Collins is worthless and pointless. He is trade eligible immediately and sending him out can allow ~$17 million to come back for teams shedding salary.
No first round picks have traded on salary dumps yet, worsening the cost of Arturas’s inability to sell high on Demar et al 2 years ago.
At best, they signed human trade exceptions they can carry into the trade season when the most money dumping occurs. At worst, they will have one of the league’s lowest payrolls and acquire nothing meaningful to the future of the team. With this new regime, “not making the future worse” does not count as a win like it did for late stage AKME.
The sunniest outlook is that this team will be much more interesting to watch than last year's. They'll look competent and they don't have any long term money, so will have space to make big swings in each following offseasons as we get a better sense of what the young guys are.
I think Powell makes a ton of sense as a stabilizing floor raiser in a post lottery-reform world, and that claxton makes sense as an upside swing, especially if Splitter specifically thinks he can get more out of him.
The Collins signing is weird. Don't get that.
Still a lot of guys on this roster that are poor short and long term fits. With Powell here you probably want to trade Okoro who would be useful on the right team but makes no sense here.
Bobby Marks says they still have the mle available available too.
The 2nd year for both Collins and Powell are team options so in way they're both just "cap space holders". Easy to trade or cut. We'll see if anything comes of that but it does mean the Collins deal is not quite as bad as the top line number
Why should Graham get praise if Wilson is great? He didn't "earn" the pick, and literally everyone on the planet agreed Wilson should go 4th. Which also means that if Wilson is worse than a player drafted after him, it's tough to put that on Graham.
So if we are to take the Powell signing as a fait accompli, then the Collins signing is the way they used the rest of their cap space (even if Collins was signed and announced first). The question is, what are the other options the Bulls could have had with $8.5m? Not really enough to get in on salary dumps of any note. Maybe you use it to take back a smaller salary like Topic and/or Sorber, but they can still do that with the Room Exception.
It is almost definitely cope, but I think the move is... meh/fine? And since it was an extension and not a FA signing, there still is the (I think unlikely) scenario that they turn around and trade Collins during the off-season as part of something larger. So if that comes to pass, things feel a little different.
Agreed - though, maybe it's more likely they are willing to move Smith (who has positive trade value imo). We'll see. Like most, I'm underwhelmed at the totality of the offseason thus far, but it's also not grim by any stretch.
I'd like to see them shop Okoro, Jones, Smith, and Giddey to win-now teams. Maybe you can pick up some draft assets and/or young players. Bracing myself for disappointment on this front.
Quentin Grimes got 4 years $60 million from the Lakers and was considered an alternative option for the 2. I like Powell better than that. More shooting, scoring punch... More tradeable contract.
This is really neither here nor there, but it's kind of interesting looking at the overall roster now. Like obviously this team is going to be bad next year, but the roster is actually fairly balanced in terms of players fitting with each other.
I feel like for the entirety of AKME's tenure, the roster made zero sense with each other. It was clear AK had zero vision for the roster and was just assembling what he viewed to be the best players at each position that fit his budget. There was no thought put towards players actually fitting with each other. Like Zach, DeMar, and Vooch should have never been a thing. They are all ball-dominant and bad defenders, but all AKME saw was "All-Star adjacent" so they threw those guys on a team together.
The major weakness of this current team is still shooting, even with the addition of Powell. But on a team this young, that's probably the area I care the least about. Hopefully good shooting staff is brought in to help all these young guys improve.
right I mean it was like the team they attempted to put together at the time at least made sense, but there was never any effort to pivot or change course. It was very bizarre.
I'd argue even that team didn't make that much sense. It was still built around three "stars" that didn't compliment each other, and was held together by a couple of journeymen - Lonzo and Caruso.
Well yeah, when they had Lonzo doing the decision making, it helped a lot though. But no, they weren't a great fit (still can't believe Sacramento looked at the Bulls and wanted them both lol).
That is a type of sense, in my opinion. They had/acquired a group of flawed, but talented players and then filled the gaps with a couple of journeymen that patched the holes left by the stars' flaws.
That team was like a truss bridge. As a complete unit, it was very solid. But when one piece broke, it completely collapsed.
I'm with you here. AK often made "seeing what we have" comments during off-seasons where his roster construction absolutely prevented him from seeing what he had.
This roster at least looks built for seeing what the team has. Norm should expose Giddey's real value, and the Center rotation should help us figure out what works around Matas/Caleb/Noah -- and which should be injured enough to see if we have a secret center on the roster.
On that note, just turn PWill into a Center, Tiago. Work your magic. Figure it out.
I don't like the fit of any of these guys if we're being honest.
Caleb and Matas have very overlapping strengths (help defense, general goodness) but also very overlapping weaknesses (man defense, strength, handle) I think they are both good enough to run with it, but it makes the rest of the fit that much more important.
The only complementary thing is that Matas seems on his way to being a good shooter.
Swain also looks like a 3 based on his size. He also can't shoot.
