The Chicago Bulls and restricted free agent Josh Giddey are still in the midst of contract negotiations that have dragged on throughout the NBA offseason. There seems to be progress being made towards a deal, but we still have no concrete timeline on when the situation will be resolved with training camp on the horizon.
Despite Giddey’s complicated free agency bringing into question his perceived value around the league, sports betting markets are viewing the Australian guard as a strong candidate for the 2025-26 Most Improved Player.
Chicago traded Alex Caruso for Giddey in June of 2024. After some solid-yet-not-spectacular numbers to open the season playing next to Zach LaVine, Giddey’s statistical output exploded post-LaVine trade, which was right before the All-Star break.
Over 19 post-All-Star break games, Giddey averaged 21.2 points, 10.7 rebounds, 9.3 assists, 1.5 steals and shot a lights-out 45.7% from 3-point range.
NBA games that take place over the final stretch of the season do have to be taken with a grain of salt. These late regular season contests usually involve the teams at the bottom of the league experimenting with inexperienced lineups, and elite teams finding rest for their key players ahead of the playoffs.
Conversely, you can only play the competition you have in front of you and anyone who watched the Bulls down the stretch can admit Giddey was playing some of the best basketball of his young career.
While Giddey detractors will surely point to the quality of competition during his hot streak, it is important to note he did show full season improvement in key areas of his game.
Pre-All-Star break, when Giddey wasn’t getting a ton of attention for his play, he was shooting 34.5% from 3-point range. While not impressive, that figure would’ve represented a career-best for Giddey. Instead of settling there, he went on to have the aforementioned lights-out shooting stretch from deep and get his 3-point percentage up to 37.8%.
Heading into the 2025-26 NBA season, several sportsbooks have Giddey as a top-seven option for Most Improved Player. At the time of this writing, Draftkings Sportsbook (+2200) and BetMGM (+2500) have Giddey 5th in the odds, while FanDuel Sportsbook has him 6th at +3000 behind teammate Matas Buzelis.
Assuming a deal is completed with Chicago and Giddey enters his second season as a member of the Bulls, he should continue to shoulder the offensive load with backcourt mate Coby White.
Nikola Vucevic and White had higher usage rates than Giddey last season, but one would expect Vucevic’s role to decline to some degree due to age-related decline and/or getting young players like Buzelis more involved in the offense. While a step back for Vucevic likely represents an uptick in FGAs for Giddey, the continued development of Buzelis and rookie Noa Essengue likely represent more opportunities for easy assists in the Bulls up-tempo attack.
Most players need to show something new in their game to have a shot at the MIP Award. But in the case of Josh Giddey, he simply needs to show he can replicate exactly what he was doing over his impressive stretch to close the 2024-25 season.