The Bulls have picked up their rookie scale team option on Tony Snell for the 2015/16 season, the team announced. The athletic third-year forward out of New Mexico will make just under $1.536MM next season, as our Rookie Scale Team Option Tracker shows. Snell, who the Bulls took with the 20th pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, averaged 4.5 points in 16 minutes per game for Chicago in his rookie year. He was named First-Team All-NBA Summer League this summer after averaging 20 points and four rebounds over five games in Las Vegas.
Snell’s elite athleticism and defensive potential made him a popular sleeper in the 2013 draft, which was in many ways similar to how K.J. McDaniels was viewed by some this past June. As of four months ago, the Bulls still seemed sold on Snell as a rotation-caliber talent, though there was talk that he was dangled in trade talks prior to the draft. He’ll enter the season as one of many options off the bench on a deep Bulls team.
The move brings Chicago’s commitments for 2015/16 to $60.2MM. That’s fairly close to the projected $66.5MM salary cap, and that figure doesn’t include a new deal for Jimmy Butler, who’ll be set for restricted free agency if he and the Bulls don’t sign an extension by the end of Friday.