your players are as important as identifying and acquiring the players.
That's why it's important to take stock of the contracts on the books. Let's take a look at the best and worst deals the Bulls currently have.
Most overpaid: Patrick Williams
Unfortunately, every Bulls fan knew where this was going. Patrick Williams has been the answer to "who is the most overpaid player on the Bulls?" since the moment he signed a five-year, $90 million contract in the 2024 offseason. It was a terrible contract then, and it looks even worse now.
The former fourth-overall pick will make $18 million next season and is under contract for two more years after this. Williams was a DNP-Coach's Decision on numerous occasions and didn't play even at a fringe backup level last season. If he were an unrestricted free agent this summer, it's difficult to see him getting more than a minimum contract. This means that he is about $15 million overpaid in his deal.
This makes him not only the worst contract on the Bulls, but also one of the least team-friendly deals in the entire league.
Williams is still somehow only 24 years old, so perhaps there is a chance he could be better and live up to some of the expectations that come with this contract. But no Bulls fan is going to be holding their breath.
Most underpaid: Tre Jones
For the sake of this exercise, it's more fun to exclude players on rookie-scale contracts. That is not a contract that teams negotiate and agree to with the players. It's a predetermined structure, and the players and the teams don't get a say. So, let's focus on contracts that were actually negotiated and signed. Otherwise, the easy answer to this would be Matas Buzelis and his $5.7 million salary for next season.
That brings us to Tre Jones. A big reason why the 26-year-old point guard is underpaid is that he is severely underrated. Because he has never been in a winning situation or played in the playoffs, most of the fans and the league don't quite appreciate how good he is.
Jones is one of the best finishers among point guards, a very impressive feat given he is undersized and underathletic. The way he understands how to get to his spots, get his shot off, and play in traffic is beautiful. He gets to the rim at will, and he shot an amazing 69% on his shots at the rim, per Cleaning the Glass.
At 63.7% True Shooting, Jones was one of the most efficient guards in the league. Combine that with the fact that he never turns the ball over or makes mistakes, and you have one of the best backup point guards in the league. The 5.4 assists-to-1.4 turnover ratio for a player who has the ball in his hands a lot and plays 27 minutes per game is certainly impressive.
Jones is doing all of this while making $8 million per year. He is under contract for another year; then the Bulls have a team option for that amount. In a league where average backups make eight-figure annual salaries, this is a very team-friendly deal for Chicago.
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