Why NBA Teams Sign Players They Don’t Want
After signing Erik Murphy to a $250,000 guaranteed deal and waiving Richard Hamilton and Malcolm Thomas, the Chicago Bulls had only 12 players under contract. They wanted to bring in veterans Mike James, Dexter Pittman, D.J. White and Dahntay Jones to fight for roster spots. They did not, however, want to pay them anything to do so.
The Bulls thus sought to sign those four to deals incorporating Exhibit 9. But they could not do so until they had 14 contracts. They thus signed undrafted rookie guards Kalin Lucas and Patrick Christopher to unguaranteed yet exhibit 9-less deals before signing those four veterans, thereby meeting the threshold for being able to give out exhibit 9?s, and subsequently signed the vet quartet to four deals containing them.
Lucas and Christopher were waived on the second day of camp. They never stood a chance of making it. An unconfirmed report further suggests that the duo did not even partake in practice – had they done so, they might have gotten hurt. And had they done so, the taxpaying Bulls might have been liable for a hefty bill. As cutthroat as it is, this is business – if someone was going to get hurt in camp, the Bulls wanted it to happen as cheaply as possible. So they protected themselves.
In the end, it has mattered not. White, Pittman and Jones have all been waived – the only surviving unguaranteed contracts are the partially guaranteed deal of Murphy and the Exhibit 9 of James. James seems to have made the team, even without a trade of Marquis Teaque, due in part to the Bulls’s need to meet the minimum roster requirement of 13 players. (They may waive James later when Kurt Thomas is fit to play again, yet he survives for now.)
Nonetheless, even though the finagling ultimately didn’t save the Bulls anything, it was engineered in such a way that it could have done. This is either shrewd asset management and smart business savvy, or an overly callous piece of manipulation by a habitually cheap franchise, depending on your perspective.
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The Bulls thus sought to sign those four to deals incorporating Exhibit 9. But they could not do so until they had 14 contracts. They thus signed undrafted rookie guards Kalin Lucas and Patrick Christopher to unguaranteed yet exhibit 9-less deals before signing those four veterans, thereby meeting the threshold for being able to give out exhibit 9?s, and subsequently signed the vet quartet to four deals containing them.
Lucas and Christopher were waived on the second day of camp. They never stood a chance of making it. An unconfirmed report further suggests that the duo did not even partake in practice – had they done so, they might have gotten hurt. And had they done so, the taxpaying Bulls might have been liable for a hefty bill. As cutthroat as it is, this is business – if someone was going to get hurt in camp, the Bulls wanted it to happen as cheaply as possible. So they protected themselves.
In the end, it has mattered not. White, Pittman and Jones have all been waived – the only surviving unguaranteed contracts are the partially guaranteed deal of Murphy and the Exhibit 9 of James. James seems to have made the team, even without a trade of Marquis Teaque, due in part to the Bulls’s need to meet the minimum roster requirement of 13 players. (They may waive James later when Kurt Thomas is fit to play again, yet he survives for now.)
Nonetheless, even though the finagling ultimately didn’t save the Bulls anything, it was engineered in such a way that it could have done. This is either shrewd asset management and smart business savvy, or an overly callous piece of manipulation by a habitually cheap franchise, depending on your perspective.
