Pau Gasol is officially an unrestricted NBA free agent.
Which means his time with the Chicago Bulls is officially over.
Pau Gasol opted out of the final year of his deal on Monday, and per ESPN.com’s Nick Friedell, neither he nor the Bulls are planning a reunion:
Both Bulls and Pau know he'll be playing elsewhere next season. https://t.co/GCLlvjIYUj
— Nick Friedell (@NickFriedell) June 27, 2016
Makes sense.
Gasol will turn 36 in July and doesn’t quite jive with the Bulls’ timeline anymore. It was fine to pay him when they were projected contenders. But after missing the playoffs last season and trading Derrick Rose to the New York Knicks last week, it looks like they’re gearing up for a rebuild. And Gasol, at his age, belongs on a contender.
Even if the two sides wanted to hammer out a new deal, this marriage still wouldn’t make a ton of sense. Though Joakim Noah is expected to leave in free agency as well, the Bulls have too many frontcourt bodies on the roster. Balancing playing time between Taj Gibson, Bobby Portis, Robin Lopez and Nikola Mirotic is going to be difficult. And let’s not forget that Doug McDermott, though listed as a small forward, is really more of a 4 in today’s league.
Incorporating Pau Gasol within this dynamic would be next to impossible. So both he and the Bulls have outlasted their use for one another.
Gasol belongs on a team that will contend for more than a low-end playoff berth, and Chicago needs to invest in its youth, not try re-opening a championship window that, truthfully, may have never been open in the first place.
