I don't think need or fit should guide your draft, but I do think you need a plan for any guy you bring in. If Carter is the best player available, so be it, but how would you know that now - in a draft where there are so many variables - is beyond me. What if Castle (a prospect I really like) falls? Or Buzelis (someone I like less, but scouts are high on)? Making a promise to a guy projected to go in the teens when you have the #11 pick in a draft where multiple guys could fall is beyond dumb. Which is why I'm scared the reports are correct.
As far as Carter, my biggest concern is his offensive upside. High dribble, slow high arching shot with not much history of success, not great in pick and roll - what's the upside?
Also, what's the plan? The Bulls have a nasty habit of drafting guys and making sure they don't have minutes. If Carter is the pick, he'll be playing behind Coby, Ayo, and Caruso - at least. He will also presumably be behind Lavine (if he's here) and competing with Ball/Carter/Terry. That's 7 guys before your 22 year old, defense first 6'2 guard can get on the court.
This promise needs to come with trades and a plan. Alas, its probably just a promise.
Draft more project guys that Donovan doesn't actually work on so he can eventually cut his rotation to 5 vets playing 48 minutes, and get 1 play-in game. That must be the direction of the franchise.
I was trying to remember "who was the 5th year senior from Bumblefuck State with no skills or athleticism that they promised to take with their 2nd first round pick a few years ago?"
I wonder when the last time was Chandler Hutchinson played in a basketball game with refs and whistles and all that. Probably been awhile.
It was definitely easy to misread that though because of the way it was written - I think if he had spelled out second vs writing 2nd it wouldn't have been as easy to gloss over.
Donovan Clingan is not lumbering he's tall and defensively agile and a future 3 point shooter, the type of pick you WILL get value from in the top 10. I would pick swap with the Rockets maybe a Caruso sweetener would get it done they definitely prioritize vets right now over more young talent.
Vuc and Drummond must go as priority one. Their games are a tempting distraction that make this team actually worse.
PW on a cheap contract is a good thing, if they put him on the second unit finally as well.
Finally, and I may get booed out of the room but I think Billy and the front office needs to have one final conversation with Zach and his reps. Look the way you play now has little to no value around the league. You have one chance to redeem yourself and that is to move to a Klay Thompson type role. You can't run pick and roll as well as Coby and you can't run isolation as well as DeMar. But what you could put your skills to, and do very well and efficiently, is shoot threes in transition, off the dribble, and off pin downs, and then then attack closeouts and get to the rim where you also are a nice finisher.. You'd be very good at that. It would fit your skills and also fit this team. We'd love to have you back if you'd take on and embrace that role. This is a good faith but no wiggle room offer. What do you say?
And since then his value has plummeted demonstrably and in real time. Nobody wants the old Zach, proof is in the no-deals. Rich Paul KNOWS this. I didn't say Zach would do it, but it would benefit him (Billy could almost guarantee him a 25+ ppg average at medium usage, just do the math 4 threes, 4 close-out dunks/layups, 4 free throws, at high efficiency, completely changing his story), and I think it's a mistake for the FO to not to try it one more time given the reality of the situation:1) Zach has to have a come-to-jesus at some point and 2) if the Bulls are not going full rebuild trading a very talented but mis-used player for two pieces of relative crap isn't a good strategy.
By all accounts this foot surgery was almost elective it was so oddly timed, I don't think Zach's camp thinks playing helps (especially a $40M player subservient to Coby White), And that it's the Bulls fault they can't find a deal.
if indeed this trade market is so bad, I do think Klutch and Zach have some kind of awareness but not to the level of where he plays for the Bulls
they'll recognize that this trade isn't going to salvage Zach's career, it'll be the next one. So maybe they're more open to, say, Detroit because while Zach surely doesn't want to be there he can at least see a path to raise his value there. In Chicago his value only goes down when he plays, plus he doesn't like the coach.
Zach is probably one of the touchiest players in the league, he nearly had a conniption about sitting in the 4th in a meaningless regular season game where he was shooting like shit. Most players have that happen to them, and the regular response (canned it might be) is "Hey I was rooting for my teammates, I just had nothing tonight and our guys were ballin!" Zach reacted like he'd just been violated. I don't think he takes criticism well, and he probably only takes it from the constellation of family, agents and advisors that circle around him.
So what you tell him might be correct and even beneficial but he's not going to take it that way.
More importantly, Klutch will spin it their way and people will believe them because the Bulls front office are commonly regarded as losers and liars. History will side with him too: there's a good chance his new team will do better than the Bulls (they're the 19th best team, most do!) And if they aren't, he'll put up 28 next year on 23 shots like Bradley Beal a few years ago and claim an all-star berth.
The Bulls have managed to maneuver themselves into a lose/lose situation with Zach, let's be honest about this, so maybe it doesn't really matter, but I think it's usually worse to have your peers laugh at you too. I think Machiavelli said that you should do terrible things energetically and with gusto, because there's nothing worse than being mocked as ridiculous as well as evil.
Well Drummond's probably gone, I don't see how they'll retain him if they're planning on paying DeRozan $40+ million.
Agree on Patrick Williams.
Mostly agree on Zach, but I don't see it happening. Dude is just dead set on being a #1 option, and now that he's got the bag I don't see why he'd change.
I hope the Bulls do pursue some avenue to rehab Zach's trade value. BUT judging by the rumors they could very well end up dumping him for a bag of chips, which would be very lame/harmful/Bullsian.
If Drummond can make the same money anywhere (and he can at least make the same money he made last year) then I don't know why he'd be here anyway. Other than getting hit really hard in the balls Vucevic is durable and they don't play together.
Morey loves picking up "non-Morey-like" players like Drummond for cheap and Philly makes a lot of sense, being both good and getting better and having a lot of chances for him to shine behind Embiid. They might have a little issue due to being under the cap (so a lot of exemptions not available) and maybe we can pick up a tiny bit of scratch for helping a conference rival sign our players away ha ha ha ha :(
As a replacement to this whole (points at Bulls big men) I'd probably sign Goga Bitadze, Jordan Nwora who is somehow still only 25 to play both F positions and maybe Dario Saric to soak up whatever is left at PF and C. You should be able to get at least two of the three combined for less than they're paying Jevon Carter, and trade all three of them at the deadline for 2nds.
I wanted to clap back at Clingan not being a lumberer, and that might be true compared to someone like Vucevic, but I checked the combine stats, and he was literally the 2nd slowest in all three movement drills (3/4 court sprint, lane agility, shuttle). he's in the Kofi Cockburn, Patrick Baldwin, Jr. range.
Well I agree the numbers are the numbers but I'm surprised. Looked mobile to me in the final four. Below is the ringer scouting report. He's moving up draft boards for a reason.
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Intimidating rim protector with a 7-foot-7 wingspan. He can block shots without even leaving his feet. Opponents avoid him when he’s lurking near the paint, not just because he’s imposing but also because he tends to be in the right position.
Has the potential to be an excellent drop defender in the pick-and-roll. He’s mobile and does a solid job of flipping his hips to contain penetrating players.
He’s good at using his size to protect the rim, but he’s also gotten mobile enough to hedge on the perimeter. He can flip his hips to contain penetrating players and recover to the roller if necessary.
The not buying into the Ringer scouting report after they sold me on Killian Hayes.
Also I just don't think looking mobile in the final four means anything more than looking mobile in, say, the French league where Killian Hayes looked mobile.
That's not to say that good performances don't count for anything. It's obviously better to be good than to be bad. But I don't think it tells us a lot.
Numbers wise, his combine results looked pretty bad. The obvious comparison here is Drummond, and Drummond (and even actually Adama Sanogo) did a lot better on the athletic testing.
Drummond is about as mobile as a 280lb man is going to get. And what I see is that in an NBA game, he's certainly "mobile enough" but it's in the sense of a 280lb man being mobile. He's a center who guards other centers.