Giddey is defensively a bad fit because ideally you'd hide him on the same guys that you'd want Caleb or Matas guarding. With them, the guarding that guy would be a boon because they could help off that guy, which is what they do best. So Giddey immediately neutralizes our biggest strength defensively.
Offensively, he's a ball dominant guy who needs lots of spacing to operate which we don't have. So is Swain. He's neutral at best as a shooter. Still a guy that will get played off the court in the playoffs.
Claxton is an undersized center who's one of the league's weakest rebounders and shooters. He will clog the lain for everyone, and his inability to rebound will limit transition opportunities. He's routinely pushed around by bigger centers (almost all of them) and there's no real helping this, but it is particularly unhelpful given that Caleb and Matas are also twiggy weaklings.
Powell brings shooting, but mostly as a ball dominant kind of shooting that I think is gonna mesh poorly with Giddey.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this team fits perfectly. Obviously they don't and all the issues you pointed out are genuine concerns. I think my point was more than AK assembled a team of prime/past-their-prime players that didn't make any sense together because they all had similar strengths and weaknesses.
This current team is nothing like that. They have several very young players with tons of potential for improvement. Swain seems to be a bit of a combo wing. The vision seems to be that he could be a jumbo guard.
Matas and Wilson obviously overlap, but both are young enough that you just go with it and see how they develop. Obviously I think the hope is that Wilson will put on some muscle and also improve his three point shooting. That would make him a more natural four while skinnier Matas would play the three. Both need to improve their on-ball defense.
Claxton does not seem like a long-term piece on this team so I'm not terribly worried about him. If healthy (big "if" obviously), his calling card is his ability to switch and guard guards, which is something that will be needed since Giddey and Powell aren't great defenders. His lack of rebounding will hopefully be mitigated by the fact that Giddey is an excellent rebounding guard and Wilson is projected to be a solid rebounder too.
Again, not saying this team compliments each other like the Knicks or anything like that. I'm just saying that this team is far better built, or at least has far more potential, than what we had gotten under the AK regime.
Since the Claxton trade isn't official, he could actually be re-routed as part of the deal before it's consummated with the league (this seems unlikely, but it's possible). After the trade completes, he could be traded right away but not aggregated with other players. Then in a couple months, he could be aggregated with other players in a trade.
I'm in a Fantasy Football league every year but I use "auto-draft" since I never have time to sit down and draft live. This offseason feels like the Reinsdorfs put Bryson Graham on "auto GM" mode. His draft picks were pretty much what an AI chatbot or mock draft consensus would have him take (certainly with Caleb, that was written the moment we got #4 on lottery night). He keeps his own guys (Collins) by default. Nets offer him a decent player for free and he says okay. He signs the best quality free agent (despite not fitting any long term strategy) who happens to fit exactly into the cap room we have available.
The 'Dorfs also enabled the "sell 2nd round picks where possible" option under the Auto-GM settings.
The good news is that I have won my fantasy league two of the past few years after auto-drafting, by making some good in-season moves and getting some good luck. The guys who overthought things didn't do any better, and often did way worse.
I guess a GM who just does the most obvious things (CPU mode for gamers, or perhaps "ask ChatGPT") could potentially end up with more success than a GM trying to outsmart themselves and everyone else. But that remains to be seen.
I guess it sort of depends on how you define "competent". But that is the question.
I just want to know Graham's strategy. (SLAP isn't a strategy.) At the moment it seems like "build a team that can be semi-competitive for the next 2 seasons while the youngsters development, and keep cap flexibility for 2028"
That's fine I guess, if it's really the plan. As you noted, it could always be worse (AK)
Huh? Even if they max out Buzelis (will he be a max player?) that's 25% of the cap, and they could potentially have a crazy huge amount of cap room. Giddey, PWill, and rookie contracts would combine to be like another 25%. Not sure who will be available to use the money on though... That's the rub in the modern NBA.
Today the Bulls acquired an actual all-star player on a very reasonable contract that in no way constrains the team beyond this season. That is a great move and I refuse to be dour about it.
I understand your point about asset accumulation, but Powell just fits so perfectly what the roster needed both on and off the court. In a perfect world you’d trade for an overpaid version of Powell with a draft pick attached, but who’s to say that trade is out there? Today’s signing gives the Bulls a decently well-rounded, decently competitive roster where all the youngsters can develop properly and learn from a veteran they respect. That’s worth at least as much as some low-level draft asset.
And it’s probably the rose-colored glasses of the offseason talking, but I think the team will be better than you realize. Our starting backcourt features one ‘26 all-star and another player who easily could have been. We have two athletic forwards with huge upside, a capable center, and a surprising amount of depth. Compared to last year’s squad we’ve clearly upgraded at SG and C. Our starting PG and PF from last year are back and more experienced. And guys like Okoro, Smith, and Miller will have to earn their minutes with Caleb Wilson on the roster. No, the Bulls aren’t title contenders yet, but they’ll be fun to watch and should sneak into the back end of the playoffs. You heard it here first!
Powell raises their floor, for sure. They now have Powell and some young vets who do contribute to winning (Jones, Okoro, Smith) with the youngsters around them.
