Report: Chicago Bulls officially avoid the luxury tax

The Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs can just go home, the Chicago Bulls have won the season's biggest prize.

Yes, according to math done by the ever-reliable Dan Feldman of Pro Basketball Talk with data from Sham Sports, the Bulls finished the regular season $791,165 below the league's luxury tax threshold, something that is always an implied goal under owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

The Bulls are so tax-avoidant that, despite being a genuine contender in several years, the team has never once paid into the luxury tax since it became a part of the league's collective bargaining agreement in 2001. They are one of just five franchises able to boast as much, so, you know, congratulations.

It didn't always look as if the Bulls could pull it off, however, and they would have gone over if Joakim Noah had made the All-NBA first team and Taj Gibson made the All-Defensive first team. While the former is a possibility and perhaps even likely, Gibson did not earn All-Defensive first team honors.

The payoff here is two-fold. First, the Bulls will receive tax payments from any tax paying teams, as tax money is distributed evenly to all non-paying teams. Second, the Bulls can now enter 2014-15 knowing they will not be a "repeater" if they go into the tax, as the current CBA increases the severity of tax payments for teams staying in the tax for multiple seasons.