When we talk about mobility, we mean can he guard down. And even a guy like Drummond, you don't really want him guarding down/defending in space, however you want to call it.
In short, yeah, Clingan is not what one would consider mobile. Maybe he'll be good in spite of that, but I think you draft him expecting him to be Roy Hibbert or a less athletic but also less TO prone version of Drummond.
(The Killian Hayes hype *was* a reputation killer for O'Connor.)
But until I have direct access to NBA FOs I'll have to count on people who do have it (and my eye, FWIW)
Here's Jonathan's Givony's (guy who's been talking to GMs and scouts about college players for 20 years as a full-time job) writing TODAY about Clingan, echoing pretty much everything I said. Also notice GMs linking the Bulls to him as a trade-up possibility.
Eye of the beholder, certainly. In the end we'll see how it all plays out :)
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3. Donovan Clingan | C | UConn
7-3 | Age: 20.2 | Previously ranked: 3
Clingan is a top-three prospect who might experience a minor drop on draft night because teams that are in the Nos. 3-6 range already have starting centers in place. He's in conversation at No. 1 after working out in Atlanta (which is exploring trade-down scenarios). He is also spending time in Washington, which has the No. 2 pick. Clingan isn't expected to drop past the Portland Trail Blazers at No. 7, whom he just visited for a private workout as well. He is being discussed among teams as a possible target for the likes of Chicago, Memphis, Oklahoma City or Utah, who all might explore trading up for a player in his mold.
Clingan's appeal is evident at 7-foot-3 with a 7-7 wingspan and 9-7 standing reach, and he's viewed by many as the draft's most impactful defensive prospect with the timing he shows as a rim-protector and the improvement he has made guarding the pick-and-roll. His youth, productivity, touch and instincts on both ends of the court give him a high floor and make him a sleeper candidate to hear his name called at No. 1. -- Givony
I think we're just speaking different languages here. You're touting things like his measurables and what guys who have to write about the draft are saying.
I'm looking at how players of his type actually operate in the NBA and how they fit in.
It very well could be that Clinton is a "top-three prospect" in this draft and yet is still basically on an Andre Drummond-like trajectory where all of that size and talent doesn't necessarily fit very well into the NBA game. Drummond was a top 3 talent too!
I think about this very much like I think about the Bulls trading away 2 seconds last year to draft Julian Phillips- a guy who THEY said they were drafting to replace Derrick Jones Jr.
I think to myself.... why? Why on so many levels. But mostly:
1. Why on earth draft a 20 year old kid to "replace" an NBA veteran?
2. Why use precious draft picks on filling roles that are more capably filled by veterans on the league minimum salary?
Again, if the next Andre Drummond is truly the BPA available, then sure, take him. But do it because of him being the guy you are convinced is going to be a huge star. It's like AKME think they're playing NBA2k or something.
Chris Fleming had a chance to be the New Gar, the holdover that empire-builds his way to dominating the whole org. Sad.
I still laugh at that interview where Eversley boasts that his son attends school in Chicago as a sign of setting down deep roots in the community. I'm hard pressed to name a single thing he's accomplished in Chicago, but I suppose that's the downside of running a North Korean-style media operation as a basketball team, people don't really know anything about anyone or anything except Chicago Grows Stronger By Leaps And Bounds Daily.
Filipowski seems like the right draft pick to me. The thing is, if you're the Bulls and you genuinely don't think development is part of your job, I think you really have to prioritize skill level in your prospects. Clingan makes sense because a mobile 7'2'' shot blocker should be pretty plug-and-play with a strong floor, but I don't think they're getting him. Everyone else in this range seems like too much of a project for a team that signs up for projects and then disclaims responsibility for them.
Regarding the "reach" part, I'll just toss this here. Draft discourse is really funny. I think it takes 5 years for a draft to really begin to clarify what it was all about. So I looked at 5 drafts from 2014 to 2018. All I did was rank the players best to worst by career win shares, which is perfectly fine for what I'm doing. Here are the draft spots of the top 14 players in each draft by career win shares:
If at the time of these drafts your personal lottery draft board looked like this, you would have been laughed away as a kook. One real certainty in the draft is that the consensus lottery draft board will be wildly wrong. And yet every year no one deviates from it much at all.
Great work. That is astonishing. I guess the mock drafters are operating the same cottage industry as the tarot reading place I see over on Harlem Avenue.
Drafting appears to be the least efficient process in the NBA. The errors seem both profound and uncorrectable. Teams are able to utilize massive amounts of data and none of it seems to have made much difference from the days when guys were chomping cigars in the stands at DePaul games and drafting guys from "good programs."
I do think there is something basically uncorrectable here, though there may be some really crazy math that can handle shit like this, I don't know.
But the biggest problem to me-- aside from the pervasive weakness in NBA development programs-- is you have these player inputs (mental, physical, skill), and these things determine production, and they are just so fucking sensitive. Like, Rodney Stuckey really does resemble Dwayne Wade! And I just think the way these things work is if those inputs of Stuckey's were just 5% more like Wade's, Stuckey's production would have been like 75% of Wade's instead of like 10% which is what actually happened.
So I basically think everyone involved pretty closely resembles each other, and this whole thing is a system where very slight differences in input yield wildly different outputs. There are other issues as well, but that one's the real doozy to me.
I like ware as a prospect at 11, assuming topic, sarr, castle, and Holland are all gone (which... I think it's a good bet). Just feel like he's an ideal replacement for Vuc, and if we keep Vuc (cuz who the fuck wants him) maybe Vuc can tutor him a bit... I know that sounds frightening, but I think Vuc is a skilled big and has made enough mistakes to be a good mentor....
Ware is a good example of a guy who isn't blowing anyone's hair back. but if you look at the history of the draft, it is guys like him who hang around for like 12 years and about whom we're like "wow, ok, I guess he was like the 11th best player in that draft". I'm not actually predicting that. Just that you dig under the dreamworld of the draft and it gets pretty staid pretty quickly.
I think I'll pass on the short-armed, not athletic big. We already have one of those.
If we had an athletic, defense-first starting center and wanted Filipowski as a backup, fine. But I don't really want another Vooch to take over when Vooch retires in two years.
As a side note, I've begun to find template-based draft thinking very unhelpful. The goal is to get a good player. Kelly Olynyk for example would be the 2nd or 3rd best player on this team.
It seems helpful to me, just from the perspective of what do we want our team to look like.
To carry on your example above, Rodney Stuckey and Wade are from the same kind of template. We don't know if the guy is going to be a star, but we have a general idea of what kind of player he'll be if he pans out.
Like... would we rather have the next Tyrese Maxey, the next Kelly Olynyk, or Andre Drummond.
Well, other things being equal, I'd probably take Maxey or Olynyk because I think they've got the most general utility.
But... if I think next Maxey or next Olynyk are just much more likely to bust, then sure, I'd settle for the next Drummond.
I don't have the same faith as you in the stability of these templates. You're examples actually show this. Take Drummond. If you went back and told people he worked out as a player, what would they think he is? They would think he's like prime Deandre Jordan with a bit more heft. That's the template: rebounding, shot blocking drop big.
But Drummond actually developed in much weirder ways than that. He turned out to have unusual ball handling and passing skills. And defensively, he always stinks as a drop big but is kind of good as a switching/blitzing big.
Olynyk is the same. You look at who he was coming into the league, a monster interior scorer with a hint of stretch and passing skill. If you asked people what a good outcome looked like for him, they'd have probably said something more like fellow Zag Sabonis. And yet that's not what happened at all. He's really more like a beefy wing.
Stuckey does resemble Wade. But that doesn't mean his development had to be restricted to that template. He was a big, strong, long, atheltic guard with good defensive numbers in college. Jrue Holiday or Marcus Smart could have been the template for him. It wasn't, but there's no way to know that at the time.