And it'll be nice to root for wins without the constant tugging in my brain saying "it would be better to lose."
I believe sneaking into the play-in is now possible, but it's going to depend on staying healthy. Lots of our holdover guys missed time last year, as did Powell. (And Caleb Wilson, and Claxton). A healthy squad can complete for a playoff berth, but it would require a lot of good fortune to stay healthy.
"And it'll be nice to root for wins without the constant tugging in my brain saying 'it would be better to lose.'"
I'm actually thinking of getting League Pass again for this exact reason. There have been plenty of reasons to not pay to watch Bulls basketball during the AK era, but one of the biggest has always been finding it weird to watch my favorite team while simultaneously hoping they'd lose.
It certainly doesn't hurt that we have some genuinely exciting young players to cheer for too!
Whenever Bryson Graham or Tiago Splitter do something odd, I try to ask, "What do they know? How can I learn?" ... and to not ask, "How can they be so stupid?" Actually, that applies to every professional team in every sport.
Do you ever go back and reexamine it months or years later? You’ll realize that what you really should learn is that they don’t know anything special and often are so stupid.
I could spend hours saying what they do know better than me: The capabilities of every player in the pros, top colleges and many AAU and HS teams; which players can't guard which other players; other teams' playing styles, player rotations and true health status; each team's current closeout shooter and favorite inbounds play. Double that, and that's why I give them credit for not making moves I think they should make. And yeah, some are better than others.
I think that most decisions, most NBA decisions, are actually probabilistic. When you draft a player, for example, there's some probability that that player will be good and some probability that they will not. As a decision maker, you're trying to estimate that probability curve and select folks that have "the best" probability, that maximizes the probability of the team being good.
It's tempting to evaluate a decision years later, see that it didn't (or did) work out, then say that it was stupid (or genius). But that is a misleading way to do an evaluation, because the decision was probabilistic in the first place. There was always some probability that it would work or it would not work.
This is true of someone like Wembanyama, by the way. Drafting him likely had a very high probability of being successful. But there was / is a chance that it would not be - injuries stick out here, but he could have just not adapted well, not developed the skills he needed. If he hadn't, would the Spurs decision to draft him have been stupid?
It's throwing darts at a dartboard. Or, maybe a more apt example, it's shooting a three point shot. If someone misses one shot, does that mean they are bad at shooting threes? Of course not. We have to look at a larger sample.
What makes it tough to evaluate Graham or AKME or any executive from the outside is that we really just never get enough data to perform that evaluation. There's not that many players on a roster, and, unless they've been an executive for decades, there isn't that much data.
My point is that when you examine moves years later and see they don't work, it might have been bad luck, not stupidity.
I agree that people (mostly) make decisions probabilistically, but probabilities aren't based on a random "works/doesn't work" binary.
What's going on is that the better decision makers have a better and fuller understanding of the underlying probabilities.
It's like playing blackjack. Sometimes the probabilities tell you to hit and you go over. That's luck. A really good blackjack player who counts cards well might look at the same hand though, and counting the cards, have an expanded probability set.
They know that even though the basic odds say "hit", the additional information he has says "stay".
The NBA is full of that sort of additional information, and the best teams are hungry and relentless for getting it and sophisticated in using it.
The average team, to continue the analogy, isn't all that great at counting cards. And the least sophisticated teams think counting cards is a bunch of unmanly bullshit that they like to avoid when they can.
Draft picks are more probabilistic than trades because there are dozens of available and plausible options, especially in the second round where there are fewer standouts. Making trades under pressure to either win now, stop the bleeding now, or start the rebuild now, you're forced to make the best trade from a limited number of options where all of the players are known commodities, and "best" in terms of your current objectives and your total complex of planned moves. As an analogy, accepting a ride from a truck driver on a rainy night is something you wouldn't normally do.
I don't care about defending anything Bulls related, but the long term asset is a better draft pick from having an ostensibly more competitive team under the new lottery rules and the increased fan engagement gained from that, I can't help but look at it as they might be. is that cynicism, idk
My optimistic take: we have a stack of tradeable expiring salary to do something with at the deadline.
My pessimistic take: the whole point of a rebuild with this much space was to be the team charging desperate contenders picks or fliers to take their bad money and we've ended the period with no future assets.
My present take: maybe Caleb Wilson is so good none of this matters.
Claxton isn't expiring (owed $21.1M in '27-28) but your points -- both the glass half full and half empty -- are well taken.
On the optimism front, we do also have Okoro, Jalen Smith, Tre Jones (team option), Dillingham (team option) and Leonard Miller as expirings. Hell, even Matas and Essengue are technically expirings as they're on team options. Depending on how the season goes, a few of those guys might even have strong value to contending teams beyond just being salary filler.
On the pessimism front, I feel like there's a contingent of smart people on this site who feel that was the whole point of a rebuild with this much space (and I tend to fall into that camp), but have anyone in the Bulls' FO ever spoken or acted that way? Either the current regime or previous regimes? The answer is a resounding no. Bryson Graham got the job because he was either aligned with or resigned to shunning that rebuilding strategy. (Just like he had to get on board with selling 2nd rounders for #cashconsiderations.).
