A mini-update after the Jimmy Butler press conference today:
- A big assumption this morning was that the Bulls still had their taxpayer-MLE exception to use. We now know that's not true, they used 'a little over $2m' of it to sign Brooks. This is technically using it (all that's left is around the vet minimum, anyway) but really strangely. Since Brooks was on the team last year, he was eligible for a 20% raise to around $1.374m. So by going over $2m they now can't use that exception for somebody else. The Bulls did a solid job in leveraging Bird rights when signing Dunleavy, but not doing the same with Brooks (though we'll probably hear of the 'bidding war' soon) is poor roster management.