Chicago Bulls promote Onuralp Bitim, forgo buyout market options

After a successful buyout acquisition in 2022-23 led to a 14-9 record with Patrick Beverley in the fold, the Chicago Bulls had an opportunity to strike again.

In his post trade deadline media availability, lead decision maker Arturas Karnisovas even harkened back to the 14-9 stretch post buyout last season, tipping that he would go shopping again on the market with his spare roster spot and $1.7 million of space below the luxury tax to work with.

The Bulls were in on Danilo Gallinari before he signed with the Milwaukee Bucks. My guess is that they were waiting to see if Evan Fournier would reach a buyout with the Detroit Pistons after being traded there, but no such buyout has materialized.

With those two options off the board, the Bulls instead turn without and use the opportunity to promote Bitim from a two-way contract to a multiyear standard NBA contract, the team announced Saturday morning.

In 12 regular season games with Windy City, Bitim averaged 16.7 points, 3.9 rebounds, 3.9 assists while shooting 45.6 percent from the field, 43.3 percent from the field and 83.3 percent from the line.

In 10 Showcase games with Windy City, he averaged 11.2 points, 3.3 rebounds, 2.9 assists on 35.2 percent from the field, 25 percent from three and 100 percent from the line.

Overall, he shot 36.3 percent from deep on 146 attempts.

In converting him to a standard contract, the Bulls remove themselves from the buyout market now that they have 15 roster spots filled.

Curiously, the Bulls weren’t playing Bitim when they could have on his two-way deal. In theory, they could have signed a free agent using their remaining $1.7 million to fill the final roster spot, while also inserted Bitim into the rotation for the remainder of the season.

As of yesterday, the prorated vet min would have been just under $600,000. Meanwhile, two-way players are allowed to appear in 50 games during the NBA season. That means the Bulls easily could have brought in a free agent and started to use Bitim in the rotation.

In not doing so, they miss out on the ability to add a body to a thin rotation (missing Lonzo Ball, Zach LaVine and Patrick Williams for the season, while Torrey Craig remains on the shelf for another 2-4 weeks).

With 4-of-15 players on the shelf, Billy Donovan had six players he can consistently count on for meaningful minutes: DeMar DeRozan, Nikola Vucevic, Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu, Alex Caruso and Andre Drummond. The rest of the rotation will be made up of Jevon Carter, Dalen Terry, Julian Phillips while Terry Taylor and Bitim fight for deep reserve minutes.

“I’m sure Arturas and Marc are diving into a bunch of stuff. And they’re probably looking at what makes sense what doesn’t make sense,” Donovan said. “Certainly for us with Torrey (Craig) being out and Patrick (Williams) being you’d be probably looking a little bit more for a specific kind of role or position to fill a need for our team. Through their due diligence, looking at that, I would imagine there’s probably not anybody that they feel maybe is what we would be looking for as an option, would be my guess. But it’s not like we’ve talked about a litany of guys to call, or speak to, or look at.”

The deadline to add someone on the buyout market is March 1. But the Bulls now have all of their roster spots filled, so barring a cut from the roster, they have removed themselves as players in the buyout market.

Ryan Arcidiacono returns

Following the Bitim news, Michael Scotto of HoopsHype.com reported that the Bulls are bringing back Arcidiacono to the Windy City Bulls.

The team has yet to confirm this news. It remains to be seen whether this is a G League or two-way contract.

Arcidiacono spent four seasons with Chicago from 2017-2021. In 207 games, he averaged 4.8 points, 2.2 assists and two rebounds per game on 43.1 percent field goal shooting, 37.3 percent three point shooting and 80.7 percent from the line.

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