In the draft you have 1-3 chances at one of the 18-24 players who are worth a damn in the NBA. It's really hard to find them. I think further sorting them by some specious template just overcomplicates things. Team design is best left for moves outside the draft, imo.
I was just thinking, man I hate this FO so much. Normally around draft time it's somewhat interesting to look at the incoming class of players and envision the impact they'll have on your team. But I can't even have that with this fucking FO and the rumors about a promise to Devin Carter. It's not only that the team is bad, it actively sucks the entertainment value out of being a fan.
New report from ESPN is that the Bulls might be looking into moving up the draft to get Buzelis. I can't decide if all of these reports with the Bulls being all over the place indicate AK is really doing his due diligence or if he has absolutely no idea what he's doing and can't make up his mind.
I saw that, mention of "AK has insight into Buzelis bc they're Lithuanian"...but to me, AK is incompetent, so that doesn't give me any faith at all lol
I think there is enough smoke about Bulls moving up in the draft, that this promise seems less likely. I think its interesting to think about what the Bulls could be offering to move up. I think the Bulls pursuing the #3 pick is a real possibility. If AK has fallen in love with someone in the draft, I could definitely see him offering something to move up.
Caruso and #11 for #3? If Bulls really want to get Clingan or Buzelis, that seems like the only way to ensure it could happen.
That seems like a terrible return. I'm pretty sure the Bulls could get a future first (likely not great but this draft isn't that good anyway) and a promising young player for Caruso. Trading him and #11 for #3 in a weak draft seems like a terrible idea.
Getting the #3 pick any draft seems like better than getting a pick in the 20s. I keep hearing about this amazing return. Where is it? Caruso is on the last year of his contract. If the Bulls get better value for him I'll be happy and completely shocked.
Man I would do that trade for #3 and not even think about it for a second. In this draft or any other. But a chance at Reed Sheppard would be extremely enticing. Closest dude I've seen to Chris Paul since the man himself. Looks like he'll even be drafted top 5 behind a 7-footer from Australia and a rangy 6'9'' shooter just like Paul was.
The next time there's a labor conflict in the NBA, remember that the NBA conspired to drive him out of the league. The Bulls refused to meet his $200k salary request, and then refused to release him or even trade him. He took them to court and lost. Despite averaging 19 a game and barely ever missing games despite numerous injuries, his career ended right then and there: forced retirement.
Chet's sin was that he was a party to Robertson vs. NBA, the lawsuit filed by Oscar Robertson that eventually lead to free agency (albeit a year after Chet retired). The scumbag owners of that era never forgave Robertson, either: that's why he had almost nothing to do with the game after his retirement.
This was the NY Times lede for the story on November 21, 1975:
"Chet Walker, who for 13 years in the National Basketball Association usually let his one‐on‐one artistry do his talking, says he has quit the Chicago Bulls because they treated him like an idiot."
lol well it's such a funny coincidence that these things get left out of obituaries, isn't it? They blackballed a guy for decades, and after he dies you'd think that it never happened, as if the mention of a man being railroaded because of his union activism diminishes him rather than makes him even more of an icon.
The details get worse the more you look into contemporary accounts:
> Last week, Coach Dick Motta and the club owner, Arthur Wirtz, asked Walker to return “without offering more money or anything else. I truly believe the people who manage the Bulls think I'm an idiot — dumb black man with no pride or principles.”
> “I ruined my health for this team, played all last season with a bleeding kidney when the doctors said I could have sat out and drawn my salary,” he said. “When I went into the hospital, management refused to pay the $470 bill, claiming the injury had nothing to do with basketball. Can you believe that?"
This extended into the '90s when the Bulls reputedly kept Walker away from one of the title celebrations. I'm willing to believe that might have been a misunderstanding, but the guy had been subject to enough indignities that he had every reason to suspect it wasn't.
Honest question. At what point is a draft bad enough that a pick becomes a negative asset because of the guaranteed salary? Is that possible this year? And what would that mean about trading up?
While I think that's a valid question, I think there are questions that come before that. Like, why is a sub .500 team so close to the luxury tax in the first place? And if said sub .500 team isn't planning on getting significantly better (they aren't), why aren't they dumping salary so they can draft a high upside guy and work towards a better future without the fear that his ROOKIE contact will be too expensive?
Think of it this way. If Zach only made $30M instead of $40M last year, it would ease the Bulls problems considerably. Given that he missed a year and was coming off surgery, he'd still be "overpaid" but the idea of taking on a guy on a max deal wouldn't be quite so awful for other teams. And the Bulls undoubtably got an insurance payout from Zach missing time as well too. Maybe $6-10M depending on how his injury was calculated.
James Wiseman made $12M last year and was worth $0. Probably an active negative amount.
So in a very tangible sense, the amount Zach is overpaid - difference between what he's worth and what he's got - is less of a problem than the amount Wiseman got.
Sure. But by that logic the Bulls (or any team really) should only ever use draft picks on players they know are absolutely going to be worth the money they get paid.
At least to me that doesn't logically follow at all.
I'm saying wasting $10M is wasting $10M. Doesn't matter on who. The draft is a risk, but so is free agency. I didn't say never take risks. I'm saying factor in the costs and benefits. Maximize the expected value. The better GMs are the ones who optimize.
In plain English though, what that means is that sometimes, it's probably a smarter strategy to move down than to move up. This is probably such a year, because the guys at the top don't seem very categorically different than the ones in the middle. So if you're getting the same quality, take the cheaper one. Or better yet, get two cheaper ones for the price of one.
Okay, I was misunderstanding. I get what you're saying now. My point with my response to THEKILLERWHALE was more just that thinking about this pick as a potential negative asset (largely due to this team's financial constraints) is fine but it's also glossing over the fact that a bunch of bad decisions were made to get to the point where we even feel the need to think about this pick potentially being a negative asset.
I get what you're saying too, but I don't think it's just the Bulls. Having a high draft pick making $8-12M and being a total bust is bad. The fact that the team might have other even worse problems doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about.
Usually the reasons why something is bad isn't A or B or C. It's D- All of the Above. And reasons A-C are all the reasons are to some degree inextricably linked in a network of bad thought processes.
Though the Bulls are struggling to deal with their problem, whereas the Warriors converted theirs to a much smaller one rather easily. Wiseman makes $12M and is worth $0. They basically traded him straight up for gary payton, a guy who makes 8M and is probably worth 7M.
This seems to be systemic in the league now. Atlanta, which is virtually Chicago's twin, is about to break into the tax too. They actually dumped Collins a year ago, but — and this is crazy! — you apparently have to make more than one move a year these days!
Portland, Shrewd Operators Apparently, are also about to hit the tax threshold because they traded Dame and Jrue and perversely held on to everyone else. 21 wins, fewer than 30 a year the last 3 years, and they're going into the tax unless they finally start moving bodies.
It looks like even just making the simple moves and sleepwalking through the summer results in your payroll escalating to the tax now.
It's almost impossible to not pre-judge their draft strategy. I have little faith they think Edey is BPA, and instead worry they are just using the draft to replace Andre Drummond bc everyone else is a locked in core. Like last year where they said Julian Phillips replaced DJJ
At least Phillips was an upside guy. Edey obviously has a way higher floor, but he also has serious limitations that will likely prevent him from ever being anything but a backup center.
Using your lottery pick and its subsequent salary on a backup center when you could get an equally good, if not better, backup center for even less while using that lottery pick on someone else is just pure AK tomfoolery.
I would not call myself an Edey guy. I think when a prospect's best skill is "he scored a lot of points in college", that's actually a red flag for me.
