It's genuinely hard now. Like I don't stop thinking about the bulls and moves they can make... But, we know this ownership, and based off the lack of moves made when it was very possible to do something, I just don't have faith that any scenario I can concoct will have any chance in reality. The bulls are going to keep things as they are and maybe attempt to do something by the trade deadline.... I fear we all know this is the truth.
2. Some team like the Spurs that has money to burn throws some at Coby, so we end up either losing him or paying more for him that we'd like, which closes off all be the most minor other upgrades.
I look at the Spurs and they've got $50M in cap space. Look around, and there's not a lot of good PG options. They've got Tre Jones, but he can't shoot. If I were them, I'd take a flyer on Coby to add there. You start looking at the available PGs and Coby looks pretty good.
Coby going to play for Pop basically guarantees another Bulls lottery pick leaving and then turning into a significantly better player than they were in Chicago.
Lol should have clarified. Bulls will TRY to keep their status quo, but it's no bulls fault other organizations, like the spurs, are constantly trying to better themselves and pickup good players.
I could see them offering Coby something outrageous that would be a 2-year contract at a 4-year price. See if he pans out. I guess it'd have to be 3-year? I don't know.
But I could also see them trying to trade back into the late lottery and grab Cason Wallace (best case) or Keyonte George, or Hood-Schifino. Cason Wallace's limitations would be less important on a team with Vassell, Johnson, and Wembanyama, and a team of Wallace, Sochan, and Wemby would be vicious in defense.
Yeah, so like 2-years/$40 million. Bulls wouldn't match that. Not as a first option, maybe, but it wouldn't be a bad idea. He's still only 23. And if it doesn't work, he's still off the books when Wembanyama is still on his rookie contract.
White hasn't made huge strides as you'd like from a bonafide All Star, but he's slowly gotten better each season. I don't think Vassell and Johnson are nearly as good as people think they are, but they are still quite young. If it all works out, you could have four guys all under 25 to pair with Wembanyama
A year from now:
White (24+)
Vassell (23)
Johnson (24+)
Sochan (21)
Wembanyama (20)
And if it's clear it's not working, Vassell can be let go or whatever, Johnson is on a very tradeable contract, and they could rebuild from there. I just don't see going after a high-profile star but not a superstar in his prime in Brown. Even if Wembanyama is on the Derrick Rose, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Luka Doncic, trajectory, it's going to be at least two seasons - when Brown is entering age 29 season - before he's a true difference maker.
I think they will be trying to get that second star to put next to Wembanyama. They will not have that many chances like this again. I could see them making a strong offer for Brown.
I wish we had a system like soccer in Europe, where disgruntled fans can break off to form our own team and then advance up the pyramid to replace the old one.
I think for about a decade the blogabull community at least has been clamoring for a second team in Chicago. We have the market for it, and it's hard to imagine a world where the reinsdorfs ever give up ownership of the bulls. JR has been very upfront of how easy running the bulls as a profitable franchise is, and it's crazy to see how the bulls are basically almost always a top ten profiting franchise despite all the mediocrity. Jordan didn't just do wonders for Nike, he and the bulls dynasty made Chicago bulls attire fashionable for generations. There's a reason the bulls have had no desire to update their logo or colors inbte past 30 years.
And different sport but similar, the Washington "Commanders" were just sold for like record profit, and were one of the worst run pro sports over the last couple decades. Goes to show, you don't need any actual results to make money in the bigger markets. Plus, as we see with LIV golf and the Saudi's, there's infinite investor money abroad just waiting for the opportunity to buy teams and sports here, when given the opportunity. Fans and championship incentive are the big losers in all this, so in a business sense, Reinsdorf is right that results don't really matter
goofy-ass leverage peddling (sorry, 'rumor') coming from LeBron that the Mavericks want to re-sign Kyrie and then also somehow get LeBron there.
If the Mavs were interested in cap space, but don't have picks to trade, Bulls could step in and offer this Lonzo poison carrot.
Bertans+Hardaway+McGee is $40.6M
they could take back a Vuc S&T (let's assuage his ego and say $15M this year but it escalates and is a 3-year deal) and Lonzo, who they waive-and-stretch. That'd be $17M in cap savings.
So why the Bulls would do this? They would trade one very good player and another who will probably never play again for one subpar and two bad players. And who's gonna start at center? It would be easier and more preferable to just sign a wing shooter in free agency.
I remember one of the theoretical advantages of hiring Karnisovas was that he knew the european market. Three years later all he's got is Simonovic, a weak prospect from the get-go.
I hope this year he will seriously pursue Micic, the best point guard in Europe and maybe the best gettable point guard. Of course they Bulls have to buy a pick so they can trade it to the OKC for his rights.
And there are some guys who clearly have a place in the NBA and are cheaper than the current NBA players.