In limited research (thanks ChatGPT) it seems like the only time we've absorbed bad salary for a (protected) 1st rounder was when we traded Nikola Mirotic to the Pels in 2018 and tool back Omer Asik's contract. However, part of our return was based on Mirotic's value itself, so taking Asik was more of a sweetener (and salary matcher) to ensure we got a 1st. Am I missing any other examples where we got something of real value for eating significant salary -- not just getting a 2nd rounder here or there to help a team avoid the luxury tax?
ChatGPT even provided a subsection with the header: "Notably, they didn't make these kinds of deals". Which I thought was pretty hilarious and telling.
We traded Lavine for a #12 (Essengue) and 3 bad contracts. ( Or at least 2 bad contracts and Tre .) Or does that not count because that pick was top 10/ top 8 protected?
But I get your main point. Up until the Lavine trade AK wasn't looking to add future assets. And after that he liked to trade for younger players rather than picks.
So far Graham has done neither so it's still anybody's guess how traditional his strategies will be. He looks to be setting up for future trades, but we could be waiting awhile (maybe even until the trade deadline) to understand his vision.
I thought about mentioning the LaVine trade, but while Collins and Huerter were objectively bad contracts, they were immediately put into service as players the Bulls were counting on to help them make the play-in tourney. I think the Bulls looked at it internally as "Zach is an All Star and Olympian who netted us a 1st, and we got these guys because salaries had to match"
The kind of bad contracts I'm talking about are guys who are either chronically/devastatingly injured, way past their prime, "bad seed" locker room cancers, and/or or "tank commander" type players. The Bulls just don't and never will take on those kinds of deals.
Yeah, I get you there. Sounds like you're talking about taking on Beal or Middleton's contract a couple years ago, but maybe on a smaller scale. A deal that is pretty much a straight salary dump. You don't see deals like that happening too much anymore.
But I think we should have been open to getting players who were overpaid but had a little upside, and could also get us picks back. Like Vanderbilt maybe or Jovic. Charlotte just got picks for taking on Finney Smith.
Of course if you are just going to take those picks and sell them, it's not much of a strategy.
Right, those were good examples. Honestly I'm not pushing as hard for these deals as others here. My point is that the Bulls are always going to focus on usefulness or upside in players they acquire, and just being paid in picks to take "dead money" or distressed assets is not gonna happen. There might be situations where we can grab a 2nd rounder to sweeten a deal but we're just going to sell those anyway....
The "we don't value 2nd rounders anyway" isn't an excuse to not pursue them, it's actually more of an indictment on Graham being unimpressive (if still TBD but looking ok on mere competence)
My stake in the ground is they are gonna be sooooo bad, like 30-something wins bad. Year after year pundits wave off their issues with talk of Spoelstra and culture and Reilly. This week you'd think their signing of Tim Hardaway Jr. to a minimum was earth-shaking to read the fawning coverage. Just a bunch of "who-hes" and over-rated role players.
They have basically spent the last several years being one or two wins better than the Bulls, and they're fawned over by the media while the Bulls are dumped on. Now, the Bulls might deserve it but the point is that Miami should also be catching some "heat," if you will.
The thing about the Heat is that they've had those weird Cinderella playoff runs which has definitely bought them some equity among pundits. But they're not anything special anymore.
Collins is worthless and pointless. He is trade eligible immediately and sending him out can allow ~$17 million to come back for teams shedding salary.
No first round picks have traded on salary dumps yet, worsening the cost of Arturas’s inability to sell high on Demar et al 2 years ago.
At best, they signed human trade exceptions they can carry into the trade season when the most money dumping occurs. At worst, they will have one of the league’s lowest payrolls and acquire nothing meaningful to the future of the team. With this new regime, “not making the future worse” does not count as a win like it did for late stage AKME.
The sunniest outlook is that this team will be much more interesting to watch than last year's. They'll look competent and they don't have any long term money, so will have space to make big swings in each following offseasons as we get a better sense of what the young guys are.
uh but what about the roster spots?
I think Powell makes a ton of sense as a stabilizing floor raiser in a post lottery-reform world, and that claxton makes sense as an upside swing, especially if Splitter specifically thinks he can get more out of him.
The Collins signing is weird. Don't get that.
Still a lot of guys on this roster that are poor short and long term fits. With Powell here you probably want to trade Okoro who would be useful on the right team but makes no sense here.
Bobby Marks says they still have the mle available available too.
I read on bluesky we have 9.8 mil available which isn't the full MLE I don't think but close
that's the room exception
MLE is for teams over the cap
Been a decade since I followed close enough to really understand the way the cap works and the various exceptions
But Patrick Williams is still here
sadly it's impossible to free up a roster spot
The 2nd year for both Collins and Powell are team options so in way they're both just "cap space holders". Easy to trade or cut. We'll see if anything comes of that but it does mean the Collins deal is not quite as bad as the top line number
Why should Graham get praise if Wilson is great? He didn't "earn" the pick, and literally everyone on the planet agreed Wilson should go 4th. Which also means that if Wilson is worse than a player drafted after him, it's tough to put that on Graham.
