Time to Get Creative: Trading for Michael Beasley.

Beasley's on my fantasy team and in a little nugget I saw while looking at his player page I saw this:

The Lakers and Minnesota have talked about a trade that would send Beasley to Los Angeles, ESPN's Chris Broussard reports. Beasley scored 17 points with seven rebounds in 33 minutes in Monday's loss to Denver.

The report says the Lakers would likely give up a second-round pick or cash.

When you're a team at the top like the Bulls are and you're going to be drafting 28-30th in the draft for the foreseeable future(Charlotte's pick is still years away), you need to be creative when looking at ways to improve your team. And when a low-risk high-reward situation like this presents itself, I don't see how you can turn it down.

Minnesota has a minutes issue at the forward spots: Kevin Love is the main guy and will be taking up damn near all the minutes at the 4 and the team just invested a high lottery pick in Derrick Williams, who's probably their future at the 3. And if it's not him, it's Wesley Johnson. Right now, Beasley's better than either one, but the T-Wolves are not about the now, they're looking down the road and if they can unload Beasley and pick up a draft pick, they'd probably do it now that he's on the bench after being injured early on.

So why would the Bulls do this? For several reasons:

1) If the Bulls do intend to make a splash and go after Dwight Howard, they will need to part with Lieutenant Deng. Now, Beasley's not the defender Deng is, but he's a much more gifted scorer and though the defense at the 3 might suffer, you plug in a really capable scorer who can get his own shot and you have Dwight under the basket, which offsets any loss of defense and then some.

2) Even if they do not go after Dwight, why not throw our really late first rounder at Minnesota for Beasley? He's a little big for the position, but I'd give him minutes at the 2 next to Derrick, moving Ronnie back to the bench mob while Rip is out. If Beasley works out, you worry about fitting Rip back into things later and perhaps hive him some time with Derrick and some time with the bench mob and bury Kyle or Ronnie further down the bench. Beasley has the potential to be the backcourt/swingman scorer to plug in with Derrick to give this team a big-time scoring punch for the next 7-8 years.

Even if Beasley doesn't become a capable defender under Thibs, which is a big possibility, he's still a super-useful scorer off of the bench and can start for you in a pinch. People here were clamoring for JR Smith, I don't see why Beasley isn't a better option. He's got far more upside and has been a 20ppg scorer as recently as last season while miscast as a #1 scoring option.

If he doesn't work out here.......kiss his ass goodbye and all you're out on is a pick which you could probably buy from another team for a million bucks or two. I look at this as a once-in-a-while situation to acquire a big talent for a bargain price, much like Memphis did with Zach Randolph a couple of years ago. I really, really like the idea of Beasley as a second or third scoring option under the tutelage of Tom Thibodeau. What do y'all think of going after this kid?