I agree with Mark Deeks about Tavares (the best center in Europe) and I really like Will Clyburn as a wing shooter who can drive to the basket, both of them are good vets who should mess well with the roster and Billy Donovan.
Who are these guys you're mentioning? Chances are whatever you write will be discovered after Karnisovas replaces all of his scouts with ChatGPT "prompt engineers" so we should all be interested in this.
In his latest podcast, Bill Simmons said the Bulls GM job is the worst in the league because they're stuck with middling assets, no apparent way to improve, and ownership that won't go into the tax.
Well everything about that is A Choice, other than the ownership that won't go into the tax. I agree that's a problem, it was a really fucked up thing when Derrick Rose was injured and they immediately began selling everything else that wasn't nailed down. Shouldn't be a problem now because this team fucking sucks and there's no way I'd pay the tax unless it meant acquiring a top 5 player. That's about the only thing that could lead to a reasonably different situation this year compared to the last two seasons.
Not to do a Gordon Gekko speech but the knowledge that the tax is going to be an obstacle should be a reason for more activity in the transaction column. Oddly, instead it causes less, almost a lethargy.
Everything else wrong with the team that Simmons mentions comes down to Karnisovas being absolutely fucking mugged by the Orlando Magic. Had he never heard of Vucevic, or even just insisted on normal protections for the picks, or included only one, or excluded Carter, or, or, or, or ANYTHING, then you're looking a team with a #8 and a #11, or a young center, lots of pieces rather than one you probably don't want and which solves none of the problems you have and causes a few all on his own. Absolutely fucking bodied by a GM whose name I don't even fucking know.
Eh, I think fucking mugged is overstating things a bit. Would I do that trade again knowing what I know now? no.
But like, Wendell is pretty much the same guy now as he was when he was traded. I hear people freaking out about Franz Wagner, and he's a nice player, but not one I lose any sleep over missing out on.
The alternative timeline in which we use those assets for a different big (Myles Turner? Ayton? someone anyone?) is the one that gives me more regret. But in general those are the kinds of risks that the FO should make.
Two picks going on 3 years later for a guy you really don't even want is a big deal. Again, everything that Simmons has a problem with stems from that trade alone. Gave up nothing much at all for two of the three best players on the roster, DeRozan and Caruso. Got fucked by Lonzo's knee, but the situation isn't irreparable (unlike, say, Lonzo's knee). The cupboard is bare, and there was nothing left to send out because they sent it all out for Nikola.
Remember when YFBB and others were pushing this team in the 2020-21 season to "do something" and compete for a playoff spot instead of tank with LaVine, Coby, the most cap room of any team by a wide mile and all of their draft picks including a potentially high lottery one? I do. I remember people calling that plan dumb.
Imagine Mobley or Barnes with LaVine and Coby and maybe DeMar with still like $40M+ in cap space. Maybe trade WCJ and a 1st for someone else.
Competing that season was dumb. It was a year too early and has messed them up until at least 2026.
Yeah I do, I was one of those others. I was thrilled to see the team make a trade (actually two — the second one we failed to heed the ominous warning that the Bulls' were receiving back cash considerations not from one but two separate teams.) You were correct in stating at the time it was a terrible trade.
Ah, and wouldn't the team of been better to have a tank commander for part of that season instead of pushing for the playoffs in a weird af bball year? Yeah.
Even the whole Boylen idea for part of the season and Fleming being interim for the rest of the year aside, you (and others) criticized the very idea of tanking because you were as a fan tired of the Bulls being bad. Problem is, they needed one more year of being really bad. Instead, they made a rash trade that altered their abilities the next 6 years.
LaVine would not have requested a trade in 2020-21 or that next offseason if the Bulls were projected to have a potential top 5 pick, the most cap space of anyone and all their picks. I feel the fans pushed ownership to push management to make a splash and we can argue the Vuc trade was bad and the wrong splash and I may even agree but yeah, making any move was premature and the bad move.
Wasn't it a direct challenge to the GSW/Lacob since they was spending like $150mil in luxury tax dollars during that off year with DLO and Oubre? Props to Lacob since he's not even a billionaire outside of the Warriors.
There's thee FO moves. 1. Go for it, either acquire a star (Durant) or build smartly around one. 2. Rebuild. Dump it all for best chance at draft assets.
I think the Bulls are well positioned to do 3. Reset. They have a couple of good young assets to keep. Lavine. PW. Maybe Coby. Caruso although I think he's a better reset asset. Trade DDR. S&T Vic if possible. Trade high on Caruso. See if Lonzo can bring back anything. Target young players not totally wanted by their team but potential to be unlocked. RJ Barrett. Ayton. Kuminga. Simons/Sharpe. Find a desperate trade partner needing immediate gratification vs waiting on development. Try to catch lightning in a bottle. If that doesn't work out, Rebuild.