True, I suppose not 'earned' specific praise but general praise for getting a superstar (even if through luck)
“Eh”
-Larry David
Holy shit, lakers gave up two firsts, two pick swaps and $130 million for Walker Kessler. That feels... Completely insane?
Woof. That's terrible.
WTAF????
So if we are to take the Powell signing as a fait accompli, then the Collins signing is the way they used the rest of their cap space (even if Collins was signed and announced first). The question is, what are the other options the Bulls could have had with $8.5m? Not really enough to get in on salary dumps of any note. Maybe you use it to take back a smaller salary like Topic and/or Sorber, but they can still do that with the Room Exception.
It is almost definitely cope, but I think the move is... meh/fine? And since it was an extension and not a FA signing, there still is the (I think unlikely) scenario that they turn around and trade Collins during the off-season as part of something larger. So if that comes to pass, things feel a little different.
if Collins is used as salary ballast for a trade, it's good. I think we're all just real cynical about the Bulls doing something like that lol
Agreed - though, maybe it's more likely they are willing to move Smith (who has positive trade value imo). We'll see. Like most, I'm underwhelmed at the totality of the offseason thus far, but it's also not grim by any stretch.
I'd like to see them shop Okoro, Jones, Smith, and Giddey to win-now teams. Maybe you can pick up some draft assets and/or young players. Bracing myself for disappointment on this front.
sign Collins at the minimum. Or just not at all. Heck carry the precious open roster spot into the season.
I like Kessler, but that trade is a sign of desperation.
Pelinka might be the luckiest executive in sports. He’s gone from LeBron to Luka and he did zero work to get either of them.
Yeah, I was interested in the Bulls throwing an offer sheet at him, but I would not have been happy with them throwing him that big of an offer sheet.
The offer sheet is whatever. What's crazy is the draft compensation.
Quentin Grimes got 4 years $60 million from the Lakers and was considered an alternative option for the 2. I like Powell better than that. More shooting, scoring punch... More tradeable contract.
The lakers spending bank with bron brons money gon, I hope he's mad
This is really neither here nor there, but it's kind of interesting looking at the overall roster now. Like obviously this team is going to be bad next year, but the roster is actually fairly balanced in terms of players fitting with each other.
I feel like for the entirety of AKME's tenure, the roster made zero sense with each other. It was clear AK had zero vision for the roster and was just assembling what he viewed to be the best players at each position that fit his budget. There was no thought put towards players actually fitting with each other. Like Zach, DeMar, and Vooch should have never been a thing. They are all ball-dominant and bad defenders, but all AKME saw was "All-Star adjacent" so they threw those guys on a team together.
The major weakness of this current team is still shooting, even with the addition of Powell. But on a team this young, that's probably the area I care the least about. Hopefully good shooting staff is brought in to help all these young guys improve.
Of all of my problems with AKME, that was the single biggest issue.
He put together a cohesive (if brittle) team with DeBallZach, but then never again attempted to put together a complementary roster.
right I mean it was like the team they attempted to put together at the time at least made sense, but there was never any effort to pivot or change course. It was very bizarre.
I'd argue even that team didn't make that much sense. It was still built around three "stars" that didn't compliment each other, and was held together by a couple of journeymen - Lonzo and Caruso.
Well yeah, when they had Lonzo doing the decision making, it helped a lot though. But no, they weren't a great fit (still can't believe Sacramento looked at the Bulls and wanted them both lol).
That is a type of sense, in my opinion. They had/acquired a group of flawed, but talented players and then filled the gaps with a couple of journeymen that patched the holes left by the stars' flaws.
That team was like a truss bridge. As a complete unit, it was very solid. But when one piece broke, it completely collapsed.
I wouldn't call those 3 months of lonzo "journeymen" level. He was playing like all-defense
I'm with you here. AK often made "seeing what we have" comments during off-seasons where his roster construction absolutely prevented him from seeing what he had.
This roster at least looks built for seeing what the team has. Norm should expose Giddey's real value, and the Center rotation should help us figure out what works around Matas/Caleb/Noah -- and which should be injured enough to see if we have a secret center on the roster.
On that note, just turn PWill into a Center, Tiago. Work your magic. Figure it out.
I don't like the fit of any of these guys if we're being honest.
Caleb and Matas have very overlapping strengths (help defense, general goodness) but also very overlapping weaknesses (man defense, strength, handle) I think they are both good enough to run with it, but it makes the rest of the fit that much more important.
The only complementary thing is that Matas seems on his way to being a good shooter.
Swain also looks like a 3 based on his size. He also can't shoot.
Giddey is defensively a bad fit because ideally you'd hide him on the same guys that you'd want Caleb or Matas guarding. With them, the guarding that guy would be a boon because they could help off that guy, which is what they do best. So Giddey immediately neutralizes our biggest strength defensively.
