With the trade deadline gone and past, the Bulls are actually in a great position to make a splash at the draft this year. Trading James Johnson was big, because it gave us another asset in the Miami pick, and also allows us to absorb more incoming salary.

The targets for the Bulls need to be a shooting guard who can shoot. I know some are worried about a hard cap or whatever, but I'm not too concerned about that. Stern isn't going to setup some kind of system that forces the Miami Thrice to breakup, old contracts would be grandfathered in if they moved to that type of system, or something or other that would prevent teams who smartly built around the current CBA to get screwed over.

The first target I would look at would be Ben Gordon. I know the Bulls have some concerns over size in the backcourt, but size in the backcourt can't be too much of an issue if they went after O.J. Mayo.

O.J. Mayo - 6'3.25" with a standing reach of 8'3.5", and a wingspan of 6'6".

Ben Gordon - 6'1" with a standing reach of 8'3", and a wingspan of 6'8.5".

So Mayo is taller, but he isn't really any longer than Gordon. Gordon actually has the superior wingspan for defending while in a defensive stance, while Mayo has the very slight half inch edge over Gordon for standing reach , which impacts the players when contesting shots.

For all intents and purporses regarding to basketball, the two guys are the same size.

With the current Pistons mess, they need to get stuff done, and moving Gordon seems a lot more likely than moving Rip Hamilton. By the time the Piston's sort their current mess out, Gordon will be on the wrong side of 30, and while he takes care of himself, there's still a reasonable expectation that he might decline.

My offer for Gordon would be C.J. Watson and Kyle Korver, the Bulls 2011 Pick, Heat 2011 pick.

This would make Ronnie Brewer the guy who gets all the backup small forward minutes, while Gordon moves in as starter at shooting guard, and Brewer gets a share of minutes at shooting guard as well. We would sign a new backup point guard during free agency.

The positives of Gordon is that him and Rose already have good chemistry playing together. If anyone remembers Rose's rookie season, until we made the deadline trades, it was just Rose, Gordon, and a bunch of crap going to war every night. I think defensively he will be fine. He contests shots, and generally stays between his man and the basket. I think he can do just as good as Keith Bogans currently does defensively, if not better. And having Gordon out there guarding Dwyane Wade or Kobe Bryant at the end of a game doesn't invoke anywhere near the same fear in me as seeing Korver out there.

Gordon's having a decent year. His scoring efficiency is higher than Rose's, Deng's, Brewer's, Bogan's, and Watson's, so he would come to the Bulls as the most efficient offensive player in the backcourt. I would expect Gordon's scoring efficiency to sky rocket playing next to Rose too, and I think the attention Gordon garners on defense would help raise Rose's and Deng's scoring efficiencies while having no effect on the defense.

The other target I would look at is Kevin Martin. The Rockets are stuck in NBA purgatory right now, and it makes sense for them to just blow the whole thing up and start rebuilding. Maritn will come at a higher price than Gordon, because he is averaging 23.0 points a game, and his scoring efficiency is also much higher at 60.6 percent. Martin would be a great fit on this team with his shooting, while at the same time being bigger than Gordon.

My offer to the Rockets would be C.J. Watson, Keith Bogans, Taj Gibson, Omer Asik, the Bulls 2011 Pick, the Heat's 2011 pick, the Bulls 2012 pick, and the Bobcats 2012 pick.

We would be left with:

PG-Derrick Rose
SG-Kevin Martin/Ronnie Brewer
SF-Luol Deng/Kyle Korver/Ronnie Brewer
PF-Carlos Boozer
C- Joakim Noah/Kurt Thomas

This trade hurts us in something we have of value right now, which is our great defensive front court depth, but we're still keeping both of our starters, we would have dynamic depth on the perimeter with Brewer and Korver coming off the bench, and we would be adding one of the best scorers in basketball in Kevin Martin.

With this scenario, the Bulls need to pray that the MLE still exists in the new CBA, which I wouldn't be surprised if it still does. Any frnachise that has recently been a contender knows the value of the MLE in building and maintaining a high level team.

I would send Thibodeau out to meet with Kendrick Perkins on the first day of free agency to try to convince him to come to Chicago. I don't know if Thibodeau would be able to offer Perkins a starting job, as bringing Noah off the bench might be unpopular in Chicago, but Thibs could say, look we have you, Jo, Boozer as our main front court players, you will each get around 32 minutes a game. Would Perkins be terribly unhappy about that scenario? And I could see Noah being willing to be a good team player and coming off the bench for Perkins to start.

The other guy is Greg Oden. Blazers turned down a pretty decent package from the Nets...but still, that would give the Blazers a lot to think about if you extended a full boat MLE deal to Oden.

Otherwise we could sign stop gap big men like Nazr Mohmmad, Yao Ming, Nenad Krstic, Leon Powe, Aaron Gray, etc. to get by for front court depth.