I think the move is trading LaVine and seeing what you can build over the next few years. LaVine is fine as a second or third option, but we’ve seen his ceiling as a “Star” and it’s not great.
I dunno, picks, whatever you can get for him. Waiting for Zach LaVine to be the franchise savior has been a fool’s errand and I’d rather see the Bulls move on from him.
Trade Lavine for a genuinely good PG. They will instantly make the rest of the team better. That raises their value for trades and makes the team more fun in the meantime.
Lavine for Ja Morant + a 2024 pick (+filler, if needed)? Ja is going to be suspended for a while and Memphis may want to move on from him. Jerry will like this because he won't have to pay Ja for half a season minimum.. maybe more.
Or maybe, Lonzo & Caruso for Ja? Not sure how much value Ja has right now. Memphis ends up with Caruso and Tyus Jones to share Ja's role and can save some money with a Lonzo DPE, while the Bulls end up with a high risk/high reward PG.
Maybe, but he's also a huge gamble at this point. The fact that he is going to be suspended for a long time will affect his value... the only question is how much? It will also depend on how highly Tyus is thought of by the Memphis org.
On their best days, Ja is probably better than Zach. But how many days is he going to give you on the court? That is the big question. If he straightens himself out, he'll be great for many years. If he doesn't, he'll disappear like Antonio Callaway (who you've probably never heard of, but would have been a first round NFL pick, had he not been a dolt in college and would have been a good to great starter in the NFL, except he couldn't stay out of trouble once he did make it there).
Those are the only FO moves. I'm not gonna bother litigating it, because there's no common ground to have with "Process" style tanking true believers, but there is also
"Be opportunistic"
The Bulls have generally been lazy and stupid whereas teams like the Raptors, Heat, Spurs and Celtics have been aggressive and smart and rigidly adhere to any of the categories you lay out.
Like, if the Bulls were going to tank, this year was the year of all years to be bad. Tanking next year, when the #1 pick is likely gonna be a dude who wouldn't be the top 5 in this draft is fucking dumb.
Spending time on these strategies without acknowledging that stuff is missing the point. Sometimes the #4 pick is Dwyane Wade. Sometimes it's Patrick Williams. Knowing which is which is very important.
+ Lavine is simply not a "good young asset". He's 28, and on the front end of a max deal that's viewed around the league as overpayment.
+ Caruso is also not young. He's 29.
+ Lonzo is not coming back.
Likewise, evaluations of the guys coming in matter. The default view should be that if other teams don't want these guys, they probably aren't that good. Some are worth a look, but just cause guys are available doesn't mean they're good. To do that right, again, you have to be good at evaluating talent. Very little suggests the Bulls are, and until that changes, no strategy will work.
IMO, Reset by definition should be about being opportunistic. In this case, the opportunity is to sell (semi)high on DDR (last trade deadline would have been better), S&T Vuc (if possible), dump Lonzo's contract, sell Caruso high (all-defense). The opportunity in the other direction is to sell-off those win-now assets for younger talent that would align with the windows of Lavine, PW and Coby.
>>>The Bulls have generally been lazy and stupid whereas teams like the Raptors, Heat, Spurs and Celtics have been aggressive and smart and rigidly adhere to any of the categories you lay out.
I think they are constantly 'Resetting'. You call them 'Opportunistic'. I think we largely agree.
>>Like, if the Bulls were going to tank, this year was the year of all years to be bad. Tanking next year, when the #1 pick is likely gonna be a dude who wouldn't be the top 5 in this draft is fucking dumb.Spending time on these strategies without acknowledging that stuff is missing the point. Sometimes the #4 pick is Dwyane Wade. Sometimes it's Patrick Williams. Knowing which is which is very important.
I am in complete agreement
>>+ Lavine is simply not a "good young asset". He's 28, and on the front end of a max deal that's viewed around the league as overpayment.
I don't agree with this assessment. I see him as an excellent, mature scorer. Is he a #1, arguably no. Is Booker #1 without Paul/Ayton/Bench and now Durant beside him. I'd argue he's not but he's a good compare for Lavine.
>>+ Caruso is also not young. He's 29.
I didn't mean to imply Caruso was young, only that he's at peak value for a contending team right now.
>>+ Lonzo is not coming back.
Well, yes. I mean as a dead contract
>>Likewise, evaluations of the guys coming in matter. The default view should be that if other teams don't want these guys, they probably aren't that good. Some are worth a look, but just cause guys are available doesn't mean they're good. To do that right, again, you have to be good at evaluating talent. Very little suggests the Bulls are, and until that changes, no strategy will work.
