NBA insider criticizes Chicago Bulls’ worst contract

The Chicago Bulls made a huge mistake when they drafted Patrick Williams in the 2020 draft, and then they compounded it with a bad extension. That extension is hampering them now and appears poised to hamper them well into the future, despite it not being a massive salary. It was just labeled as one of the contracts that’s going to age the absolute worst.

NBA insider believes Patrick Williams’ contract will age so poorly

The Patrick Williams $90 million deal is almost halfway over, but it’s still going to hurt even when the Chicago Bulls are about to get out from under it. There are two years and $36 million left with a player option after that, and Williams would never get $18 million a year anywhere else, so he’s going to opt in.

It’s such a bad contract that it’s listed on Bleacher Report’s Dan Favale’s list of bad contracts that will age poorly in two seasons. “Patrick Williams’ deal just keeps going and going, doesn’t it?” he wrote. He acknowledged that Williams only makes under 10% of the cap, which isn’t really that much.

But in order for that to matter, Williams actually has to be a rotation combo forward, but he’s been anything but so far. He’s almost unplayable. “While he’s young enough to keep getting better, he’s shown few signs of being a serviceable offensive weapon,” Favale wrote.

“Ultra-low volume offsets the 39.2 percent clip he’s shooting from deep. Since entering the NBA, he has never ranked higher than the 22nd percentile of BBall Index’s O-LEBRON metric. His usage rate, meanwhile, has topped out inside the 17th percentile,” Favale continued.

He estimated that it would be like Zeke Nnaji’s bad deal with the Denver Nuggets. “The price is low enough it won’t seem detrimental, but ebbing playing time and the inability to trade Williams without attaching assets will speak for itself,” he wrote in conclusion.

The Williams deal is just bad enough to prevent the Bulls from doing much during its duration, and it’s bad enough that they’d have a really hard time getting anyone to trade for it. For reference, Williams makes $18 million, and he was listed with Joel Embiid ($62.5 million), Jayson Tatum ($62.8 million), DeAaron Fox ($53.6 million), and Jakob Poeltl ($27.3 million) in terms of 2027-28 salaries.

So while Williams does not make all that much, it’s bad enough to be compared to albatross contracts, which is a scathing indictment.