Bulls forward Jimmy Butler, who is a restricted free agent, is interested in signing a one-year deal with the Los Angeles Lakers, according to the Los Angeles Daily News' Mark Medina. Unfortunately for Butler, the league's salary cap rules won't allow him to do so.
Jimmy Butler wants to sign a 1-year deal with the Lakers, but he can’t
The Bulls restricted free agent may want to play hardball, but in this case Chicago has all the power.
Theoretically, signing a one-year deal would be a good decision for the 24-year-old Butler to make. He’d be able to re-enter the free agency market in a year and take advantage of all that new TV money set to enter the league. Butler’s wariness of the Bulls has been reported; Yahoo Sports! Adrian Wojnarowski noted that Butler was interested in pursuing a short-term deal with the Bulls so he could become an unrestricted free agent.
Signing with a team like the Lakers would also allow Butler to split with Derrick Rose. The two reportedly have a cold relationship.
"A league source again acknowledged that one of the issues that has left Butler willing to play hardball with the Bulls in his push to hit the free-agent market sooner than later was because he's turned off with the idea that it's "Derrick Rose's team," wrote the Chicago Sun Times on Friday.
But Butler cannot sign a one-year offer sheet with another team because of something called the Maximum Qualifying Offer. Teams already must tender a normal qualifying offer to any potential restricted free agent, but if they really value that player, they can also attach the Maximum Qualifying Offer provision. The mechanics of a Maximum Qualifying Offer are explained in detail by HoopsHype’s Mark Deeks.
The most important provision is that other teams must sign Butler for at least three seasons with no options. The Lakers therefore cannot sign Butler to a one-year contract and they can’t even sign Butler to a deal with an opt-out after the second year like Dallas did with Chandler Parsons last summer.
The Bulls offered Butler both the qualifying offer and the max qualifying offer on Monday. Therefore the only real way Butler could leave Chicago and sign with L.A. before the 2018 season is if he takes the one-year, $4.4 million tender from Chicago and becomes an unrestricted free agent in 2016. Butler would surely have multiple teams offering him a maximum contract then, and he’d have much more freedom to leave Chicago. That deal would also be worth millions more than it is now due to the salary cap’s jump.
But a lot can happen to a player in one year. Is Butler willing to bet on himself for a second year in a row? He’d be turning down a lot of money and security to do so.
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