In the Bulls’ timeout huddles, it’s usually the veterans that do most of the talking. That’s why Dwyane Wade was thrown off in a Jan. 2 game against the Charlotte Hornets when the team’s backup center, Cristiano Felicio, spoke up late.

“I was like, ‘Cris talked, we’re going to win this game,’” Wade says. “I don’t even remember what he said. I was just shocked that he said anything, because he’s very quiet.”

That’s the one constant when you ask Felicio’s teammates about him. He doesn’t talk much, but the other Bulls are hard-pressed to remember a time they’ve seen him in a bad mood.

Lately, Felicio’s game has been doing the talking, and he’s become one of the few genuine bright spots on a middling Bulls team that’s approaching the All-Star break in a bad mood. In his second season, he’s earned a regular spot in the rotation, passing former first-round pick Bobby Portis as the fourth big off the bench, and lately he’s earned the coaching staff’s trust to the point that he’s closing games in place of Robin Lopez.

“He gives us a lot,” head coach Fred Hoiberg says. “I’m really proud of the kid, how he’s worked, how he’s established himself as a rotation player in this league.”

Felicio’s path to the NBA has been anything but conventional: from playing professionally in his native Brazil as a teenager, to a lost year at a shady California prep school, to a college career short-circuited by legal hurdles, to a Summer League invite with the Bulls that he turned into a training camp invite and then a roster spot. Now, he’s playing regularly, and playing well, and could be in line for a big payday this summer.

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Like most kids in Brazil, Felicio’s first sport was soccer, which he played throughout grade school in his hometown of Pouso Alegre. A preteen growth spurt ended that dream, unless he wanted to be a goalie, which wasn’t appealing to him.

“I started growing a little bit,” Felicio says. “And my coach wanted me to play goalie because I was tall. I didn’t want to do that, so I stopped playing and started playing handball.”

Basketball was an afterthought at first, but he grew to love the sport. He didn’t have cable at home, but he was able to catch the occasional NBA game at friends’ houses. He was particularly drawn to Dwight Howard’s Orlando Magic teams of the late 2000s and the renewed Lakers-Celtics rivalry.

“I was into handball,” he says. “Basketball for me was a second sport. But I started learning about the game and right away I stopped playing handball because basketball took over.”

Bulls center Cristiano Felicio has proven to be a valuable asset for the Bulls, who are trying to remake their team on the fly. (Mike DiNovo/USA TODAY Sports)

He spent three years in the youth development program for Minas Tenis Clube, a team in Novo Basquete Brasil, the country’s top professional league. He trained with the team and played with other kids his age while going to high school in Belo Horizonte, where he moved while his family stayed in Pouso Alegre.

It wasn’t until he was 17 that Felicio started to think playing professionally was an option. He knew the easiest path to the NBA would be to get a Division I college scholarship. He started looking into moving to the United States for his senior year, in order improve his grades. A friend told him about CCSE Prep Academy, a new program in Sacramento that had already attracted a few top recruits. He made the decision to transfer there, despite not knowing much English and not really knowing his chances of eventually making it to the NBA.

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Felicio’s time at CCSE was shrouded in controversy. The program was essentially a pop-up prep basketball academy that outsources the actual education, and was seemingly designed to con some kids, and their parents, into forking over tens of thousands of dollars for the promise of earning Division I scholarship.

“The only thing legitimate about CCSE was the players,” says Dave Garcia, an assistant coach at the school during part of Felicio’s year there.

The school’s president, Francis Ngissah, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty in 2014 to charges of physically abusing some of the players in the program.

CCSE’s head coach, former Cal State-Northridge basketball player Keith Moss, brought on Garcia in September of 2012 to assist with player development but resigned a week later because Ngissah wasn’t paying him on time. Garcia stuck around but stepped down two months later, after he discovered that Ngissah had used his direct-deposit information to steal money out of his bank account to cover expenses.