But I do think it's a little odd that Phillips, a guy who has yet to improve in much of anything, is thought of as having higher upside than a guy who has already improved at a number of things. (Phillips is fine, btw. I don't. know why this specific franchise chose him, but he's fine). I do think having improved at things in the past means you are more likely to improve at things in the future. Learning is a skill.
Edey could be worth it, btw. Here's one way how. Boban used to play 12 minutes a game and be completely unstoppable for those 12 minutes. Supposedly Edey is in phenomenal physical shape. Suppose you get Boban but he can play 20-23 minutes a game. That could very well be worth the 11th pick, especially in this draft.
it'd be even better if Donovan (no doubt backed by management) escaped the thrall of the "double double machine" and those minutes would be with the starting lineup
I guess I say Phillips has a higher upside because he has a much lower floor. If Phillips puts on some muscle and develops a good three point shot, he's pretty much instantly a starting-level wing due to his length and athleticism. Not saying he will become that, but there's at least the potential there. I'd say that's higher upside than Edey playing 15-20 minutes a game as a backup center.
But I do get what you're saying. I actually don't hate Edey and could see a situation where he does prove to be a decent backup center. I just don't see why the Bulls would draft him at 11. I'm also firmly in the draft-the-highest-upside-player-available camp so Edey doesn't make sense to me regardless.
If the Bulls were fairly good and just looking for pieces to fill out their roster and they happened to be picking in the late teens or early 20s and Edey was available, I'd be more than happy with him. But they're not good and shouldn't be looking to fill out their roster and they have a lottery pick.
See this is my problem. Shouldn't there be something real here to underpin what we say about these guys? Like, Phillips hasn't gotten better at anything. But we're like, well, what if he gets stronger and learns how to play defense and learns how to shoot? Then he'll be good. He hasn't done anything like that before. Patrick rightly gets criticized for his anemic offense, and as a rookie he was miles ahead of where Phillips is as a shooter.
Furthermore, we can play the same game with Edey if we're just dreaming about stuff. What if Edey comes into the NBA and is like "holy shit, I'm the biggest guy in the league. Maybe I can be a really good shot blocker." And he gets put into a system where everything gets funneled into him and thrives. Now you have Boban on offense and Brook Lopez on defense. That's probably a top 5 pick in this draft. Way higher upside that what you outlined with Phillips.
1. It's hard to say Phillips hasn't gotten better at anything. He barely played to begin the season. Once he did start getting meaningful playing time he wasn't terrible (at least not for a guy who was a second round pick and drafted based off of potential), but he pretty much immediately got hurt. So you may be right that he didn't really improve, but there's also really no way for us to know if he did or not.
2. You say you don't like talking about upside without something real to underpin the argument. The "real" thing to underpin the Phillips argument is that he's 6'8" with a 7' wingspan and a 43" vertical. Then again, that's kind of the point of upside. It's looking for something that isn't currently there, or at least not developed, but something that seems like it can be developed in that person better than in most others.
3. Your upside scenario with Edey still requires everything to be funneled through him. Any team that requires their whole offense to be funneled through Edey (even if he's good, like in your scenario) is not going to be that good of a team. He'd put a cap on your ceiling. You could even compare it to DeMar now. DeMar has been incredible during his time with the Bulls, but everyone understands that your team can only be so good with a guy like that featured heavily.
Would you rather have a center that's really good but caps the ceiling of the team or a really good role player that lifts the existing ceiling? I guess it's up to each individual person, but I'd rather have the role player.
We've gotten way off-topic though. Phillips was drafted based on upside. We could argue that he probably shouldn't have been, but that's not the reality we live in. Pretty much no one looks at Edey as an upside guy. We know what Edey is most likely going to offer at the NBA level, and most likely what he'll offer is a decent backup center in the right situation.
For a Bulls team that's not currently good and doesn't have the financial flexibility to get significantly better, I'd rather they took a swing and went for someone who has a chance of becoming much better than Edey even if they also have a good chance of being worse than him.
1) I wouldn't say that my scenario requires everything on offense to be funneled through Edey because I actually did not say that. That reference was to defensive scheme.
2) I wouldn't say "we know what Edey is most likely going to offer" because no one actually knows that.
3) I wouldn't say "pretty much no one thinks Edey has upside" because in addition to that probably (hopefully-- like, hopefully people aren't that stupid?) being false of any first round pick, it's worth noting that no one knows how to judge upside anyways. And this "I know upside when I see it. I look at combine results, and that's how I know there's upside or not" is terribly naive.
4) I probably wouldn't compare the prospective 11th pick in a bad draft to a 6 time all star as though that's a bad outcome.
5) I swear to god, it is possible to make trades in the NBA. If your pick is good, but you don't like the direction he puts your team in, you can trade him for value. Limited stars get good hauls all the time in the NBA. The Bulls just suck and are stupid.
I think Edey is better than Boban. I think there is a small chance Edey is a doible-double machine. But that may just make him a modern day AL Jefferson. Awesome on one end, abysmal on the other. Can he get to a space where he's a positive impact defensively? Might be Vuc 2.0 on that end.
I do want to say that if any GM/FO brass ever says they're trying to replace a vet with a guy in the draft they should be fired on the spot. Evidence of stupidity that's become malfeasance.
They've won five playoff series in the past 25 years. There are cheap teams. There are poorly managed teams. The Bulls are the most lethal combination of both that exists in the modern NBA.
"The team is built around two overpaid perimeter scorers, one of whom is 34 and will inevitably extract an inflated contract out of the Bulls in free agency, the other of whom already got one and can't stay healthy. The Bulls gave away two lottery picks for Nikola Vucevic, who is now on one of the NBA's worst contracts. They owe another pick to the Spurs next year for DeMar DeRozan. They've held Alex Caruso hostage for the duration of his well below-market contract because of their insistence on competing for the Play-In tournament, but that means they'll either have to trade him for less value than they could have gotten in the past or extend him at a number that might be shaky as he reaches his 30s."
Ouch.
I do disagree with Sam's overall assessment though. Like I get what he's thinking, but I don't think he realizes Billy has cracked the code. He's right that the Bulls aren't a serious organization and that's exactly why Billy's job is so safe. Billy became besties with AK and it sounds like he's pretty friendly with the Reinsdorf's too. They don't care if their coach is good or not. As long as he doesn't upset the status quo and he goes golfing with them, they couldn't be happier.
I don't think need or fit should guide your draft, but I do think you need a plan for any guy you bring in. If Carter is the best player available, so be it, but how would you know that now - in a draft where there are so many variables - is beyond me. What if Castle (a prospect I really like) falls? Or Buzelis (someone I like less, but scouts are high on)? Making a promise to a guy projected to go in the teens when you have the #11 pick in a draft where multiple guys could fall is beyond dumb. Which is why I'm scared the reports are correct.
As far as Carter, my biggest concern is his offensive upside. High dribble, slow high arching shot with not much history of success, not great in pick and roll - what's the upside?
Also, what's the plan? The Bulls have a nasty habit of drafting guys and making sure they don't have minutes. If Carter is the pick, he'll be playing behind Coby, Ayo, and Caruso - at least. He will also presumably be behind Lavine (if he's here) and competing with Ball/Carter/Terry. That's 7 guys before your 22 year old, defense first 6'2 guard can get on the court.
This promise needs to come with trades and a plan. Alas, its probably just a promise.
Draft more project guys that Donovan doesn't actually work on so he can eventually cut his rotation to 5 vets playing 48 minutes, and get 1 play-in game. That must be the direction of the franchise.
man i swear if we end up with another fucking chandler hutchison...
At least you remembered his name.
I was trying to remember "who was the 5th year senior from Bumblefuck State with no skills or athleticism that they promised to take with their 2nd first round pick a few years ago?"
I wonder when the last time was Chandler Hutchinson played in a basketball game with refs and whistles and all that. Probably been awhile.