Again, I don't agree. I think you can steal a decently good today guy with possibly high upside for DDR and Caruso, in particular. The fact that, IMO, that opportunity exists means the Bulls are NOT stuck in no-asset, .500-team purgatory with hands-tied. I think they can RESET their roster in interesting ways (not championship ways, but new useful new directions). Teams like Knicks, Warriors, Blazers all would at least consider those two for their near-term impact, possibly shedding guys like Barrett, Kuminga, Simons, etc. who are not fully win-now. I'd take a flyer on those guys. If they pan out, you might have something. If they don't, you dump Lavine in a year and start over.
Plot LaVine and Booker on a graph and they both start out about the same and then Booker's line goes up like a hockey stick. Booker scores 28 a game in the playoffs across 43 games. LaVine scores 19 across uh 4 games. Booker is often completely unguardable. He was his team's starting PG for two years simply because they didn't have a better one. It's a scary situation to see Zach making any kind of decisions with the ball.
It's only a comparison if you haven't seen Booker lately.
> without Paul/Ayton/Bench and now Durant beside him
A huge number of those games came with Paul injured, without Durant on the team. (I'll grant you he had the phenomenon called "Ayton/Bench" beside him, though it's strange timing since Ayton and Bench were non-entities this year, when he averaged 34 a game in the playoffs.)
I've seen Booker, love him, of course. He has definitely risen to the occasion playing in big games the past few years. Zach is not as good right now, I agree. But skill-wise he's in the ballpark. If he improved (as Booker improved), they'd be close. Zach may no longer improve or clean up his faults. Yep. There's a chance in the right situation he could. I simply don't agree that Booker is head-and-shoulders above the best version of Lavine.
Booker's younger than he is. If you're putting money on which player will see more improvement in the next 2 years, I'm putting that money on Booker, despite already being better across the board.
Not sure how much better Booker can get, but in the end not sure why it matters. If you think there's no path for Zach being part of a good team (not as a standalone number 1 but part of a somewhat balanced roster), then this Bulls team needs a total restart. My idea was to try something between a clear-the-roster tank and an unrealistic go for it with this roster approach, both of which suck.
>>>The Bulls have generally been lazy and stupid whereas teams like the Raptors, Heat, Spurs and Celtics have been aggressive and smart and [ed: don't] rigidly adhere to any of the categories you lay out.
>>I think they are constantly 'Resetting'. You call them 'Opportunistic'. I think we largely agree.
Your 'Reset' just explicitly just boils down to "trade all the older players". But this is clearly not what Boston (Kemba, Kyrie, Horford) or Toronto did (keeping Siakam). If the Heat were doing that, they never would have signed Jimmy in the first place and would have traded him again. The Spurs tried to stay good one way by bringing in Aldridge and DeMar, then executed an obviously targeted rebuild the last two seasons. You could say they fit your idea then, but not on the attempt before.
And let's not get into all the teams that have won titles or come close (Lakers and Warriors, for example) long after the point where most fans and owners would have decided they needed to "reset".
I saw a couple Twitter comments over the weekend (I know, I know) that "Vooch isn't the problem" and "Bulls issues aren’t Vuce related" and I give up at this point.
Those are lazy takes at best. I really hope this smoke of extension talks is just that, smoke.
what bothers me most is that they'll say (somehow) that DeRozan is the actual problem. When he's good! Part of their vaunted run to start 2021-22 season (banner pending) was not just Lonzo having working knees but DeMar playing out of his mind
To date, the DeMar DeRozan signing is turning out to be Karnisovas' only unequivocally good move. He acquired a 2x all star, clutch scorer and team leader in exchange for a protected mid-round 1st, and did so with no cap room. Low-key brilliant, in fact (though admittedly some will correct me that finding a back-up PG in the 2nd round is where he truly shined...)
yeah but to be fair, this is also why it would make sense to trade him. Like, he's way more valuable now than he was when he was mired in post-Kawhi Spurs obscurity.
I don't think he's way more valuable now than he was then. Might be about the same, might be a little less (we were getting him for his 32-34 seasons). A team trading for him now, assuming he signs an extension, is getting him for his age 34-36 seasons.
Is a team going to trade a mid first for that? Maybe the right team. But probably there aren't a lot of takers at that price.
And... given our performance, it's likely that we're trading a lottery pick (in 25 for him).
Anyway, in the bigger picture, I think DeMar's value points to the general problem of aligning player's "on court" value with their "overall value".
He was a great signing because he was a really good player the last two years and will probably still be a really good player for a couple more. On the court.
To say that it makes sense to trade him, then what we're really saying is we don't value what he's bringing on the court all that much, because we know we're mediocre and he's just a floor on our mediocrity.
