NBA Free Agency 2012: Why the Chicago Bulls Cannot Afford to Lose Omer Asik

The Houston Rockets have offered Chicago Bulls backup center Omer Asik a contract worth $24.1 million over three years, with the restricted free agent set to make roughly $14.11 million in the final season of the deal—a poison pill provision designed to discourage Chicago from matching the offer.

It may work.

Barring a trade or use of the amnesty cause, the Bulls will already have $48 million in committed salary in 2014-15 between Derrick Rose ($17.8 mil), Carlos Boozer ($16.8 mil), Joakim Noah ($12.2 mil) and Jimmy Butler ($2.0 mil) (via ShamSports). That does not include Taj Gibson, whom the Bulls will try to extend in the coming months, or Deng, whom the Bulls will have to extend before the 2014-15 season if they wish to retain his services.

That means Asik’s $14.1 million could put Chicago firmly into luxury tax territory, and that is perhaps too hard a pill for Bulls ownership to swallow considering the center’s role with the team. To date, Asik has only logged two career starts in the NBA, has averaged only 13 minutes per game and has shown no signs of improving his offensive game year over year, a troubling sign considering he will turn 26 on July 4.

That said, the Bulls simply cannot afford to let Omer Asik walk in free agency.

With a healthy Derrick Rose the Bulls are title contenders, as evidenced by the last two seasons. And the most direct path toward remaining contenders is keeping their core of Rose, Deng, Noah, Gibson and, to a lesser extent, Boozer intact.

If the Bulls want to acquire the second offensive playmaker that they desire—and so clearly needed against Miami in the 2011 playoffs and Philadelphia in the 2012 playoffs—they will need to send back enough salary in a trade to bring back an elite, high-paid player.

Asik’s $14.1 million will be an expiring contract in 2014-15 and represents the Bulls' best and perhaps only way to send out significant salary without sacrificing a member of the core.

And that’s what championship teams do: They fill holes without creating other ones in their place. And they do it by trading away players they don’t need but who nonetheless command high salaries.

In 2007, the Celtics traded for Kevin Garnett. The salary centerpiece of their outgoing package was a 34-year-old Theo Ratliff, who was set to make $11.6 million in the final year of his expiring deal.

In 2008, the Lakers traded for Pau Gasol. Their biggest outgoing salary? An expiring Kwame Brown making $9.07 million (via Basketball Reference).

If there’s one rule of NBA transactions, it’s that there are always teams willing to part with talent to get out of salary—and there are always richer, more competitive teams willing to take on salary to acquire talent.

Chicago, more than any other team, should be in the latter category.

According to Forbes, the Bulls are the NBA’s most profitable franchise with a five-year average profit of $55 million. They have never left the top three since the mid-1990s, even as their teams swung from mediocre to unspeakably bad between 1999 and 2005. 

That's why there is no excuse for not matching Asik’s offer sheet, even if it means they risk eating his salary and paying the luxury tax in 2014-15 (in the event they can’t move him in a trade).

The upside of keeping him is one they can’t afford to pass on. Over the next two seasons they will have the league’s best backup center on a reasonable contract of roughly $5 million per year.  And in the third and final year they will have a trade chip that allows them to package their non-rostered assets (protected first-round draft pick via Charlotte, European prospect Nikola Mirotic, future first-rounders) for an elite talent without sacrificing Deng, Noah or Gibson.

The coming days will say a lot about Bulls ownership. If they let Asik walk, we will be reminded, once again, that there are strict financial parameters to their pursuit of a championship.

And if they match Houston’s offer sheet, it will be a clear sign the Bulls’ talk of paying for a winner was not just idle chatter.