(Nobody remind him they took Hutchison in the first round!)
I think he was the first player from his draft class to actually retire. He was 26. That is amazing.
THEY PROMISED HIM THEY WOULD. I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND
It's not the same if the prospect doesn't know you loved him BEFORE the draft. That's what makes it special!
he said 2nd first round pick, not 2nd round pick.
Oh.
It was definitely easy to misread that though because of the way it was written - I think if he had spelled out second vs writing 2nd it wouldn't have been as easy to gloss over.
Good stuff in yfbb's post. A few thoughts...
Donovan Clingan is not lumbering he's tall and defensively agile and a future 3 point shooter, the type of pick you WILL get value from in the top 10. I would pick swap with the Rockets maybe a Caruso sweetener would get it done they definitely prioritize vets right now over more young talent.
Vuc and Drummond must go as priority one. Their games are a tempting distraction that make this team actually worse.
PW on a cheap contract is a good thing, if they put him on the second unit finally as well.
Finally, and I may get booed out of the room but I think Billy and the front office needs to have one final conversation with Zach and his reps. Look the way you play now has little to no value around the league. You have one chance to redeem yourself and that is to move to a Klay Thompson type role. You can't run pick and roll as well as Coby and you can't run isolation as well as DeMar. But what you could put your skills to, and do very well and efficiently, is shoot threes in transition, off the dribble, and off pin downs, and then then attack closeouts and get to the rim where you also are a nice finisher.. You'd be very good at that. It would fit your skills and also fit this team. We'd love to have you back if you'd take on and embrace that role. This is a good faith but no wiggle room offer. What do you say?
If I were Zach, I'd say "I heard you last year when you said this, and I emphatically responded at the time: 'nah' "
And since then his value has plummeted demonstrably and in real time. Nobody wants the old Zach, proof is in the no-deals. Rich Paul KNOWS this. I didn't say Zach would do it, but it would benefit him (Billy could almost guarantee him a 25+ ppg average at medium usage, just do the math 4 threes, 4 close-out dunks/layups, 4 free throws, at high efficiency, completely changing his story), and I think it's a mistake for the FO to not to try it one more time given the reality of the situation:1) Zach has to have a come-to-jesus at some point and 2) if the Bulls are not going full rebuild trading a very talented but mis-used player for two pieces of relative crap isn't a good strategy.
That said he may just delusional himself out of the league (see Westbrook's struggles before he accepted his appropriate role)
By all accounts this foot surgery was almost elective it was so oddly timed, I don't think Zach's camp thinks playing helps (especially a $40M player subservient to Coby White), And that it's the Bulls fault they can't find a deal.
if indeed this trade market is so bad, I do think Klutch and Zach have some kind of awareness but not to the level of where he plays for the Bulls
they'll recognize that this trade isn't going to salvage Zach's career, it'll be the next one. So maybe they're more open to, say, Detroit because while Zach surely doesn't want to be there he can at least see a path to raise his value there. In Chicago his value only goes down when he plays, plus he doesn't like the coach.
Zach is probably one of the touchiest players in the league, he nearly had a conniption about sitting in the 4th in a meaningless regular season game where he was shooting like shit. Most players have that happen to them, and the regular response (canned it might be) is "Hey I was rooting for my teammates, I just had nothing tonight and our guys were ballin!" Zach reacted like he'd just been violated. I don't think he takes criticism well, and he probably only takes it from the constellation of family, agents and advisors that circle around him.
So what you tell him might be correct and even beneficial but he's not going to take it that way.
More importantly, Klutch will spin it their way and people will believe them because the Bulls front office are commonly regarded as losers and liars. History will side with him too: there's a good chance his new team will do better than the Bulls (they're the 19th best team, most do!) And if they aren't, he'll put up 28 next year on 23 shots like Bradley Beal a few years ago and claim an all-star berth.
The Bulls have managed to maneuver themselves into a lose/lose situation with Zach, let's be honest about this, so maybe it doesn't really matter, but I think it's usually worse to have your peers laugh at you too. I think Machiavelli said that you should do terrible things energetically and with gusto, because there's nothing worse than being mocked as ridiculous as well as evil.
Well Drummond's probably gone, I don't see how they'll retain him if they're planning on paying DeRozan $40+ million.
Agree on Patrick Williams.
Mostly agree on Zach, but I don't see it happening. Dude is just dead set on being a #1 option, and now that he's got the bag I don't see why he'd change.
I hope the Bulls do pursue some avenue to rehab Zach's trade value. BUT judging by the rumors they could very well end up dumping him for a bag of chips, which would be very lame/harmful/Bullsian.
If Drummond can make the same money anywhere (and he can at least make the same money he made last year) then I don't know why he'd be here anyway. Other than getting hit really hard in the balls Vucevic is durable and they don't play together.
Morey loves picking up "non-Morey-like" players like Drummond for cheap and Philly makes a lot of sense, being both good and getting better and having a lot of chances for him to shine behind Embiid. They might have a little issue due to being under the cap (so a lot of exemptions not available) and maybe we can pick up a tiny bit of scratch for helping a conference rival sign our players away ha ha ha ha :(
As a replacement to this whole (points at Bulls big men) I'd probably sign Goga Bitadze, Jordan Nwora who is somehow still only 25 to play both F positions and maybe Dario Saric to soak up whatever is left at PF and C. You should be able to get at least two of the three combined for less than they're paying Jevon Carter, and trade all three of them at the deadline for 2nds.
I wanted to clap back at Clingan not being a lumberer, and that might be true compared to someone like Vucevic, but I checked the combine stats, and he was literally the 2nd slowest in all three movement drills (3/4 court sprint, lane agility, shuttle). he's in the Kofi Cockburn, Patrick Baldwin, Jr. range.
That said, he at least looks more agile than Vucevic would: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RwDRV5mHUg
Well I agree the numbers are the numbers but I'm surprised. Looked mobile to me in the final four. Below is the ringer scouting report. He's moving up draft boards for a reason.
>>>
Intimidating rim protector with a 7-foot-7 wingspan. He can block shots without even leaving his feet. Opponents avoid him when he’s lurking near the paint, not just because he’s imposing but also because he tends to be in the right position.
Has the potential to be an excellent drop defender in the pick-and-roll. He’s mobile and does a solid job of flipping his hips to contain penetrating players.
He’s good at using his size to protect the rim, but he’s also gotten mobile enough to hedge on the perimeter. He can flip his hips to contain penetrating players and recover to the roller if necessary.
The not buying into the Ringer scouting report after they sold me on Killian Hayes.
Also I just don't think looking mobile in the final four means anything more than looking mobile in, say, the French league where Killian Hayes looked mobile.
That's not to say that good performances don't count for anything. It's obviously better to be good than to be bad. But I don't think it tells us a lot.
Numbers wise, his combine results looked pretty bad. The obvious comparison here is Drummond, and Drummond (and even actually Adama Sanogo) did a lot better on the athletic testing.
Drummond is about as mobile as a 280lb man is going to get. And what I see is that in an NBA game, he's certainly "mobile enough" but it's in the sense of a 280lb man being mobile. He's a center who guards other centers.
When we talk about mobility, we mean can he guard down. And even a guy like Drummond, you don't really want him guarding down/defending in space, however you want to call it.
In short, yeah, Clingan is not what one would consider mobile. Maybe he'll be good in spite of that, but I think you draft him expecting him to be Roy Hibbert or a less athletic but also less TO prone version of Drummond.
I'm not sure about that, really.
I knew this was coming lol.
(The Killian Hayes hype *was* a reputation killer for O'Connor.)
But until I have direct access to NBA FOs I'll have to count on people who do have it (and my eye, FWIW)
Here's Jonathan's Givony's (guy who's been talking to GMs and scouts about college players for 20 years as a full-time job) writing TODAY about Clingan, echoing pretty much everything I said. Also notice GMs linking the Bulls to him as a trade-up possibility.
