Just enjoying some old Bulls in new uniforms

They should really offer League Pass for the week after the trade deadline. One of the ancillary fun in trades (and yet another thing GarPax deprived us of) is seeing old Bulls in new uniforms. We don’t even have to galaxy-brain into rooting for failure to help lottery odds or some bullshit.

All of the Bulls except one that were removed from the roster last week had debuts with their new teams over the weekend.

Wendell Carter

Using Paxsonian logic, the Magic getting Carter is like another lottery pick ::snicker::

But seriously folks, it’ll be stress-free to see if Carter can blossom on another team. The thing was he is already pretty decent for his age. But as documented pretty thoroughly, a lack of development, especially on offense, has led to pretty heavy scrutiny in wondering why he isn’t better.

Maybe he’ll get that chance in Orlando with their defense-first coaching staff. For his debut, Carter was the 10th man facing the star-less Lakers on Sunday night, finishing with 20 minutes and a solid 8 points and 8 rebounds. He somehow had 7 free throw attempts, the third highest mark in that category all season.

Carter’s first shot attempt was a bricked straight-away three. But here is a make, part of a final minutes scramble to get the Magic back in the game.

It’ll be interesting to see where Carter slots in the rotation in Orlando. Starting center Khem Birch is 28 and an unrestricted free agent this summer. They still have Mo Bamba. Will they actually use Carter at some power forward? ::grimacing::

Otto Porter

Shame we have to retire the fat Otto jokes. Otto himself is not retired, and at least so far is not going to negotiate a buyout to join a playoff-bound team and perhaps boost his free agency prospects.

Porter also came off the bench in his Orlando debut to play nearly 25 minutes. He missed 5 of his 7 shots, the only three point make coming on a 3rd quarter buzzer beater, and the final miss on a good look that would’ve tied the game.

Daniel Gafford

Gafford had the best debut of the bunch, doing Gafford things. Blockin shots and dunkin oops. He even had 4 defensive rebounds in his 13 minutes. This was all against the tanky Detroit Pistons, but still.

(random note: every time I see Gafford’s Twitter handle I think it’s Dan Gadzuric)

With the same energy of Zach LaVine saying he’d never played with anybody like Nikola Vucevic before, Bradley Beal said the same about Gafford.

Luke Kornet

A pale oaf winning hearts and minds in Boston? Well, I never...

Kornet had 8 points in 13 minutes and his lineups were +21 as the Celtics surged past the should-be-contracted Thunder on Saturday night.

Supposedly the Celtics motivation for gifting Daniel Theis to the Bulls was it ‘forced’ them to start Robert Williams, but maybe Kornet will be their 3rd center...he was ahead of fellow newcomer Mo Wagner in the rotation for this game. And no buyout players seem to want to play for them.

‘Green Kornet’ isn’t a bad nickname, to be fair.

Chandler Hutchison

Hutchison hasn’t played in months due to an unspecified ‘personal matter’. So it was very odd to see quotes of him talking like he was ready to play, as if the matter was more your typical playing time grievance. However when reading his full media availability, it was clear that there was not much change in his readiness to play and his absence to this point indeed had nothing to do with basketball, and he’ll share that when he feels like it.

So now it’s merely weird that he didn’t say that much, or anything, for the past couple months to the Chicago media. Maybe Joe Cowley’s right, the beat covering the Bulls is SOFT.