a Zach LaVine trade is still necessary, but no longer urgent

LaVine's not playing for the Bulls again, and both parties are ok with that

Summer League has begun. We have a thread for that:

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He may sometimes smirk and trick local admirers, but based on actions Arturas Karnisovas¹ has no confidence in their own ability to make trades.

Perhaps it’s the only example of them possessing self-awareness? Because, indeed, after seeing two major trades of Alex Caruso and DeMar DeRozan, the extremely few trades they do make are losing ones.

That inability, and then being gun-shy, has made these actual trades worse. The trade of DeRozan especially was not an intentional change in direction, it was because they couldn’t move Zach LaVine first. They have had like two years now where they’ve wanted to trade LaVine (and LaVine agreed around 10 months or so ago), and have just…not done it.

So I suppose it makes logical sense that going into this offseason they had no faith they could think ahead to future moves or have any kind of multi-transactional plan. And thus would not do better moves now if it put them over the luxury tax, even temporarily.

This paralysis, specifically with LaVine, is not in and of itself surprising. The AKME regime are demonstrated failures and should be fired. They had literally announced, every transaction period for three seasons, a literal inability to make a move.

What’s surprising to me is that anyone would treat this LaVine situation as anything but that: inability. It’s not “the market” or any other circumstances that have kept the Bulls from trading LaVine, AKME can’t trade LaVine because they are incapable of doing their jobs. Sure, it takes multiple parties to agree to a trade, but every other team in the league doesn’t seem to have that problem to this degree, and assuming things are outside of their control is assuming that all GMs are equally logical actors in this market. Like good players and bad ones, there are good front offices and bad front offices. When LaVine dribbles the ball off his foot every 4th quarter we don’t credit the defense or say that’s just the NBA’s perfectly elastic game theory at work.

The Bulls and LaVine find themselves in this same standoff, though what has changed is the rest of the Bulls roster and payroll. By exchanging their better players for worse ones, they are no longer within razor-thin margin of the Luxury Tax line² . They also have clearly shown no ambition to be any good. This is not the same as “tanking”, that’d be showing ambition the other way.

Luckily (?), their remaining high priced veterans don’t help you win regardless. Both Nikola Vucevic and LaVine are sulking bad-vibes merchants that can be productive while not positively-impactful. The key difference is that while both whine about having the ball, only LaVine actually has the ability to take it.

Insomuch that anything surrounding this team is actually ‘important’ besides the 2025 Draft Lottery next friggin’ May, it’s important that Zach LaVine is off the team to start this season. The Bulls are not trying to be bad to the point where they want to self-sabotage their newly-prized young “core” of ballhandlers in Coby White and Josh Giddey.

This is not to say LaVine has to be traded this summer. He’s just not going to be with the team. For an example of this, we can look back all the way to last season: Zach played terribly, got hurt, came back and played listlessly, got hurt, then stayed away by electing to get surgery.

I make the joke that this is not ancient history, but it’s looked to be a necessary joke when I read anybody suggest that LaVine can play for the Bulls this season. KC Johnson has been at the forefront of this wish-casting:

keeping LaVine and letting him either rehabilitate his value, play well alongside Giddey and White or both isn't out of the question

and then KC oddly negates his own argument:

But remember: Prior to last season going off the rails, LaVine was viewed as the bridge piece between the older core of DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic and the younger core headlined by White and Williams and Dosunmu.

Yes, last season quickly went off the rails because of Zach LaVine playing. He wasn’t the only reason, and it’s not completely causal that LaVine getting hurt the first time coincided with better play and record in his absence. But it’s not like it wasn’t foreseen even then that LaVine would struggle to adjust to a secondary role imposed by a head coach he doesn’t like. Now somehow this year he’s going to be motivated to subsume his stardom for Josh Giddey? And that would somehow improve his trade value?

LaVine’s trade value is indeed in the dumpster. But it was bad last year too. Perhaps his disastrous 2023-24 campaign took it from the trash can out to the dumpster? Yes, he’s coming off of injury, but all indications are that this was not something major to where Zach has to prove he can play basketball again. I trust that LaVine and his “powerful” representation³ can communicate that Zach is ready to go physically.

But even that assumption puts him back to merely “injury prone”, which saddled his trade value from the outset and would not go away anytime soon even if he played for the Bulls again.

Right, back to that trade value: now that I’ve conclusively put forth why Zach isn’t playing for the Bulls again, let’s get back to moving him.

There’s been a reflexive call to arms to try and rehabilitate LaVine’s value, or at least “battle” perception and narrative. I find this is really weird. It doesn’t matter what outsiders think of LaVine. Who cares what we parse as ‘unprofessional’ or not, both the Bulls and LaVine have made it extremely clear - and not without good reason, like I went through above - that they don’t want to be together anymore⁴.

And it also doesn’t matter how outsiders peg “value”. We should know especially well after following this front office that these are not logical, unbiased assessments. The GMs in charge can be emotional and stupid and desperate, for example: a recent “trade of Alex Caruso to a title contender” became, based on the value, actually “a trade for Josh Giddey”.

The Bulls have already screwed up the Zach LaVine trade. They should’ve moved him years ago, and his value has only gone down since whether he’s been on the court or not. They should’ve known the new CBA rules would make this all even harder than before. Zach definitely should’ve been moved earlier this summer, so you could better build your roster with intent instead of being forced into a rebuild due to these sunk costs.

But now that DeRozan’s gone, and they have “pivoted” or whatever you want to call it, that urgency is also gone. LaVine certainly can’t play for the team anymore, but the Bulls (for once) shouldn’t show desperation and feel a need to trade him ASAP.

There’s this binary thinking I’ve seen out there where the Bulls would surely have to use a first round pick if they wanted to trade LaVine now. This idea, again, is giving the Bulls front office too much credit: assuming they can find the best deal possible and are working hard to do so.

I do agree that the Bulls absolutely should not use a first round pick to move LaVine.

But I don’t think they’ll need to. James Harden wasn’t traded last year until November. The Bulls and #BeKlutch will agree - they can use this blog post as compelling evidence! - that Zach’s not reporting to the team while they keep looking for a new home. Zach and these other teams will become the desperate ones and make a trade that will have ‘observers’ scratching their heads as to the value. Maybe it’s just bad money swapping (and the Bulls no longer have to save money in this trade), or lesser-than-firsts assets coming from the Bulls.

I’d go into hypothetical destinations (::cough:: LAKERS ::cough::) but this is already too long! I have a couple great ideas but maybe someone in the comments will come up with another.

1. and his staff, not sure it’s quite as paltry as “our small staff” like John Paxson used to say

2. a.k.a. the ‘dorf cap, not literally restricting but based on ownership it has the same effect

3. Klutch represents Jalen Smith. Couldn’t they have returned the Bulls a favor for signing Smith to that fairly generous deal that limited their trade flexibility?

4. I suppose one could say “that’s what the contract is for”, but let’s try and be realistic about things.