Eye of the beholder, certainly. In the end we'll see how it all plays out :)
>>>
3. Donovan Clingan | C | UConn
7-3 | Age: 20.2 | Previously ranked: 3
Clingan is a top-three prospect who might experience a minor drop on draft night because teams that are in the Nos. 3-6 range already have starting centers in place. He's in conversation at No. 1 after working out in Atlanta (which is exploring trade-down scenarios). He is also spending time in Washington, which has the No. 2 pick. Clingan isn't expected to drop past the Portland Trail Blazers at No. 7, whom he just visited for a private workout as well. He is being discussed among teams as a possible target for the likes of Chicago, Memphis, Oklahoma City or Utah, who all might explore trading up for a player in his mold.
Clingan's appeal is evident at 7-foot-3 with a 7-7 wingspan and 9-7 standing reach, and he's viewed by many as the draft's most impactful defensive prospect with the timing he shows as a rim-protector and the improvement he has made guarding the pick-and-roll. His youth, productivity, touch and instincts on both ends of the court give him a high floor and make him a sleeper candidate to hear his name called at No. 1. -- Givony
I think we're just speaking different languages here. You're touting things like his measurables and what guys who have to write about the draft are saying.
I'm looking at how players of his type actually operate in the NBA and how they fit in.
It very well could be that Clinton is a "top-three prospect" in this draft and yet is still basically on an Andre Drummond-like trajectory where all of that size and talent doesn't necessarily fit very well into the NBA game. Drummond was a top 3 talent too!
I think about this very much like I think about the Bulls trading away 2 seconds last year to draft Julian Phillips- a guy who THEY said they were drafting to replace Derrick Jones Jr.
I think to myself.... why? Why on so many levels. But mostly:
1. Why on earth draft a 20 year old kid to "replace" an NBA veteran?
2. Why use precious draft picks on filling roles that are more capably filled by veterans on the league minimum salary?
Again, if the next Andre Drummond is truly the BPA available, then sure, take him. But do it because of him being the guy you are convinced is going to be a huge star. It's like AKME think they're playing NBA2k or something.
Chris Fleming had a chance to be the New Gar, the holdover that empire-builds his way to dominating the whole org. Sad.
I still laugh at that interview where Eversley boasts that his son attends school in Chicago as a sign of setting down deep roots in the community. I'm hard pressed to name a single thing he's accomplished in Chicago, but I suppose that's the downside of running a North Korean-style media operation as a basketball team, people don't really know anything about anyone or anything except Chicago Grows Stronger By Leaps And Bounds Daily.
Filipowski seems like the right draft pick to me. The thing is, if you're the Bulls and you genuinely don't think development is part of your job, I think you really have to prioritize skill level in your prospects. Clingan makes sense because a mobile 7'2'' shot blocker should be pretty plug-and-play with a strong floor, but I don't think they're getting him. Everyone else in this range seems like too much of a project for a team that signs up for projects and then disclaims responsibility for them.
I like Filipowski for them, too. Or Yves Missi. They'd both be reaches, but it would be helpful for them to draft some length and rim protection.
Regarding the "reach" part, I'll just toss this here. Draft discourse is really funny. I think it takes 5 years for a draft to really begin to clarify what it was all about. So I looked at 5 drafts from 2014 to 2018. All I did was rank the players best to worst by career win shares, which is perfectly fine for what I'm doing. Here are the draft spots of the top 14 players in each draft by career win shares:
2014: 41, 25, 3, 45, 7, 4, 30, 39, 6, 13, 38, 16, 1, 19
2015: 1, 32, 13, 11, 4, 30, 27, 22, 24, 16, 37, 40, 20, 46
2016: 11, 27, 9, 32, 3, 1, 36, 7, 2, 29, 6, 20, 19, 50
2017: 3, 22, 14, 13, 19, 7, 29, 5, 23, 30, 51, 12, 43, 42
2018: 3, 11, 5, 10, 36, 33, 1, 27, 4, 7, 42, 12, 17, 14
If at the time of these drafts your personal lottery draft board looked like this, you would have been laughed away as a kook. One real certainty in the draft is that the consensus lottery draft board will be wildly wrong. And yet every year no one deviates from it much at all.
Great work. That is astonishing. I guess the mock drafters are operating the same cottage industry as the tarot reading place I see over on Harlem Avenue.
Drafting appears to be the least efficient process in the NBA. The errors seem both profound and uncorrectable. Teams are able to utilize massive amounts of data and none of it seems to have made much difference from the days when guys were chomping cigars in the stands at DePaul games and drafting guys from "good programs."
I do think there is something basically uncorrectable here, though there may be some really crazy math that can handle shit like this, I don't know.
But the biggest problem to me-- aside from the pervasive weakness in NBA development programs-- is you have these player inputs (mental, physical, skill), and these things determine production, and they are just so fucking sensitive. Like, Rodney Stuckey really does resemble Dwayne Wade! And I just think the way these things work is if those inputs of Stuckey's were just 5% more like Wade's, Stuckey's production would have been like 75% of Wade's instead of like 10% which is what actually happened.
So I basically think everyone involved pretty closely resembles each other, and this whole thing is a system where very slight differences in input yield wildly different outputs. There are other issues as well, but that one's the real doozy to me.
I see a lot of 11s in there. 60% success rate on 11s. Pretty good odds right there.
Damn, the curse of the 2nd pick. Only appears once on the list over 5 years!
I like ware as a prospect at 11, assuming topic, sarr, castle, and Holland are all gone (which... I think it's a good bet). Just feel like he's an ideal replacement for Vuc, and if we keep Vuc (cuz who the fuck wants him) maybe Vuc can tutor him a bit... I know that sounds frightening, but I think Vuc is a skilled big and has made enough mistakes to be a good mentor....
Ware is a good example of a guy who isn't blowing anyone's hair back. but if you look at the history of the draft, it is guys like him who hang around for like 12 years and about whom we're like "wow, ok, I guess he was like the 11th best player in that draft". I'm not actually predicting that. Just that you dig under the dreamworld of the draft and it gets pretty staid pretty quickly.
I think I'll pass on the short-armed, not athletic big. We already have one of those.
If we had an athletic, defense-first starting center and wanted Filipowski as a backup, fine. But I don't really want another Vooch to take over when Vooch retires in two years.
As a side note, I've begun to find template-based draft thinking very unhelpful. The goal is to get a good player. Kelly Olynyk for example would be the 2nd or 3rd best player on this team.
It seems helpful to me, just from the perspective of what do we want our team to look like.
To carry on your example above, Rodney Stuckey and Wade are from the same kind of template. We don't know if the guy is going to be a star, but we have a general idea of what kind of player he'll be if he pans out.
Like... would we rather have the next Tyrese Maxey, the next Kelly Olynyk, or Andre Drummond.
Well, other things being equal, I'd probably take Maxey or Olynyk because I think they've got the most general utility.
But... if I think next Maxey or next Olynyk are just much more likely to bust, then sure, I'd settle for the next Drummond.
I don't have the same faith as you in the stability of these templates. You're examples actually show this. Take Drummond. If you went back and told people he worked out as a player, what would they think he is? They would think he's like prime Deandre Jordan with a bit more heft. That's the template: rebounding, shot blocking drop big.
But Drummond actually developed in much weirder ways than that. He turned out to have unusual ball handling and passing skills. And defensively, he always stinks as a drop big but is kind of good as a switching/blitzing big.
Olynyk is the same. You look at who he was coming into the league, a monster interior scorer with a hint of stretch and passing skill. If you asked people what a good outcome looked like for him, they'd have probably said something more like fellow Zag Sabonis. And yet that's not what happened at all. He's really more like a beefy wing.
