Bulls acquire Nic Claxton on eve of huge draft night

Bryson Graham era has its first trade

I was planning on doing a draft preview that wasn’t much of a draft preview (more on that later), but instead we have a trade!

On late Monday night, reports surfaced (trade can’t be officially announced until new league year on July 6th) that the Bulls have acquired Nic Claxton from the Brooklyn Nets. In return they gave up…nothing. Well, not literally nothing, as for a 3-team trade to happen there is a ‘touch rule’ where all teams have to interact in some way, so the Bulls are sending Mo Gueye - and his non-guaranteed contract - to the Timberwolves¹. I…honestly had no idea Gueye was on the roster, must’ve been signed that final week of this season in that scramble to have ambulatory bodies for those games.

It’s been jarring to my system to consider new and extreme differences in how I evaluate - or in this case make snap-judgements - Bulls transactions in context:

1. the announced lottery reform has successfully ended galaxy-brain thinking that suggested (and in many cases, devolved into annoying pleading) that ‘sabotage your roster to be terrible on the court this coming season’ was a smart team-building initiative and so it’d be actually bad if they got a good player

2. Arturas Karnisovas can’t hurt me anymore, and I don’t have to expend energy thinking what he’s thinking

So with that out of the way, how should we judge this trade in this new context of tanking-abolishment and new hire Bryson Graham?

It’s a long-established good practice to not rely on signing free agents as best use of cap space. It’s rare that needle-moving players get to unrestricted free agency anymore², and even more rare that restricted free agents of high caliber move teams. So what has been done, especially teams that are as far away from relevancy (let alone contention) as the Bulls are, is facilitate a financially-uneven trade using that cap space. And the asset used in exchange for ‘absorbing’ a salary into cap space depends on how ‘bad’ the money is.

Unlike Nikola Vucevic, Nic Claxton is a starting-caliber (if low-end) center on a reasonable contract ($23.3M/$21.1M). And also unlike Vuc, Claxton plays at both ends closer to the rim. Like Vuc, Claxton has been durable and is a capable passer.

Claxton had been with the Nets for his entire 7-year career³, and signed a contract extension before the 2025-26 season. Given how the Nets at the time were in the midst of egregiously tanking, plus Claxton’s age (he turned 27 this past April), it was initially speculated that this extension was meant to make Claxton tradeable. Unfortunately for the Nets, there never looked to be a point where Claxton would command positive value like a first round pick, so they held on to him through the trade deadline.

That he was available this summer for zero assets means that the Bulls valued Claxton’s contract as neutral. That’s probably correct, but for what it’s worth old pal Stephen Noh’s model projects Claxton as very overpaid, and there are some red flags raised the past couple of seasons:

Claxton was pretty good a few years ago, but he's been declining since. Biggest issue being that he gets pounded on the glass and his rim protection has fallen off.

Claxton has also dealt with back injuries that have impacted his availability and productivity. With athletic centers of his ilk, injury and age-related decline can come early, so perhaps that is part of the reason the Nets were willing to move off their homegrown product.

Again, it’s important to remember that this isn’t the same league and Bulls front office as last year. We knew AK was delusional about his own team’s standing, and ignorant of their lottery odds. Maybe Bryson Graham has these same faults (or others), but we don’t know it yet and certainly this Claxton acquisition isn’t going to indicate much.

The Bulls still have a lot of cap flexibility remaining, but this does use a significant portion:

And so when grading the move, it’s really about the opportunity cost of not using this $23M in cap space in a deal where the Bulls get a worse player (and worse contract) though acquire an asset for doing so⁴. Or trying to get a younger player with more upside like Jalen Duren or Walker Kessler. As mentioned, it’s rare that restricted free agents change teams, but maybe it screws with another team’s books and you don’t miss out much if this Claxton move is not available by then.

We’ll see if Claxton can be better than he was the last couple of seasons in this new, decidedly-not-the-Nets, environment. It very likely won’t be leading the Bulls to a lot of wins, but he could help in facilitating his much-younger teammates’ development, simply soak up innings as a veteran, or get you something in a subsequent trade to a more competitive team. The Nets - also with lots of cap flexibility this summer - gave up on that idea in this trade.

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The draft is tonight! I figured on lottery night that their jumping up was the best case for a lazy blogger: I wasn’t compelled to try and judge who to take at #4 as it was pretty clear-cut that you simply take the guy that falls.

And to a lesser extent that kind of applies to #15 as well? There is going to be someone, maybe multiple someones, who were projected to go between #5 and #10 and they will slip. Even AK got this dynamic right when selecting Matas Buzelis. I’m sure Bryson Graham has too much self-belief to figure the draft is a crapshoot so he can just make a safe pick that pundits - and lazy bloggers - will grade well. So we can more appropriately judge that pick, or if the Bulls move up or down or acquire more selections, when the prospects actually play.

I’ll certainly read up on the players scouting reports after they are Bulls. It’s a real time-saver!

1. Looks like the 2nd-tier (Darren Wolfson, Mike Scotto) rumor-mongering that the Wolves were interested in Josh Giddey didn’t pan out

2. speaking of, former Bull and Chicago basketball legend Ayo Dosunmu extended his contract with the Timberwolves for another 5 years and $112M. Good deal for both sides! That the Bulls thought they couldn’t get Ayo back on that number says a lot about how far they fell in the AK era. (again: can’t hurt me anymore!)

3. on the Nets player development staff for Claxton’s first few years in the league: Tiago Splitter

4. Doug Thonus brought to mind that we have a clear alternative in this very transaction: Bulls could have been the team instead of the Nets that took Julius Randle and gotten the #28 pick in this draft