(670 The Score) After holding on to center Nikola Vucevic as the trade deadline passed Thursday afternoon and as his unrestricted free agency looms in the summer, the Bulls are optimistic they will re-sign him.
“I’m confident,” executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas told reporters in Brooklyn on Thursday evening before the Bulls faced the Nets.
Vucevic, 32, is averaging 18.0 points and 11.3 rebounds while playing in all 54 of the Bulls’ games this season. He’s shooting 52.2% overall, which is on pace to be the second-best mark of his 12-year NBA career.
The Bulls acquired Vucevic from the Magic in exchange for center Wendell Carter Jr. and two first-round picks in March 2021. Vucevic is extension-eligible now, though there hasn’t been much noise on that front lately.
“He’s having an unbelievable year,” Karnisovas said of Vucevic. “We want him to be here. So I just think that for this group, now is important. Now that the trade deadline has passed, this is the group that we’re sticking with. They can go out there and play and put a foot on the gas and put together a run.”
Vucevic isn’t the Bulls’ only free agent-to-be. Guard Ayo Dosunmu and guard Coby White are in line to be restricted free agents, while wing Javonte Green is set to hit unrestricted free agency.
Beyond that, the Bulls lack draft capital, probably won’t have salary cap space of significance and historically haven’t been inclined to pay the luxury tax. So how do they plan on improving this summer?
“We’ll have ways to do it,” Karnisovas said. “This trade deadline showed us that we have a lot of good players who have a lot of value around the league. I think there’s ways to do it. We will look at how to improve it based on the next 28 games and how we’re going to finish the season. And we’ll go from there.
“We turned the roster around the last couple years. We’ve done deals in the summertime that a lot of people said that we couldn’t do. I think there are ways to improve it. It’s just the timing is going to depend on when you make those moves. This is just a collection of information in the next 28 games of where we are.”
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