Offensively, he's a ball dominant guy who needs lots of spacing to operate which we don't have. So is Swain. He's neutral at best as a shooter. Still a guy that will get played off the court in the playoffs.
Claxton is an undersized center who's one of the league's weakest rebounders and shooters. He will clog the lain for everyone, and his inability to rebound will limit transition opportunities. He's routinely pushed around by bigger centers (almost all of them) and there's no real helping this, but it is particularly unhelpful given that Caleb and Matas are also twiggy weaklings.
Powell brings shooting, but mostly as a ball dominant kind of shooting that I think is gonna mesh poorly with Giddey.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this team fits perfectly. Obviously they don't and all the issues you pointed out are genuine concerns. I think my point was more than AK assembled a team of prime/past-their-prime players that didn't make any sense together because they all had similar strengths and weaknesses.
This current team is nothing like that. They have several very young players with tons of potential for improvement. Swain seems to be a bit of a combo wing. The vision seems to be that he could be a jumbo guard.
Matas and Wilson obviously overlap, but both are young enough that you just go with it and see how they develop. Obviously I think the hope is that Wilson will put on some muscle and also improve his three point shooting. That would make him a more natural four while skinnier Matas would play the three. Both need to improve their on-ball defense.
Claxton does not seem like a long-term piece on this team so I'm not terribly worried about him. If healthy (big "if" obviously), his calling card is his ability to switch and guard guards, which is something that will be needed since Giddey and Powell aren't great defenders. His lack of rebounding will hopefully be mitigated by the fact that Giddey is an excellent rebounding guard and Wilson is projected to be a solid rebounder too.
Again, not saying this team compliments each other like the Knicks or anything like that. I'm just saying that this team is far better built, or at least has far more potential, than what we had gotten under the AK regime.
Are Powell and/or Claxton tradeable or would Graham have to wait until February?
Since the Claxton trade isn't official, he could actually be re-routed as part of the deal before it's consummated with the league (this seems unlikely, but it's possible). After the trade completes, he could be traded right away but not aggregated with other players. Then in a couple months, he could be aggregated with other players in a trade.
Norm won't be tradeable until Dec. 15.
I'm in a Fantasy Football league every year but I use "auto-draft" since I never have time to sit down and draft live. This offseason feels like the Reinsdorfs put Bryson Graham on "auto GM" mode. His draft picks were pretty much what an AI chatbot or mock draft consensus would have him take (certainly with Caleb, that was written the moment we got #4 on lottery night). He keeps his own guys (Collins) by default. Nets offer him a decent player for free and he says okay. He signs the best quality free agent (despite not fitting any long term strategy) who happens to fit exactly into the cap room we have available.
The 'Dorfs also enabled the "sell 2nd round picks where possible" option under the Auto-GM settings.
The good news is that I have won my fantasy league two of the past few years after auto-drafting, by making some good in-season moves and getting some good luck. The guys who overthought things didn't do any better, and often did way worse.
I guess a GM who just does the most obvious things (CPU mode for gamers, or perhaps "ask ChatGPT") could potentially end up with more success than a GM trying to outsmart themselves and everyone else. But that remains to be seen.
can a GM succeed here not being very good and merely competent?
we know an incompetent one cannot succeed. And Graham hasn't done anything completely Karnisovasian yet
I guess it sort of depends on how you define "competent". But that is the question.
I just want to know Graham's strategy. (SLAP isn't a strategy.) At the moment it seems like "build a team that can be semi-competitive for the next 2 seasons while the youngsters development, and keep cap flexibility for 2028"
That's fine I guess, if it's really the plan. As you noted, it could always be worse (AK)
In two years Matas will get a new deal. Don’t think there is gonna be much cap flexibility
Huh? Even if they max out Buzelis (will he be a max player?) that's 25% of the cap, and they could potentially have a crazy huge amount of cap room. Giddey, PWill, and rookie contracts would combine to be like another 25%. Not sure who will be available to use the money on though... That's the rub in the modern NBA.
The cap will be ~$182M if my math is in the right general ballpark.
A 30% Max would be $54M
A 25% Max would be $45M
Factoring in raises
Matas $40
Giddey $25
Pat $18
Wilson $12
Noah $8.2
Swain $5.6
27 #5 $11
28 #5 $10
Roster charges ~ 3M
= $133M
Leaving about $49M in theoretical cap room. But that's imagining the Bulls don't add any money over the next two seasons at all. Which seems unlikely.
And then, as you say, what are they buying with that?
Today the Bulls acquired an actual all-star player on a very reasonable contract that in no way constrains the team beyond this season. That is a great move and I refuse to be dour about it.
I understand your point about asset accumulation, but Powell just fits so perfectly what the roster needed both on and off the court. In a perfect world you’d trade for an overpaid version of Powell with a draft pick attached, but who’s to say that trade is out there? Today’s signing gives the Bulls a decently well-rounded, decently competitive roster where all the youngsters can develop properly and learn from a veteran they respect. That’s worth at least as much as some low-level draft asset.
