Cartier Martin‘s second 10-day contract with the Bulls expired last night, and Chicago won’t re-sign him for the rest of the season, reports Shams Charania of RealGM.com. Teams are limited to handing out only a pair of 10-day deals to a player before they must decide whether to keep him for the season or part ways.
A report surfaced within an hour of the team’s announcement of Martin’s second 10-day contract that the Bulls hoped to re-sign the Andrew Vye client for the season, so it isn’t clear whether the decision not to do so came from Chicago or from Martin’s camp. The Bulls are perilously close to luxury tax territory, as I explained earlier this month, so perhaps Chicago grew skittish about committing the bulk of its remaining room beneath the tax threshold to the 29-year-old. Today’s news could be a boon for Mike James, whose first 10-day contract with the team expires after Friday night. The Bulls are at 13 players without Martin, and they can’t carry fewer than that for more than two weeks at a time.
Tom Thibodeau was supportive of Martin sticking around for the rest of the season, Charania tweets, so maybe this is another sign of disconnect between the Bulls coach and front office. Martin averaged just 2.5 points in 8.0 minutes per game over six appearances, though he made 62.5% of his field goal attempts in the small sample size.