But if that's the case, what's the point of having him? Do we want a floor on our mediocrity or not? If we don't, then getting him wasn't a great get. If we do, we shouldn't trade him. For the record, I don't want to be total shit, so I'm A-OK keeping him.
But what's his value to other teams? Well, outside of a maybe 5 teams that are desperately trying to win, he's a floor on another team's mediocrity too. Which many of them don't want for the same reasons Bulls fans don't want.
So we're left with a couple teams that really want to win, but they're already spending a lot and have a good roster so they probably don't have good picks and nearly $30M of salary to trade away for DeMar.
So I think the market for him is actually incredibly small, and if we only value him in terms of bringing back an asset and not in terms of what he can do on the court for us, his value is quite low.
yeah I have yet to see a DeMar trade that actually gets the Bulls potentially better, and like you said he is the 'mediocrity floor'. There's no way that , say, giving Patrick Williams more freedom will make up for DDR's productivity.
Whereas if they traded LaVine they could still be 'competitive' in the way AK+ownership wants, with one reason being they'd get more for him
I think, like, the Knicks could want DeMar and have the salary structure to do it. Now, if the Bulls could get Immanuel Quickley that's interesting if you believe he can be a starting PG (I honestly don't know). But getting a lotto-protected first and, like Evan Fournier's contract, puts a mediocre 'ceiling' on the team AND removes the floor.
(obviously some want to trade DeRozan not to 'reset' but just to tank, but I'm not speculating under that motivation)
I haven't seen anyone come up with a (realistic) hypothetical trade that even gets Chicago something where you say, wow, I have no choice but to trade DeMar DeRozan for this. Instead the trade is presented as almost like a chore, or a routine but somewhat unpleasant medical procedure that's good for us and we have to do it anyway.
Yeah, I was very against that move, and I still wouldn't actually do it. I thought they should have spread that remaining money around to try to get role players that were good on defense like Jared Vanderbilt. It would have provided more flexibility. You could see the impasse they're at now coming as soon as they signed him. 3 big contracts without one dominant star (let alone 2) would never cut it.
That said, it was still a great signing in a vacuum, and he could still use that asset for good if they wanted. They got 1 All-NBA season adn 2 All-Star seasons out of him. Certainly more than I ever expected.
To be fair, it's Twitter. 😂 With that being said, I do think Vooch becomes a better player without DeMar. Does he become so much better that it makes losing DeMar worth it? Definitely not. But I do understand why some people think trading DeMar for young assets and allowing Vooch a little more freedom to operate isn't the worst idea.
Totally agree. Just saying I see what people are trying to say. Trading one old player for younger players or draft capital while freeing up room for another old player does make some sense. I'm not sure it really moves the needle much now or in the future though to make it worth it.
Thanks for the shout out, Matt. I'm going to write up a more fleshed out offseason plan probably after the Finals are over with a list of cheapo shooters that the Bulls could target.
The way i see it, the likely case is they end up with the career ending injury exemption from the cap. Waiving and stretching him would just be insurance if they dont.
But they will, because guys dont come back from cartilage transplants
That leak saying that some in the Bulls org think that he'll never play again gives me some hope that they might actually do something to open up some space.
That Dan Bernstein interview w/ Bulls Talk was so cringey, played automatically while I was working and almost knocked the jack stand out from under my car leaning to turn it off. Have never understood why that guy has kept a job so long, his kind were the absolute doldrums of sports radio in Chicago history. Just snarky useless comment after pithy useless observation, the king of pseudo-intellect, never interesting. Like sports Seinfeld, a show about nothing, but except without the humor or wit. All the more proof that major sports media, especially in Chicago, remains to this day an old boys club, which preserve their dusty mantle with the likes of the Reinsdorfs. And why the only interesting content is in underground corners of media like this Blog and Cash Considerations. Guys like Dan Bernstein, and often times the Bulls "beat" reporters themselves (more often like Approved Bulls Biographers though than beat reporters) are so at odds with modern Bulls fans it's almost like there's animosity between the brand and the fans, and yet on air Bernstein and the old Bulls reporters are revered as if they're all time titans. They're gate keepers closely maintaining narratives, only willing to state the obvious on topics like Lonzo's knee, the extremely low ceiling and flexibility of the roster (obvious last off-season), AK's job performance, etc about a season after it's obvious to honest observers. They deserve every bit as much scorn as the Reinsdorfs, Chicago deserves more. Or maybe we dont? It has always been a town centered around grift and self- serving promotion at the expense of the greater good.
I logged into rec this comment. That was the worst interview I've ever seen. Tony Gil interviewed him about his son for 15 minutes. I was flabbergasted. I almost wrote in to demand he be fired. Does that show have a producer?