And it’s probably the rose-colored glasses of the offseason talking, but I think the team will be better than you realize. Our starting backcourt features one ‘26 all-star and another player who easily could have been. We have two athletic forwards with huge upside, a capable center, and a surprising amount of depth. Compared to last year’s squad we’ve clearly upgraded at SG and C. Our starting PG and PF from last year are back and more experienced. And guys like Okoro, Smith, and Miller will have to earn their minutes with Caleb Wilson on the roster. No, the Bulls aren’t title contenders yet, but they’ll be fun to watch and should sneak into the back end of the playoffs. You heard it here first!
Powell raises their floor, for sure. They now have Powell and some young vets who do contribute to winning (Jones, Okoro, Smith) with the youngsters around them.
And it'll be nice to root for wins without the constant tugging in my brain saying "it would be better to lose."
I believe sneaking into the play-in is now possible, but it's going to depend on staying healthy. Lots of our holdover guys missed time last year, as did Powell. (And Caleb Wilson, and Claxton). A healthy squad can complete for a playoff berth, but it would require a lot of good fortune to stay healthy.
"And it'll be nice to root for wins without the constant tugging in my brain saying 'it would be better to lose.'"
I'm actually thinking of getting League Pass again for this exact reason. There have been plenty of reasons to not pay to watch Bulls basketball during the AK era, but one of the biggest has always been finding it weird to watch my favorite team while simultaneously hoping they'd lose.
It certainly doesn't hurt that we have some genuinely exciting young players to cheer for too!
yeah, they might even make moves to get better midseason?
I can't believe how much I'm already loving the lottery reform
Same, completely love it
Whenever Bryson Graham or Tiago Splitter do something odd, I try to ask, "What do they know? How can I learn?" ... and to not ask, "How can they be so stupid?" Actually, that applies to every professional team in every sport.
Do you ever go back and reexamine it months or years later? You’ll realize that what you really should learn is that they don’t know anything special and often are so stupid.
I could spend hours saying what they do know better than me: The capabilities of every player in the pros, top colleges and many AAU and HS teams; which players can't guard which other players; other teams' playing styles, player rotations and true health status; each team's current closeout shooter and favorite inbounds play. Double that, and that's why I give them credit for not making moves I think they should make. And yeah, some are better than others.
I think that most decisions, most NBA decisions, are actually probabilistic. When you draft a player, for example, there's some probability that that player will be good and some probability that they will not. As a decision maker, you're trying to estimate that probability curve and select folks that have "the best" probability, that maximizes the probability of the team being good.
It's tempting to evaluate a decision years later, see that it didn't (or did) work out, then say that it was stupid (or genius). But that is a misleading way to do an evaluation, because the decision was probabilistic in the first place. There was always some probability that it would work or it would not work.
This is true of someone like Wembanyama, by the way. Drafting him likely had a very high probability of being successful. But there was / is a chance that it would not be - injuries stick out here, but he could have just not adapted well, not developed the skills he needed. If he hadn't, would the Spurs decision to draft him have been stupid?
It's throwing darts at a dartboard. Or, maybe a more apt example, it's shooting a three point shot. If someone misses one shot, does that mean they are bad at shooting threes? Of course not. We have to look at a larger sample.
What makes it tough to evaluate Graham or AKME or any executive from the outside is that we really just never get enough data to perform that evaluation. There's not that many players on a roster, and, unless they've been an executive for decades, there isn't that much data.
My point is that when you examine moves years later and see they don't work, it might have been bad luck, not stupidity.
Probability doesn't equal luck though.
I agree that people (mostly) make decisions probabilistically, but probabilities aren't based on a random "works/doesn't work" binary.
What's going on is that the better decision makers have a better and fuller understanding of the underlying probabilities.
It's like playing blackjack. Sometimes the probabilities tell you to hit and you go over. That's luck. A really good blackjack player who counts cards well might look at the same hand though, and counting the cards, have an expanded probability set.
They know that even though the basic odds say "hit", the additional information he has says "stay".
The NBA is full of that sort of additional information, and the best teams are hungry and relentless for getting it and sophisticated in using it.
The average team, to continue the analogy, isn't all that great at counting cards. And the least sophisticated teams think counting cards is a bunch of unmanly bullshit that they like to avoid when they can.
Draft picks are more probabilistic than trades because there are dozens of available and plausible options, especially in the second round where there are fewer standouts. Making trades under pressure to either win now, stop the bleeding now, or start the rebuild now, you're forced to make the best trade from a limited number of options where all of the players are known commodities, and "best" in terms of your current objectives and your total complex of planned moves. As an analogy, accepting a ride from a truck driver on a rainy night is something you wouldn't normally do.
It also in no way helps the Bulls beyond this season.
This is pending trades soon or at the deadline, but yes pretty striking that the Bulls had $50M in cap space and didn't get a single long term asset
I don't care about defending anything Bulls related, but the long term asset is a better draft pick from having an ostensibly more competitive team under the new lottery rules and the increased fan engagement gained from that, I can't help but look at it as they might be. is that cynicism, idk
Norman Powell, Nic Claxton, and Zach Collins.