Still, in his short time at CCSE, Garcia saw Felicio’s raw talent for what it was.

“I knew he could be a pro right away,” says Garcia, now an NAIA assistant coach at William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif. “It was just a matter of where — overseas or in Brazil or in the NBA. I saw that he had a ton of potential. He was really skilled, he had really good hands, a really good feel for the game. Anytime we would scrimmage or go up and down, he had a really good feel and knew naturally where to go. He also worked his tail off. You see him now, whenever his shot goes up, he’s following every single shot. He had a natural ability.”

After Felicio arrived in Sacramento, he was greeted not just by his new teammates and coaches, but also by Dana Altman and the rest of the coaching staff at University of Oregon, who had heard about him from international scouts and were intrigued enough to fly out on a private plane to get an in-person look.

“They walked into the gym that we were working out on,” Garcia said. “I shook [Altman’s] hand, shook his staff’s hand, and they said, ‘Let me see five minutes.’ Essentially, they just watched him work out for five minutes and decided, ‘We like what we see,’ and then got back into the car and flew back out.”

Felicio didn’t commit to Oregon right away. Pittsburgh was also interested, and he was focused on getting his grades up. He ultimately decided to go to Oregon because they were the only school to recruit him in person.

Cristiano Felicio Signs with Oregon pic.twitter.com/sRWJRs0y — CCSE PREP BASKETBALL (@CCSEPREP) December 6, 2012

Although the CCSE program fell apart, Felicio improved his grades and SAT scores and was able to gain academic eligibility to attend Oregon. However, the NCAA took issue with his tenure with Minas Tenis Clube, which covered his transportation and food for out-of-town games in Brazil. They challenged his amateur status, eventually declaring him ineligible to play college basketball.

After the NCAA’s ruling ended his college career before it started, Felicio returned home and signed with the Brazilian club Flamengo. He crossed paths with the Bulls in Oct. 2013, when Chicago played a preseason exhibition game against the Washington Wizards in Rio de Janeiro. That week, the Bulls worked out at the same facility as Flamengo and caught wind of him.

“I remember talking to their coaching staff,” Taj Gibson said. “And they said, in broken-up English, ‘We’ve got this kid who’s going to come over.’”

Later, when Felicio became a member of the Bulls, he learned that their scouting team had been watching him for years.

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Felicio declared for the NBA draft in 2014. He had a strong showing at Adidas’ EuroCamp in Italy and drew interest from several NBA teams, but went undrafted and played the following season for Flamengo. His agent, Aylton Tesch, also represented Nikola Mirotic, the Bulls’ most highly touted international prospect, who came over to the NBA in 2014. The Bulls had been tracking Felicio since his time at CCSE and reached out in 2015 to invite him to play for their Summer League team in Las Vegas.

“It was amazing,” Felicio says of receiving that invite, which was the first time he’d learned of the Bulls’ interest in him. “It was everything I was waiting for, to be able to come here and show them that I’m able to play in this league.”

Typically, Summer League rosters are built around a team’s first- and second-round draft picks of the past two or three seasons, along with the occasional veteran washout looking for a second chance at getting on an NBA team. The rest of the summer rosters feature an assortment of undrafted players with only a fringe chance of playing minutes in Vegas, let alone actually making an NBA roster. There are occasional undrafted success stories like Wesley Matthews and Jeremy Lin, but it’s an uphill battle if you aren’t a name.

That’s where Felicio found himself as he headed to Las Vegas. Freshly hired Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg had no idea who Felicio was when he walked into his first practice as an NBA coach.

“Not one thing,” Hoiberg said.

Felicio didn’t play much that summer, averaging just 13.3 minutes over six games in the tournament. But after just a few days of practices in Las Vegas, the Bulls’ coaching staff and front office decided they’d seen enough and invited Felicio to training camp, signing him to a non-guaranteed two-year deal on July 12.

