Jordan Hawkins and the Bulls Two-Way Deal: How the Market Repriced a Former Lottery Pick

Last Friday, Jordan Hawkins was placed on waivers by the Memphis Grizzlies. Three weeks earlier, he had just been traded to Memphis in a four-player deal. Today, he signs a two-way contract with the Chicago Bulls. Within a single month, the market repriced Hawkins twice, and each time it was cheaper than the last.

The notable part isn't the signature. It's a set of numbers few people mention. Hawkins was selected by the New Orleans Pelicans with the 14th pick of the 2026 draft, after winning the NCAA title with UConn. In the season with the higher minutes, he averaged 23.6 minutes and 10.8 points per game. Last season, he played 51 games at 13.6 minutes per game. That is a decline of nearly 42%. In professional basketball, minutes are the most honest language a coaching staff speaks. They don't lie the way press-conference statements do, and they don't care where a player was drafted.

The cheapest mechanism in a front office's hands

To understand why a former lottery pick accepts a two-way deal, one has to understand the mechanism under the NBA's collective bargaining agreement. A two-way contract pays a flat salary, usually about half the rookie minimum, and that amount does not count against the salary cap or the luxury tax. Each team may carry up to three two-way players. These players can be active for a limited number of NBA games, and spend the rest of the time in the G League. The team may convert the two-way deal into a standard contract at any time.

This is the cheapest and most reversible tool in a front office's hands. It costs no cap space, carries no long-term commitment, and can be terminated or upgraded at will. For a team in transition, it is the cheapest way to buy an option on the market.

Hawkins' journey over one month reads like a valuation chart. New Orleans drafted him and then sent him away. Memphis acquired him in a four-player deal involving AJ Johnson and Taj Gibson, then waived him after just three weeks. Chicago picked him up with a two-way slot. Three teams, three prices, each lower than the last.

A team acquiring a player and immediately waiving him is the signature of a salary-matching piece or a throw-in, not a targeted acquisition. Memphis' real return lay in the other elements of the four-player deal. Hawkins, in that calculation, was the card that balanced the equation, not the purpose of it.

Tactical profile: a saturated archetype

Hawkins belongs to the group of off-ball movement shooters and catch-and-shoot finishers, the modern three-and-D wing. This is the most common archetype in contemporary basketball. Because it is common, scarcity is low, and when a skill exists everywhere, the leverage of whoever owns it falls with it. Hawkins' NBA value depends on a skill the league mass-produces every season.

Based on my experience watching games, I always start with one question: what problem does this player solve for a team? An off-ball shooting specialist solves the spacing problem, but only if his defense survives deliberate switching. In the playoffs, opponents attack the weakest link in the switching chain, and a two-way player is rarely that link within a rotation.

The source analysis provides no defensive data at all. No three-point percentage, no true shooting percentage, no effective field goal percentage, no plus-minus. Any claim that Hawkins is efficient or inefficient has no foundation. Here, the data is missing, and I cannot assess it. An honest analyst states the limits of the data at hand instead of filling the gap with speculation.

From the CBA, I learned: the rough gem isn't in the highlight, it's in the quiet minutes. For Hawkins, those quiet minutes are shrinking.

The minutes collapse is the decisive fact

The collapse from 23.6 to 13.6 minutes per game is the decisive tactical fact. Whatever role Hawkins held in the higher-minutes season, that role is gone. This implies one of three possibilities, and each leads to a different conclusion about his future.

The first is that the team changed its scheme. In that case, Hawkins simply lost his way on a team redirecting itself toward developing creative ball handlers rather than catch-and-shoot specialists. This is the trap an off-ball shooting specialist is most prone to: he needs a playmaker to exist, and when the team restructures around playmakers, he is pushed to the margins.

The second is that he became a defensive liability. If so, signing a two-way deal with the Bulls is a difficult bet. Chicago has historically valued defensive buy-in, and a player under suspicion on that end will struggle to climb into the rotation.

The third is that he slumped as a shooter. That story is different: a shooter who has lost his rhythm can find himself again in a lower-pressure environment, where off-ball cuts are rewarded.

The report does not specify which. This is a serious gap, because not knowing the cause means the outcome cannot be predicted. I mark this entire cluster of facts as pending verification, and I want to be explicit about the chronology: if the source article was written in the 2026 offseason, then last season is 2026-26; if not, the 23.6 minutes belong to an earlier season. Every inference below must survive both readings.

The age curve favors Hawkins. He was drafted in 2026, most likely aged 22 to 24, the favorable part of the career curve. Physical decline risk is low. But role-decline risk is high. A player can be young and already squeezed out of a rotation, and the minutes data points exactly at that scenario.

At 31, I no longer chase intuition; I teach intuition to read data. And the data here says one clear thing: Hawkins' trajectory is downward. Minutes nearly halved between the two seasons cited, and he was waived within three weeks of being traded. Two independent signals point the same direction.

Position in the league landscape

Hawkins moved from a lottery team to a contender, then was waived, then landed with a middle-tier team. That journey is a compressed illustration of how fast the NBA reprices young wings. A contender like Memphis treats a roster spot as something fungible, and acquiring then immediately waiving a player is the hallmark of organizations that put winning now above all else.

For Chicago, spending a two-way slot on a pedigreed player shows they see optionality, not a rotation fix. This is consistent with a team that is neither fully tanking nor contending. From that position, a cheap swing on a shooter is a rational move.

The combination of former lottery pick, waived three weeks after being traded, and now on a two-way deal is a textbook pedigree-decay curve; the market has repriced him twice in one month.

The contrarian angle

The common reading is that Hawkins is on the way down: fewer minutes, waived, forced to accept a two-way. But there is another reading worth weighing, and I want to argue against myself here.

The minutes collapse may measure the team's direction, not the player's decline. A catch-and-shoot shooter can be squeezed out of a rotation while still playing well, simply because the team shifted toward developing ball handlers. If so, the red flag I read above may be wrong, and Hawkins is simply the victim of a restructuring, not of decline.

It is also worth remembering that a player can be drafted into a rebuilding team where the coaching staff wants to develop initiators rather than catch-and-shoot specialists. In that environment, an off-ball shooting specialist is the archetype most likely to lose minutes, no matter how well he shoots.

The deeper contrarian angle sits at the league level. A former lottery pick accepting a two-way deal reflects the collapsing leverage of non-star young players under the current CBA. Teams are using two-way deals as a soft way to keep a pedigreed player in the system without a roster guarantee. This is a structural trend worth tracking, and it changes how one reads small transaction reports.

The transfer market is a battlefield where sellers use reputation and buyers use data. Here, the reputation of a lottery pick no longer buys a guarantee, only an opportunity.

What to watch

For Chicago, this is a near-zero-risk bet: buying low on the reputation of a former lottery pick without spending cap space or a roster spot. For Memphis, Hawkins was a throw-in. For New Orleans, he was a player they drafted and then gave away. Two franchises have moved on, and that is a negative external validation of his market value.

The decisive variable is whether Chicago converts the two-way deal into a standard contract during the season. If it does, this is the story of an asset rediscovered. If it does not, it is a routine depth signing that leaves no trace. And if Hawkins is not converted before the season closes, the most likely next step is a career reset in the G League or overseas.

Fans see the decisive shot; I see the 47 cuts nobody records. For Hawkins, those 47 cuts will mostly happen in the G League, where no camera points. Sport never stops; it only changes courts, changes rules, and changes the people holding the data pen.