Trading Derrick Rose (for Chris Paul)

Trading Chris Paul isn’t out of the question. It would be unlikely, but not out of the realm.

If you don’t believe me, Bill Simmons actually talks about it in his recent article on espn.com and it can definitely make sense with the current situation the Hornets are in.

If they can bring back a young player with as bright of a future as Rose, it’s worth considering for them. They are in quite a cap crunch and are losing a ton of money. They can’t get better pieces around Paul for at least 2 years and they will be over the tax this year and next year losing a tremendous amount of money (some figures put that over $20 million).

If they can’t build a good team around Paul and he’s likely to opt out in 3 years anyways, why not trade him if they can get a young star to build around AND save themselves over 20 million dollars? It’s not unforseeable.

And yes, dakoose, thank you. I meant if you had Lebron and Durant for roughly the same amount of years, basically all things being equal, who would you rather have? We obviously wouldn’t rather have Rose than anybody else in the NBA, and while I think Paul may be the best PG in the NBA, there are a few players NO would likely not be able to turn down for him straight up.

Quite the opposite. I’m a HUGE Derrick Rose fan and wish the Bulls had kept BG because they’d be one of the leagues top backcourt combos right now.

BUT,

Chris Paul is on a trajectory to become perhaps the greatest non-Magic Johnson PG of all time!!! Rose will be fantastic and I think will ultimately be more of a scorer than Paul but Paul sets the table so beautifully and if the Bulls are married to a guy like Deng then he needs a guy like Paul to set him up. Paul and West become options 1 and 2 with Deng settling nicely into the 3rd banana role and go back to being the little voice in the corner. He couldn’t complain because both guys have been clearly more productive than him in their careers.

Now THIS trade could actually happen because N.O. may be forced to dump Paul and West. The only question will be can the Bulls put together a package better than what anyone else can put together. Somebody will try to steal Paul the way the Lakers did with Gasol. Let’s hope it doesn’t work out…unless it happens for the Bulls.

By all accounts Paul is a tremendously loyal player. If the Bulls paid him and he was happy here (IE, not being given bullshit) I think he’d fall in love with the city and the fans. Everybody would appreciate his hard work and competitiveness, I didn’t like the guy coming into this league, but he’s a joy to watch and I really respect him now.

To the trade, we’d need to take back some of their salary, almost certainly that Peja contract, and quite possibly also the Okafor contract that they seem to want to dump.

Here’s a hypothetical trade:

Bulls get

Paul (13.5)
Peja (14.2)
Okafor (10.5)

Hornets get

Rose (5.1)
Noah (2.4)
Miller (12.2 expiring)
James (6.6 expiring)
Hinrich (9.5) or Deng (10.3)

Pargo/Gray type people could fill in to even out salaries as needed.

In this case, we give up a load of talent and expiring contracts. The hornets save a shit ton of money. We get Paul and can move Peja next year since he’ll be expiring. We basically roll over the James and Miller expirings until next year, get a starting quality big man in return for Hinrich (the more likely one to go in this trade since NO has West and would need a starting PG).

Something like this wouldn’t cost us anymore money, just another year or half year of wins until we can move the Peja expiring deal to get some quality talent around Paul.

The Hornets would save a shit ton of money in this deal, at least 18 mil this year and a lot more as time goes on and would have a brighter future with Rose and Noah than they would if Paul leaves for nothing. It’s a trade that would still piss off their fans, but unlikely most trades for Paul, it would not incite a riot.