My optimistic take: we have a stack of tradeable expiring salary to do something with at the deadline.
My pessimistic take: the whole point of a rebuild with this much space was to be the team charging desperate contenders picks or fliers to take their bad money and we've ended the period with no future assets.
My present take: maybe Caleb Wilson is so good none of this matters.
Claxton isn't expiring (owed $21.1M in '27-28) but your points -- both the glass half full and half empty -- are well taken.
On the optimism front, we do also have Okoro, Jalen Smith, Tre Jones (team option), Dillingham (team option) and Leonard Miller as expirings. Hell, even Matas and Essengue are technically expirings as they're on team options. Depending on how the season goes, a few of those guys might even have strong value to contending teams beyond just being salary filler.
On the pessimism front, I feel like there's a contingent of smart people on this site who feel that was the whole point of a rebuild with this much space (and I tend to fall into that camp), but have anyone in the Bulls' FO ever spoken or acted that way? Either the current regime or previous regimes? The answer is a resounding no. Bryson Graham got the job because he was either aligned with or resigned to shunning that rebuilding strategy. (Just like he had to get on board with selling 2nd rounders for #cashconsiderations.).
In limited research (thanks ChatGPT) it seems like the only time we've absorbed bad salary for a (protected) 1st rounder was when we traded Nikola Mirotic to the Pels in 2018 and tool back Omer Asik's contract. However, part of our return was based on Mirotic's value itself, so taking Asik was more of a sweetener (and salary matcher) to ensure we got a 1st. Am I missing any other examples where we got something of real value for eating significant salary -- not just getting a 2nd rounder here or there to help a team avoid the luxury tax?
ChatGPT even provided a subsection with the header: "Notably, they didn't make these kinds of deals". Which I thought was pretty hilarious and telling.
We traded Lavine for a #12 (Essengue) and 3 bad contracts. ( Or at least 2 bad contracts and Tre .) Or does that not count because that pick was top 10/ top 8 protected?
But I get your main point. Up until the Lavine trade AK wasn't looking to add future assets. And after that he liked to trade for younger players rather than picks.
So far Graham has done neither so it's still anybody's guess how traditional his strategies will be. He looks to be setting up for future trades, but we could be waiting awhile (maybe even until the trade deadline) to understand his vision.
I thought about mentioning the LaVine trade, but while Collins and Huerter were objectively bad contracts, they were immediately put into service as players the Bulls were counting on to help them make the play-in tourney. I think the Bulls looked at it internally as "Zach is an All Star and Olympian who netted us a 1st, and we got these guys because salaries had to match"
The kind of bad contracts I'm talking about are guys who are either chronically/devastatingly injured, way past their prime, "bad seed" locker room cancers, and/or or "tank commander" type players. The Bulls just don't and never will take on those kinds of deals.
Yeah, I get you there. Sounds like you're talking about taking on Beal or Middleton's contract a couple years ago, but maybe on a smaller scale. A deal that is pretty much a straight salary dump. You don't see deals like that happening too much anymore.
But I think we should have been open to getting players who were overpaid but had a little upside, and could also get us picks back. Like Vanderbilt maybe or Jovic. Charlotte just got picks for taking on Finney Smith.
Of course if you are just going to take those picks and sell them, it's not much of a strategy.
Right, those were good examples. Honestly I'm not pushing as hard for these deals as others here. My point is that the Bulls are always going to focus on usefulness or upside in players they acquire, and just being paid in picks to take "dead money" or distressed assets is not gonna happen. There might be situations where we can grab a 2nd rounder to sweeten a deal but we're just going to sell those anyway....
The "we don't value 2nd rounders anyway" isn't an excuse to not pursue them, it's actually more of an indictment on Graham being unimpressive (if still TBD but looking ok on mere competence)
So I’m looking at Miami’s current roster and…is that even a 50 win team?
The median ppg last year was 115.6. Can they get to that number? Can they get anywhere close to that number if Giannis doesn’t play at least 65 games?
They have to be the best defensive team in the East BY FAR if they want a shot at a top 5 seed.
My stake in the ground is they are gonna be sooooo bad, like 30-something wins bad. Year after year pundits wave off their issues with talk of Spoelstra and culture and Reilly. This week you'd think their signing of Tim Hardaway Jr. to a minimum was earth-shaking to read the fawning coverage. Just a bunch of "who-hes" and over-rated role players.
They have basically spent the last several years being one or two wins better than the Bulls, and they're fawned over by the media while the Bulls are dumped on. Now, the Bulls might deserve it but the point is that Miami should also be catching some "heat," if you will.
The thing about the Heat is that they've had those weird Cinderella playoff runs which has definitely bought them some equity among pundits. But they're not anything special anymore.
Are you looking pre-LeBron signing or post-LeBron signing?
(Not that he's definitely going there, but it's certainly a top option)
Bam scored 83 by himself!