I don't live in Chicago anymore but the sports coverage is laughable. You think about a guy like KC who has been covering the team for 15 years and he has no insights, no sources, no sense of fan service
And it bleeds into the lack of urgency with the team. The sports writers should be lighting the Bulls up. Instead we get 15 minutes convos with Bernstein son. Embarrassing.
The thing is too, you'll have plenty of people who make excuses for Bernstein and KC, saying some variation of "What do you expect them to do?" or "You think you would be different in their shoes?" When in Chicago, there's probably dozens of not hundreds of very qualified young journalist talent to replace them. KC has said before, he considers himself more of a "Bulls historian" than an actual beat writer. Only problem with that is he's taking up a rare Bulls beat reporters spot on the payroll, and the fans need a real beat reporter/ analyst/ investigator trying to get info anyway they can. And Bernstein.... Guy has been getting high inhaling his own farts on air for 30 years so nothing to say there. It was a shame when people actually listened to Bernstein and thought he was some form of intellectual Seinfeldian sports humor, but thankfully now I don't even think he's even got those listeners. The Bulls fandom has the talent to replace these guys but they're in self preservation mode like everyone else in the org
Worst interviews of the year candidates so far: KC interviewing AK about his back story right around the trade deadline when the team was in a death spiral, never asking him real current Bulls questions. And NBC Sports doing a puff piece on Dan Bernstein's son, probably initiated by Dan Bernstein trying to get his son into the "family business"
I'm not sure why we bother talking about Lonzo. The Bulls are going to keep him and keep saying they are monitoring this next season. Then they will say after the season they were really hopeful but they are hopeful for the 24-25 season.
They will not apply for the DPE because then they would be pressured to use it, which they won't do because that could put them in the luxury tax. They are never going into the luxury tax so why would we consider otherwise?
Was also thinking the waive & stretch would be best for Lonzo, but Dorf hates paying for players not on the roster (was surprised he signed off on waiving Bradley). What about Lonzo/Caruso for Ben Simmons? I know he’s a mess, but maybe a risk worth taking? I think we need more ball movement and less ISO. Ben fits positional needs for PG/PF. Then use exceptions for shooters - strus?
No thanks. I prefer my basketball billionaires to be capable of making a jump shot. I know the Chicago Bulls don't value that skill over the last 25 years or so, but they really need to change that.
Bulls need a huge talent infusion. It sure seems like the right place to look is a DeMar trade to OKC. They've got all this young talent and cap space, and a cerebral, efficient offensive player like DeMar would fit right in.
Could Demar return Jalen Williams and their 1st (#12) or something?
Yeah it's definitely too rich, but I still think the fit makes sense. A Giddey-Shai-DDR-Chet core would have the potential to be awesome.
Also I may be overvaluing Demar, but I think others here are undervaluing him. Consider that Kyrie, even with all his baggage, just returned Dinwiddie, Finney-Smith a first rounder and two seconds. Kyrie is only like a year and a half younger, and has a way longer injury history.
DeMar should absolutely be worth a solid rotation player and a first rounder
I think the difference is that Kyrie, for all his flaws, was still viewed by the Mavs as a difference maker in a really important position in the modern NBA (guard who can shoot at an elite level, plus drive and finish with high efficiency). DeMar, while really good on the court, is still viewed as being from a past era (mid-range heavy).
I guess, but I think most GMs know that the heuristics about shot charts and efficiency don't really apply to a subset of scorers who can kill you in the midrange. DDR's ISO efficiency is well documented.
And I wouldn't underestimate the value of wing creation in today's NBA either.
DeMar will be 34. Literally 10 years older than SGA, who's the oldest of their current lineup. Nobody except I guess the Bulls would entertain that kind of thing even for a second.
No. OKC would hang up on them. And have a round of laughs. Jalen Williams ceiling is high AND you're asking for a 1st round pick in return also.
For a soon to be 34 year old ball dominant, mid range shooting, bad defensive player. That would take the ball out of SGA and Giddey's hands. Thus slowing their growth.
The thing about The Spurs is they do have some interesting veterans making money and no long-term commitments, so they theoretically could help the Bulls out of their own cap hell, but San Antonio is SO UNDER the cap and have such breathing room with Wemby being 19 or whatever, there's no incentive for them to move money and would probably require a pick. Dog is probably a solid player to put around Wemby because he can add spacing.
I don't think he was pissed about playing time. He's not a serious player IMO. Multiple times this season he had to delay checking in to take out jewelry.
I suppose he could want more playing time to get a bigger contract, but I think he can more effectively dupe executives (and KC Johnson) when he has 5 boards in 3 minutes and needs to sit after being winded.