Stuckey does resemble Wade. But that doesn't mean his development had to be restricted to that template. He was a big, strong, long, atheltic guard with good defensive numbers in college. Jrue Holiday or Marcus Smart could have been the template for him. It wasn't, but there's no way to know that at the time.
In the draft you have 1-3 chances at one of the 18-24 players who are worth a damn in the NBA. It's really hard to find them. I think further sorting them by some specious template just overcomplicates things. Team design is best left for moves outside the draft, imo.
Patrick Williams is a good defender.
that's right lu
yep agreed
I was just thinking, man I hate this FO so much. Normally around draft time it's somewhat interesting to look at the incoming class of players and envision the impact they'll have on your team. But I can't even have that with this fucking FO and the rumors about a promise to Devin Carter. It's not only that the team is bad, it actively sucks the entertainment value out of being a fan.
"your fans"
New report from ESPN is that the Bulls might be looking into moving up the draft to get Buzelis. I can't decide if all of these reports with the Bulls being all over the place indicate AK is really doing his due diligence or if he has absolutely no idea what he's doing and can't make up his mind.
I saw that, mention of "AK has insight into Buzelis bc they're Lithuanian"...but to me, AK is incompetent, so that doesn't give me any faith at all lol
I'm most worried about AK making _2_ promises. What happens then? You have to keep your promises.
I think then there's an overriding AK principle: "whatever makes Vuc happy"
I think there is enough smoke about Bulls moving up in the draft, that this promise seems less likely. I think its interesting to think about what the Bulls could be offering to move up. I think the Bulls pursuing the #3 pick is a real possibility. If AK has fallen in love with someone in the draft, I could definitely see him offering something to move up.
Caruso and #11 for #3? If Bulls really want to get Clingan or Buzelis, that seems like the only way to ensure it could happen.
That seems like a terrible return. I'm pretty sure the Bulls could get a future first (likely not great but this draft isn't that good anyway) and a promising young player for Caruso. Trading him and #11 for #3 in a weak draft seems like a terrible idea.
Getting the #3 pick any draft seems like better than getting a pick in the 20s. I keep hearing about this amazing return. Where is it? Caruso is on the last year of his contract. If the Bulls get better value for him I'll be happy and completely shocked.
Man I would do that trade for #3 and not even think about it for a second. In this draft or any other. But a chance at Reed Sheppard would be extremely enticing. Closest dude I've seen to Chris Paul since the man himself. Looks like he'll even be drafted top 5 behind a 7-footer from Australia and a rangy 6'9'' shooter just like Paul was.
RIP Chet Walker.
The next time there's a labor conflict in the NBA, remember that the NBA conspired to drive him out of the league. The Bulls refused to meet his $200k salary request, and then refused to release him or even trade him. He took them to court and lost. Despite averaging 19 a game and barely ever missing games despite numerous injuries, his career ended right then and there: forced retirement.
Chet's sin was that he was a party to Robertson vs. NBA, the lawsuit filed by Oscar Robertson that eventually lead to free agency (albeit a year after Chet retired). The scumbag owners of that era never forgave Robertson, either: that's why he had almost nothing to do with the game after his retirement.
This was the NY Times lede for the story on November 21, 1975:
"Chet Walker, who for 13 years in the National Basketball Association usually let his one‐on‐one artistry do his talking, says he has quit the Chicago Bulls because they treated him like an idiot."
I salute you, granvill. BaB's own History Man, his skin inked with the whole dread wasteland of Chicago Bulls lore.
lol well it's such a funny coincidence that these things get left out of obituaries, isn't it? They blackballed a guy for decades, and after he dies you'd think that it never happened, as if the mention of a man being railroaded because of his union activism diminishes him rather than makes him even more of an icon.
The details get worse the more you look into contemporary accounts:
> Last week, Coach Dick Motta and the club owner, Arthur Wirtz, asked Walker to return “without offering more money or anything else. I truly believe the people who manage the Bulls think I'm an idiot — dumb black man with no pride or principles.”
> “I ruined my health for this team, played all last season with a bleeding kidney when the doctors said I could have sat out and drawn my salary,” he said. “When I went into the hospital, management refused to pay the $470 bill, claiming the injury had nothing to do with basketball. Can you believe that?"
This extended into the '90s when the Bulls reputedly kept Walker away from one of the title celebrations. I'm willing to believe that might have been a misunderstanding, but the guy had been subject to enough indignities that he had every reason to suspect it wasn't.
Reinsdorf back tattoo with caption DON'T BELIEVE HIS LIES
Honest question. At what point is a draft bad enough that a pick becomes a negative asset because of the guaranteed salary? Is that possible this year? And what would that mean about trading up?
While I think that's a valid question, I think there are questions that come before that. Like, why is a sub .500 team so close to the luxury tax in the first place? And if said sub .500 team isn't planning on getting significantly better (they aren't), why aren't they dumping salary so they can draft a high upside guy and work towards a better future without the fear that his ROOKIE contact will be too expensive?
Think of it this way. If Zach only made $30M instead of $40M last year, it would ease the Bulls problems considerably. Given that he missed a year and was coming off surgery, he'd still be "overpaid" but the idea of taking on a guy on a max deal wouldn't be quite so awful for other teams. And the Bulls undoubtably got an insurance payout from Zach missing time as well too. Maybe $6-10M depending on how his injury was calculated.
James Wiseman made $12M last year and was worth $0. Probably an active negative amount.
So in a very tangible sense, the amount Zach is overpaid - difference between what he's worth and what he's got - is less of a problem than the amount Wiseman got.
Sure. But by that logic the Bulls (or any team really) should only ever use draft picks on players they know are absolutely going to be worth the money they get paid.
At least to me that doesn't logically follow at all.
I'm saying wasting $10M is wasting $10M. Doesn't matter on who. The draft is a risk, but so is free agency. I didn't say never take risks. I'm saying factor in the costs and benefits. Maximize the expected value. The better GMs are the ones who optimize.
In plain English though, what that means is that sometimes, it's probably a smarter strategy to move down than to move up. This is probably such a year, because the guys at the top don't seem very categorically different than the ones in the middle. So if you're getting the same quality, take the cheaper one. Or better yet, get two cheaper ones for the price of one.
Okay, I was misunderstanding. I get what you're saying now. My point with my response to THEKILLERWHALE was more just that thinking about this pick as a potential negative asset (largely due to this team's financial constraints) is fine but it's also glossing over the fact that a bunch of bad decisions were made to get to the point where we even feel the need to think about this pick potentially being a negative asset.
I get what you're saying too, but I don't think it's just the Bulls. Having a high draft pick making $8-12M and being a total bust is bad. The fact that the team might have other even worse problems doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about.
Usually the reasons why something is bad isn't A or B or C. It's D- All of the Above. And reasons A-C are all the reasons are to some degree inextricably linked in a network of bad thought processes.
Though the Bulls are struggling to deal with their problem, whereas the Warriors converted theirs to a much smaller one rather easily. Wiseman makes $12M and is worth $0. They basically traded him straight up for gary payton, a guy who makes 8M and is probably worth 7M.
This seems to be systemic in the league now. Atlanta, which is virtually Chicago's twin, is about to break into the tax too. They actually dumped Collins a year ago, but — and this is crazy! — you apparently have to make more than one move a year these days!
Portland, Shrewd Operators Apparently, are also about to hit the tax threshold because they traded Dame and Jrue and perversely held on to everyone else. 21 wins, fewer than 30 a year the last 3 years, and they're going into the tax unless they finally start moving bodies.
It looks like even just making the simple moves and sleepwalking through the summer results in your payroll escalating to the tax now.
