Bulls superstar signs three-year contract with Kings; did Sacramento overpay?

The Chicago Bulls are officially moving on from the DeMar DeRozan era.

The Bulls agreed in principle to a sign-and-trade on Saturday night that will send DeRozan to the Sacramento Kings, according to a breaking report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

DeRozan is now on the other side of his three-year tenure with Chicago, which saw the six-time All-Star average 25.5 points per game in 229 regular season games.

The 34-year-old now joins an upstart contender in the Western Conference. He leaves Chicago having won one playoff game in a Bulls uniform.

There was a time this summer when Chicago still believed it would re-sign DeRozan, but circumstances quickly changed. Once it surfaced that DeRozan didn’t want anything to do with the Bulls’ rebuild and wanted out of Chicago, the franchise realized it had to pivot.

The Bulls shifted into accepting their fate with DeRozan. They leaned into their rebuild while keeping a sign-and-trade for DeRozan in mind as the best-case scenario.

Bulls Nation perked up on Friday when it surfaced that such a deal with Sacramento was imminent and possibly going to be finalized within 24 to 48 hours.

Things became even more real on Saturday morning when it was reported that DeRozan was flying to Sacramento to meet with Kings personnel and presumably review the details of a deal.

The negotiations apparently did not take long.

DeRozan is a King. He will ultimately receive his wish of landing a contract in the $20M-$25M range, as the deal with Sacramento is reportedly worth $74M over three years, per Wojnarowski.

Chicago and Sacramento have been in trade discussions for days, during which they established that in order for a deal to be possible, a third team needed to get involved to take on salary.

That team ended up being the San Antonio Spurs, and that salary ended up being Harrison Barnes. The Spurs are sending Chris Duarte, two second-round picks and cash to Chicago while receiving Barnes from Sacramento.

Some will argue that the Kings are overpaying for DeRozan, who turns 35 in August.

Sacramento obviously feels differently. The Kings hope that DeRozan will prove to be the missing piece on a talented roster that has achieved regular season success but not yet made a deep playoff run.

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Author(s)

Colin Keane is a contributing journalist for The Sporting News. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Villanova University and currently resides in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.