I just remembered comments after a few DNPs in Jan/Feb when asked about whether he was effective and he was basically like "you tell me" which came off as annoyed, imo.
yeah I wouldn't be surprised if he just said he was opting in and then his agent informs him that he can get the minimum (which I don't think is announced yet but for him would be < $500k less than his player option) in a better situation, or slightly more (bi-annual?) somewhere else
Have you ever stopped to think about how silly the Drummond and DJJ contracts were in the context of a team that was right up against the LT threshold and already had $20M in dead money on its books?
The real story here is the Bulls continued lazy cap, salary and roster (mis)management.
Remember, or understand that under the CBA, a player who signs a one-year veteran minimum contract has his salary partially offset by a payment from the league.
Drummond made $3.2M last year, which just under $300k over his minimum amount of $2.9M. If we'd signed him for the one year minimum though, his cap number (and the true price paid by the Bulls) would only have been $1.84M. That is, the Bulls cost themselves an extra $1.36M this past year to sign Drummond to this two year deal.
Did the same thing with Jones too.
This year his $3.36M is just $200k over his $3.15M estimated vet min amount. If we'd just signed him to a minimum deal, his cap number and the Bulls portion of his salary would be $1.99M. So again, they are basically costing themselves a roster spot ($1.37M) for both of these guys.
It's not just the cap either. It's actual salary paid out since the Bulls aren't availing themselves of the league offset for veteran players.
Taken together, they are paying $13.1M for Drummond and Jones.
If they'd signed them both to consecutive one year minimum deals, Drummond and Jones would (combined) have still made $12.1M dollars. However the Bulls would only have paid $5.46M dollars!
That's right, AKME's mismanagement let the Bulls to spend an extra $7.66M dollars in order to pay these two guys an extra $1M. At a time when they were right up against the LT.
This is why I say the Bulls aren't always stereotypically cheap. They're penny-wise and pound foolish in a lot of ways, and their management team just isn't very good at cap minutiae.
it also limited trade options, as you can deal players making the minimum without matching salary
I'd say both Drummond and Jones were more valuable than the minimum, but not much more to where they had to be given extra to sign. Find the new guys who will play above the contract.
I swear... I point this out in other places, and people jump to say somehow this is a brilliant maneuver that's going to save the Bulls money and make them better.
People are really determined to believe what they want in spite of it all
They do some really dumb shit. Like hardcapping themselves with hinrich. I don't really get into the cap stuff and I hadn't seen the angle before about the bulls screwing themselves over by avoiding signing to the minimum, but it is on brand for them to do something that stupid.
I think some of it is arrogance in their player evaluation
they target 'their guys' because they think it'll overcome whatever they compromised to get them. Not humble and realizing that a lot of it is a crapshoot so you have to accommodate being wrong
Thanks for linking the Cash Consideration pod with Stephen Noh. Found myself tickled that a few of the players he mentioned as cheap pick-ups are some of my current scrub obsessions (Yuta Watanabe, Torrey Craig) and a few others who are probably even better pick-ups.
The other good part about pursing this strategy is if a few of those players turn out useful but you're not going anywhere, you've just added second round picks you can flip them for at the deadline from a playoff-bound team that needs shooting (aka almost all of them). Similarly, there's no good reason why any team would voluntarily trade a competent back-up PG or C - the positions where every team needs someone that fits in roughly those shapes and sizes. Who is like "Man, we have too many backup Cs and PGs, we are oozing with too much competence and it is a problem"? But they might part with them if you've got some scrub that is shooting 41% from 3.
idk why I feel like I need to spell this out but "having things that other teams want is good for you."
Agree 100% on Dosunmu and a few others. They're not unusable players or anything, they're just on the worst possible team to be a non-shooter. I have a vision in which Dosunmu is the leader of a revamped Bench Mob which comes in and fucks with the other team's best players by getting in their jerseys and being all gritty-like... But you can't perfect your bench when your starting lineup is such a mess. And what I'm willing to pay for that isn't really different than what I'd pay for Kris Dunn.
So are we going to cook up some microwave excitement around the new Phoenix bonehead hiring a worse coach than the one he fired and now trying to get rid of Chris Paul?
yeah I like Ayo and Javonte a lot, but being this close to the tax they can't be spending more than the minimum on these guys who are redundant with others already on the roster (Jones, Terry...could try and dump them I suppose) and they need roster space for trying their luck at shooters in those roles
Man, I just started going to BleacherNation in August of last year, and felt it sort of level-headed. The season was "over" and they seemed to have good takes. It was all downhill from there.
Anyway, there Bulls coverage is atrocious. They tried to say that keeping Vucevic is a no-brainer and Front Office 101. I wouldn't keep Vuc at any price, especially with Drummond opting in to his contract. Go after Naz Reid somehow, or just get a bouncy young center and hope for the best. Try to strike gold on a defensive mistake-eraser and don't worry about offense. Spend your money elsewhere.
My ideal off-season is to get Van Vleet and Reid, though I haven't even looked into if that's really, really, really unlikely or impossible.
