Yes, as long as we have the cap space in 2010 to make a decent run at an historic unrestricted free agent class.

If, as you say, the guys in the second group are the ones you want to move, that also helps you define your market/trading partner, namely, any team that thinks it’s ready to win right now.

A "win now" team will want in-prime talent that’s playing right now at its peak. For that talent, they will be more willing to trade away a talented but not yet fully developed player…OR an older, past his prime player that the Bulls could turn into a year-end salary dump.

I made a comment about how in drafting Rose we need to recognize that our window for a Championship will be “pushed back” a few years, and that all personnel decisions will now need to reflect the revised window of opportunity. Needless to say, I agree with Matt on his similar point, although I disagree about the approximate prime years of an NBA player and I would not hesitate to retain a 27- or 28-year old player who might be 30 or 31 when our window of opportunity would “open”. (Don’t take this to mean that I want to retain Gooden, Kirk, or Noce – I want them gone, but not because of their age).

I have an Excel file that includes a graphical representation of the Bulls depth chart, with ages and projected level of performance, as well as salary data, that I’d be interested in uploading and sharing if I could figure out how that stuff works. The graphic is nearly identical to the Tufte-like infographics that Nate Silver has used to analyze baseball franchises over at Baseball Prospectus. I put it together when I couldn’t sleep on the night of July 3, 2006, after the Ben Wallace signing was announced, and I’ve maintained it ever since. (Hopefully the excitement generated from the Derrick Rose selection will be better served than the Wallace nightmare!).

If someone can point me in the right direction regarding the file uploading/embedding, I’ll try to post it in a Fanpost at some point. Thanks.

But Noce needs a change of address. I love his hustle but soured on him last year as his offensive game was very selfish with a shoot-first attitude. Gooden was as advertised: A couple of great games followed by one where he disappeared. But I think he can help the Bulls and improve his game with a strong point guard (Rose) leading the way.

a list or an invitation of debate in terms of what positions or players we would want to add to the Bulls roster?

We could discuss moving existing players all day and still be at the same start point. What we need to add to the discussion is the players or positions we want to acquire.

At what position are we strong? At what position are we weak? What kind of player do we want coming off the bench? Do we want scoring? What kind of scoring? Outside shooters? Cutters? Do we want defense? Do we want rebounding?

I think there are clubs that need a starting point guard in Hinrich and would give up some of their stronger bench production and future picks/fillers to get him. I also think there are clubs that will give up a starter that has the future starter already on their bench in order to shore up their bench by acquiring Nocioni.

I think our biggest need, moving beyond the draft where we select Rose, is the front court at PF and Center. I think we have our starters in Thomas and Noah, but after that it is Drew Gooden and Aaron Gray. Two players that interest me are Pryzbilla and Chris Wilcox.

If snley reads this, there are ways we can use the #1 overall pick to arrange the lottery selections to our favor. There are lottery teams that have real needs that cannot be met with selections in this draft. The club might just take the best player available anyway, but we can speculate with our #1 pick on who we might select as a way of moving Beasley down the board, other players up the board, so that another team acquires a player at a position they already have an existing player so to make that player more likely to be traded.

For example, if you can engineer a move of Beasley down to #4 then the Sonics select him and Wilcox becomes trade material. If you move one player down then other players move up. Memphis at #5 has many needs. One of their biggest needs is a bench. Chapu to Memphis for ??? It’s a contract dump. Want Brian Cardinal?

These are speculative moves. My theme here is get us talking about major moves between multiple teams as a way of using the #1 overall pick, and our 1.7 percent luck of certainty, into a 1.7 chance at advancing to the 2nd round of the 08-09 postseason.