Now Bulls thrown in the Zach Edey mix
https://www.bleachernation.com/bulls/2024/06/10/zach-edey-chicago-bulls-11/
It's almost impossible to not pre-judge their draft strategy. I have little faith they think Edey is BPA, and instead worry they are just using the draft to replace Andre Drummond bc everyone else is a locked in core. Like last year where they said Julian Phillips replaced DJJ
At least Phillips was an upside guy. Edey obviously has a way higher floor, but he also has serious limitations that will likely prevent him from ever being anything but a backup center.
Using your lottery pick and its subsequent salary on a backup center when you could get an equally good, if not better, backup center for even less while using that lottery pick on someone else is just pure AK tomfoolery.
I would not call myself an Edey guy. I think when a prospect's best skill is "he scored a lot of points in college", that's actually a red flag for me.
But I do think it's a little odd that Phillips, a guy who has yet to improve in much of anything, is thought of as having higher upside than a guy who has already improved at a number of things. (Phillips is fine, btw. I don't. know why this specific franchise chose him, but he's fine). I do think having improved at things in the past means you are more likely to improve at things in the future. Learning is a skill.
Edey could be worth it, btw. Here's one way how. Boban used to play 12 minutes a game and be completely unstoppable for those 12 minutes. Supposedly Edey is in phenomenal physical shape. Suppose you get Boban but he can play 20-23 minutes a game. That could very well be worth the 11th pick, especially in this draft.
it'd be even better if Donovan (no doubt backed by management) escaped the thrall of the "double double machine" and those minutes would be with the starting lineup
I guess I say Phillips has a higher upside because he has a much lower floor. If Phillips puts on some muscle and develops a good three point shot, he's pretty much instantly a starting-level wing due to his length and athleticism. Not saying he will become that, but there's at least the potential there. I'd say that's higher upside than Edey playing 15-20 minutes a game as a backup center.
But I do get what you're saying. I actually don't hate Edey and could see a situation where he does prove to be a decent backup center. I just don't see why the Bulls would draft him at 11. I'm also firmly in the draft-the-highest-upside-player-available camp so Edey doesn't make sense to me regardless.
If the Bulls were fairly good and just looking for pieces to fill out their roster and they happened to be picking in the late teens or early 20s and Edey was available, I'd be more than happy with him. But they're not good and shouldn't be looking to fill out their roster and they have a lottery pick.
See this is my problem. Shouldn't there be something real here to underpin what we say about these guys? Like, Phillips hasn't gotten better at anything. But we're like, well, what if he gets stronger and learns how to play defense and learns how to shoot? Then he'll be good. He hasn't done anything like that before. Patrick rightly gets criticized for his anemic offense, and as a rookie he was miles ahead of where Phillips is as a shooter.
Furthermore, we can play the same game with Edey if we're just dreaming about stuff. What if Edey comes into the NBA and is like "holy shit, I'm the biggest guy in the league. Maybe I can be a really good shot blocker." And he gets put into a system where everything gets funneled into him and thrives. Now you have Boban on offense and Brook Lopez on defense. That's probably a top 5 pick in this draft. Way higher upside that what you outlined with Phillips.
A few things here.
1. It's hard to say Phillips hasn't gotten better at anything. He barely played to begin the season. Once he did start getting meaningful playing time he wasn't terrible (at least not for a guy who was a second round pick and drafted based off of potential), but he pretty much immediately got hurt. So you may be right that he didn't really improve, but there's also really no way for us to know if he did or not.
2. You say you don't like talking about upside without something real to underpin the argument. The "real" thing to underpin the Phillips argument is that he's 6'8" with a 7' wingspan and a 43" vertical. Then again, that's kind of the point of upside. It's looking for something that isn't currently there, or at least not developed, but something that seems like it can be developed in that person better than in most others.
3. Your upside scenario with Edey still requires everything to be funneled through him. Any team that requires their whole offense to be funneled through Edey (even if he's good, like in your scenario) is not going to be that good of a team. He'd put a cap on your ceiling. You could even compare it to DeMar now. DeMar has been incredible during his time with the Bulls, but everyone understands that your team can only be so good with a guy like that featured heavily.
Would you rather have a center that's really good but caps the ceiling of the team or a really good role player that lifts the existing ceiling? I guess it's up to each individual person, but I'd rather have the role player.
We've gotten way off-topic though. Phillips was drafted based on upside. We could argue that he probably shouldn't have been, but that's not the reality we live in. Pretty much no one looks at Edey as an upside guy. We know what Edey is most likely going to offer at the NBA level, and most likely what he'll offer is a decent backup center in the right situation.
For a Bulls team that's not currently good and doesn't have the financial flexibility to get significantly better, I'd rather they took a swing and went for someone who has a chance of becoming much better than Edey even if they also have a good chance of being worse than him.
Suggestions for cleaning up your argument a bit.
1) I wouldn't say that my scenario requires everything on offense to be funneled through Edey because I actually did not say that. That reference was to defensive scheme.
2) I wouldn't say "we know what Edey is most likely going to offer" because no one actually knows that.
3) I wouldn't say "pretty much no one thinks Edey has upside" because in addition to that probably (hopefully-- like, hopefully people aren't that stupid?) being false of any first round pick, it's worth noting that no one knows how to judge upside anyways. And this "I know upside when I see it. I look at combine results, and that's how I know there's upside or not" is terribly naive.
4) I probably wouldn't compare the prospective 11th pick in a bad draft to a 6 time all star as though that's a bad outcome.
5) I swear to god, it is possible to make trades in the NBA. If your pick is good, but you don't like the direction he puts your team in, you can trade him for value. Limited stars get good hauls all the time in the NBA. The Bulls just suck and are stupid.
I think Edey is better than Boban. I think there is a small chance Edey is a doible-double machine. But that may just make him a modern day AL Jefferson. Awesome on one end, abysmal on the other. Can he get to a space where he's a positive impact defensively? Might be Vuc 2.0 on that end.
uh, we HAVE a double double machine ALREADY, GOD
I do want to say that if any GM/FO brass ever says they're trying to replace a vet with a guy in the draft they should be fired on the spot. Evidence of stupidity that's become malfeasance.
I wanted to check and this isn't a meme, Eversley said this after the draft:
https://www.blogabull.com/p/the-bulls-technically-did-something
ARRGGGGHH
1) You don't know if he'll be good
2) If he is good, you don't know what that will even look like
3) Even if you somehow know 1 and 2 (you won't), he won't be good as a rookie godddamn this sucks!
Fun sad stuff
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/ranking-all-30-nba-head-coaching-jobs-right-now-why-lakers-are-near-bottom-and-dan-hurley-was-right-to-say-no/
They've won five playoff series in the past 25 years. There are cheap teams. There are poorly managed teams. The Bulls are the most lethal combination of both that exists in the modern NBA.
"The team is built around two overpaid perimeter scorers, one of whom is 34 and will inevitably extract an inflated contract out of the Bulls in free agency, the other of whom already got one and can't stay healthy. The Bulls gave away two lottery picks for Nikola Vucevic, who is now on one of the NBA's worst contracts. They owe another pick to the Spurs next year for DeMar DeRozan. They've held Alex Caruso hostage for the duration of his well below-market contract because of their insistence on competing for the Play-In tournament, but that means they'll either have to trade him for less value than they could have gotten in the past or extend him at a number that might be shaky as he reaches his 30s."
Ouch.
I do disagree with Sam's overall assessment though. Like I get what he's thinking, but I don't think he realizes Billy has cracked the code. He's right that the Bulls aren't a serious organization and that's exactly why Billy's job is so safe. Billy became besties with AK and it sounds like he's pretty friendly with the Reinsdorf's too. They don't care if their coach is good or not. As long as he doesn't upset the status quo and he goes golfing with them, they couldn't be happier.
NEW POST! based on the comments here about draft promises and targeting FA replacements, so thank you.
https://www.blogabull.com/p/bulls-draft-rumors-may-be-revealing