In the final game of his second Summer League season, Bulls center Cristiano Felicio wins an opening tip over Minnesota Timberwolves forward Adreian Payne in the final at Thomas & Mack Center. Chicago won the game 84-82 in overtime. (Stephen R. Sylvanie/USA TODAY Sports)

The timing of the Bulls’ offer was a surprise. Usually, teams wait until August or September, after they’ve made all their big offseason free-agency moves, to offer camp invites to players on the fringes. The Bulls’ aggressiveness with their camp invite gave Felicio reassurance that he might have a legitimate shot at making the regular-season roster.

Right away when he got to training camp, he set himself apart with his activity and ability to run the floor.

“The biggest thing was how easy he moves for someone his size,” Hoiberg said. “Not only his height, but for a guy that’s 270 pounds, the way he moves up and down the floor, the way he moves his feet, he can guard anybody. He can stay in front of anybody.”

That athleticism impressed the coaching staff, and his work ethic impressed his teammates.

“He just kept working,” Doug McDermott said. “That’s what the coaches saw and the front office saw, how much he wanted it. That’s kind of what separated him from everybody else who was at training camp.”

Even with all of that going for him, Felicio still faced long odds to make the roster. The Bulls have traditionally only carried 14 players, leaving an empty roster spot, and with Derrick Rose missing most of training camp with a facial fracture, if they were going to keep an extra player, a guard would have made the most sense.

But on Oct. 23, the Bulls travelled to Lincoln, Neb. to play an exhibition game against the Dallas Mavericks to close out their preseason. Before the game, general manager Gar Forman pulled Felicio aside to deliver the news that he was going to make the team.

“It was one of the best feelings of my life,” Felicio says. “After that, I was smiling the whole day. I remember Niko asked me why I was smiling, and I couldn’t tell anybody. They told me not to tell anybody. But he knew right away what it was.”

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As would be expected for an undrafted rookie, Felicio didn’t play much his first season. He appeared in only six games before the All-Star break, almost entirely meaningless garbage-time minutes.

“I was happy to be there,” Felicio said. “I was expecting that. When they told me they were going to keep me, they told me I wouldn’t play much. I’d just practice and work on my game the first year. So that was what I did. I went there every day and worked. They told me they wanted to turn me into a player for the future to help the team in three or four years, so that’s what I tried to do.”

Even after Joakim Noah underwent season-ending shoulder surgery in January, Felicio was slow to crack the rotation. He spent two weeks in the D-League in early January, averaging 14.3 points, 5.5 rebounds and 1.5 blocks in 23.8 minutes per game over four games with the Canton Charge.

He actually caught Wade’s eye during his time in Canton.

“I was actually watching a random D-League game one day when he was in the D-League,” Wade says. “And I was like, ‘Dang, I like that guy.’ I saw how athletic he was. And then the next thing you know, we’re playing the Bulls and I see him on the bench. I hadn’t realized they’d called him up, but I really liked that kid.”

Bulls center Cristiano Felicio, with forward Doug McDermott, was fired up when he got a chance to play last season. (Kamil Krzaczynski/USA TODAY Sports)

Felicio began playing more toward the end of the season, as the Bulls’ playoff hopes slipped away and Hoiberg began giving more minutes to the young players. He started four games in March and April and had back-to-back 16-point performances in the final week of the season, including in a win over the Cleveland Cavaliers.

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Felicio played in Las Vegas again in July, where this time he was a focal point. He was a key piece of the Bulls’ run to the Summer League championship. He followed that up by playing in the Olympics in his home country — he was a late replacement on the Brazilian national team for the injured Anderson Varejao. Felicio averaged 3 points and 3.4 rebounds in 10.5 minutes per game in the tournament as Brazil was eliminated in the group stage.

Beyond that, Felicio stayed in Chicago to work out with the Bulls’ staff at the Advocate Center. He attended several Cubs playoff games in his transition to being a full-time Chicagoan, all while working on his game.

