The Bulls should ride it out instead of making a trade.

Excellent point. I’d rather be GM’ing the Bulls than any other team in the league right now. And good poker analogy, as when you’re ahead in the game, it really does pay to choose your spots based on a high probability of additional success instead of going for broke. you can spend so much time wringing your hands over the 2 guard spot that you forget the big picture, which is very, very bright right now. BY FAR, the #1 consideration that should be driving the strategy of the Bulls is maintaining every capacity to EXTEND ROSE’s contract. And the #2 consideration should be making sure he has, not 4, but 12 players around him over that time to compete. This is how you win championships – just ask the Lakers and the Celtics. In time, I think this bulls team, if they don’t disrupt it too much, will reveal that Thibs may actually know what he’s doing (which isn’t surprising) and that the front office has played this well (which kind of is surprising).

But I hope they look after an upgrade. Even if it is a minor one, such as Lee or CDR – maybe they can make it happen just using picks. But I would have no problem giving Taj or other for a solid SG

But.. there’s no acceptable reason to go into the second half of the season with Keith Bogans as the starting SG. There are too many other better, reasonable options, to allow that to happen if you are the GM.

ten-day contracts, mostly to give Deng or Rose some rest. But I’m sure Thibs can’t stand the idea of bringing in someone who doesn’t know his defense.

The league is not going to survive if they force teams to have to release players.

The Lakers are way too powerful a draw for the league to force them to split up Kobe-Gasol-et all, and Miami has brought the most viewership to the league since MJ left for the first time.

It ain’t happening.

Internet reports, etc are great and radio announcers are great at doing this fear talk to drive up discussions on the league (remember last year it was all that the league’s cap would drop so fast that no team could afford to keep what they had and sign even scary thought 1 max player…..

It’s just an internet story.

The league knows (and there are very smart, high end business men) that if they strike, they risk losing the little NBA comeback we’ve seen. THe league still has not fully recovered from the 1999 lockout. I really doubt their will be a lockout. If the fans leave, there’s little money for any. Ultimately the Owners need to keep their investment and the players need to see the numbers.

I don’t even think a lockout will happen next year, I think it’s the typical smoke and mirrors.

That said, we in Chicago have the historically cheap Reinsdorf, and I worry he won’t open his pocketbook to pay the tax, or if he does won’t make a move to make us even better down the line if we’re not quite there because of the tax. There was no tax in MJ’s day, if the tax remains, then there will be no hope of major external (new pieces) improvement, barring a lucky free agent signing or lucky late 1st round draft pick.

I fear we’re headed to be the next Orlando Magic (differently constructed) but perhaps a perenial ECF team that will always be the 3rd best team in the league.

With an owner unwilling to spend like Buss, Arinson, etc at least so far, it’s scary and Deng’s contract is the killer. Deng is solid, but overpaid as our 4th option (Even though he’d be a good 3rd option).

At some point you’re going to have to gamble big to win. I see no better opportunity than this year. No clear cut favorite. We’re at the top without a healthy roster.
Gamble now for that SG and we might be set for the next decade.

First I’d like to thank everybody for their comments being that this is my first serious post I appreciate the feedback and debate with other bulls fans.

Now I’d like to say in response to majoyenrac, I don’t think that by setting a hard salary cap you are splitting up kobe and pau or the big 3 in miami. By having a cap that you cannot go over it forces teams to be smarter with how they allocate their resources. For example to win it all in today’s nba you have to pay the luxury tax. You just do, to add the quality of players and depth that you need. Thats one of the things that hurts us is that we don’t have an owner willing to pay the tax. By having a hard cap it basically says to the lakers pay kobe 20 mil and paul 18 mil if you want. But can you afford to pay odom 14 mil per, shannon brown 3 mil per etc. It forces orlando to say we can’t pay gilbert 20 mil per and bring him off our bench, while paying nelson to start then way over pay to keep reddick. The hard cap with hurt the big players depth while making us stronger because our quality depth comes mostly from cheap young players and not expensive veterans.

The other point I would like to make is that I’m not against a trade like someone pointed out just a bad trade and I think giving up Taj except in the case of an elite player is a bad trade. The reason being is our front line of boozer and noah has shown to be fragile and injury prone. Noah I think is more just two isolated incidents vs a pattern but with boozer we know he’s going to miss somewhere between 15-25 games a season guaranteed. Having a starting quality back up being able to come off the bench means that not only do we have an advantage against most 2nd unit bigs but when boozer is out there is not a massive drop off in play between boozer and taj. None of the potential SG trade prospects out there get me to think that including Taj in a trade for them is a good idea. I’d give you draft picks jj and cash for C Lee and Marcus Thorton. But J.R. Smith to me personally brings too much baggage with him. Is he a great player? Yeah, he brings athleticism, energy, toughness and shooting which I like but also has major character issues, work ethic issues and is a volume scorer who will shoot you out of games just as much as keep you in them.

O.J. Mayo has never lived up to the hype in my opinion. Coming into the league he was supposed to be a D. Wade light sort of a player Athletic, take over a game, dominate in stretches. But once again he has shown to be another high volume inefficient scorer who has shown no significant upgrades in his game during his time in the league. Plus the salary he will ask for to me doesn’t fit the production we will get out of him. Out of Mayo my big question is can he take his game to an elite level (22-25 ppg and combined 8-9 reb. + ast per night) and being the 3rd – 4th option in our offense I don’t know if he or whoever the future SG will be will get enough touches to do that. In a lot of ways a player such as anthony parker I think would be the best fit for what we need because he actually does what bogans is supposed to do. He can play solid man defense (will be much better in our scheme) and can consistently hit the 3 at a rate which will force his defender to stay with him thus spacing the floor for rose and boozer. His age is just a killer though.