In his rookie season, Felicio was in the 92nd percentile in the NBA in scoring out of pick-and-rolls, scoring 1.294 points per possession, per Synergy. His footwork carried over from his younger days playing soccer and handball, and he’s all over the floor crashing the boards. This season, he’s the Bulls’ leading rebounder, grabbing 18 percent of all available boards when he’s on the court.

“He’s the best we’ve got at putting pressure on the rim in pick-and-roll situations,” Hoiberg said. “And that really helps our ability to spray it out to shooters.”

Most of his offense still comes around the basket from offensive rebounds and putbacks, but at times he’s flashed a midrange game that could eventually allow him to be featured more in the Bulls’ offense.

“I know he can shoot,” Garcia said. “When I was working him out, we were working on a lot of pick-and-pop, some back-to-the-basket stuff, ball screens. But he can flat-out shoot. I’m talking from 3. He can shoot from 23 feet. He’s got a midrange shot, but he can also hit an open 3. He’s developed, but he’s got a whole a lot of room to continue to show what he can do. Currently, when I watch, he’s setting a lot of high ball screens and off-ball screens, he’ll roll, kind of be a garbage man, get an alley-oop here and there. But there’s a whole other element to his game that, if he gets his shot, which hopefully he will, he can show and expand his role and show that he can actually shoot a little bit too.”

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Part of the appeal of the life of a professional athlete is the money, and Felicio has a chance to earn a fat NBA contract this summer. He’s making $874,636 this season and is set to hit restricted free agency in July. The Bulls will be able to match any offer sheet he signs with another team, and between his youth and the lack of quality big men on the free-agent market, it’s likely his salary jumps from the league minimum to eight figures annually.

The Bulls will have an easier time re-signing Felicio than they would have in previous years. As a second-year restricted free agent, Felicio is an Arenas Rule player, meaning another team’s offer sheet can’t exceed the value of the midlevel exception (expected to be around $8 million) for the first two years, but can go as high as the max for the next two. In the past, teams have manipulated the rule with backloaded deals to make the luxury-tax penalties prohibitive for the team matching — that’s how the Bulls lost Omer Asik to the Houston Rockets in the summer of 2012.

Under the new CBA, the team matching the offer sheet can choose to average out the cap hit evenly over the life of the contract, rather than absorb the lopsided numbers in real time.

With this season perpetually on the brink of going off the rails, the Bulls seem poised to undertake a full-on youth movement. Management very much sees Felicio as part of their long-term plans for the roster, and his development has been a credit to their coaching staff and scouting department. It would be a surprise if they let him go.

“I want to be here,” Felicio said. “I love Chicago. Chicago’s a great city and the fans here are amazing. I’ve never seen something like it, and I feel comfortable in here. So if I can be in Chicago, it’d be a great thing for me.”

There’s still the rest of the season to get through before it gets to that point, whether that includes a postseason run or not. Felicio isn’t thinking too much about his free agency.

“I haven’t thought about it,” he said. “I’m just trying to get focused on this season and what we have to do to get to the playoffs. When the summer comes, that’s when I’ll start thinking about what I’m going to do.”

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That Felicio has that kind of money and long-term security potentially in his future less than two years after being an unknown Summer League invitee is a surprise, but it’s no accident.

“One thing I always tell kids is, character and work ethic matter a ton,” Garcia said. “Cris is a prime example of that. [The Bulls] basically gave him a shot just based on, ‘We like you, you have great character, high character, a good teammate, and we’re going to give you a shot to develop and show what you can do.’”

At 24, he’s still young enough that he could develop into a full-time starter, especially if the Bulls decide to go young. Felicio feels he’s up to the challenge.

“I think I can get a lot better,” he says. “I’m young. I’ve showed in some games what I can do, but I’m sure if I can improve my handling and shooting, I can be a much better player than I am right now.”