But:
VanVleet - Dosunmu
LaVine -
Caruso - Terry
DeRozan - Williams
Reid - Drummond
Would kind of be about as good as you could expect. Yuo could try for Reid with the MLE, but I don't know how you get VanVleet without trading valuable players in LaVine, Caruso or DeRozan. Maybe some form of Patrick Williams and Lonzo Ball to start. I'd definitely do that.
Yeah, fair. I have no way of getting this done. It’s just the one almost plausible scenario I can think of that would actually shake things up and make the team better at the same time.
I could see DeMar possibly going back to Toronto, with FVV coming back to the Bulls in a S+T. Then you'd use the MLE to sign Reid, or re-sign Vooch. Doesn't seem crazy for either side.
I read Bleacher Nation as I'm a fan of Elias's writing. He's not as down on things as Matt (no disrespect, yfbb), but he's also not at the level of stupidness most beat writers are. I read BaB and Bleacher Nation to get a more balanced view of things.
With regard to his article about Vooch's extension, I tend to lean more towards what Elias said. From a strictly financial perspective, it's dumb to let go of an asset for nothing. That obviously doesn't translate perfectly to basketball contracts, but it's not a bad framework to start from.
I do like your thoughts on Reid though. If we could get him for the right price, I'm totally fine with letting Vooch walk. But you can't just do nothing with Vooch until that time because you have no idea if you'll land Reid or not.
And no matter how you look at it, working out a sign and trade with Vooch for another center that fits this team better, as well as at least one other piece would always be better than just signing Reid and letting Vooch walk. Essentially you're just flushing money down the drain if you let Vooch walk. For a team so strapped for money, that doesn't make a lot of sense. I think that's what Elias was saying in that article.
It's equally dumb to overpay a "guy in our building" and then have to attach assets to get rid of his awful contract. That's what I'm more worried about with Vuc. Sign him, don't sign him, the team is still going absolutely nowhere next year. I'd hope they can avoid paying him $25 million for the 25-26 season, at which point maybe Jerry will have croaked and there could be a new GM who can stay awake during the season.
For sure. It's definitely not a perfect move either way. I do think Vooch still has value on the right team though. He's not worth $20 million a year for three years to us because he doesn't fit this team. He certainly could be worth that to another team though.
there was no interest in Vuc at the trade deadline* when he was on an expiring deal. I understand some teams want long-term security for players, but also Vuc is only going to get slower and less durable as he ages
*or there was and AK was so against 'selling' that it didn't even come out in rumors
Yeah, that's the conundrum. I'd wager a team would have taken a crack at him had AK bothered to turn his phone while at whatever his preferred beach is. Oh well.
A 3 man rotation of Vucevic, Green and Looney in Golden State would be devastating, but they can't spend $20 million on him either so they'll instead get a journeyman a little shorter and much cheaper and probably be okay.
Here's the weird thing: just putting someone like Jeff Green in a C rotation (for instance) won't actually give up that much in size. Vucevic has somehow lost 1.5 to 2 inches in height since joining the NBA:
the difference with Vuc's "bird rights trap" is that while correct the Bulls can't spend $20M in cap exceptions on a replacement for Vuc, if they re-sign Vuc they can't even spend their full exceptions because of how close they are to the tax
letting Vuc walk (and clearly I'd prefer a sign/trade, even for a trade exception) would open up the full $12M mid-level. I mean it was always 'open' but now they'd actually use it.
For sure. It's not really a great situation either way. I just think there are a lot of people who think re-signing Vooch is absolutely the worst possible move and I just don't know if it's that black and white.
Vucevic is not an asset for the Bulls. If he were on the open market (and the Bulls could sign him somehow), what is the max you would pay and how much does he affect winning? 2 or 3 games, at most? And people want to pay him $20 million to go from a below .500 team to a .500 team?
From a financial perspective, that's dumb.
The worst thing any team can do is overpay mid-tier guys. NBA wins cost just under $4 million dollars. They're already overpaying both DeRozan and LaVine (one way more so than the other), a team can't be competitive and overpay another player.
And let's be clear: this "they can't lose an asset for nothing" line is hogwash. They made their choice. The price they pay for being in this situation is that they got to run the season out and almost beat an NBA finals team. That was value they got back for keeping Vucevic past the trade deadline. That's not nothing, so letting him walk wouldn't be letting him walk for nothing. The Bulls kept him because they wanted to be "competitive." They got what they wanted by keeping him.
Hollinger just published his free agent valuations. Vucevic isn't even in the top 25, so we don't know what his projected value is but it's under $15M (Grant Williams)
I think BleacherNation/Bulls is good, and they've cut out some of the fanboy writing as even the most diehard AK stans feel let down at this point
And as a site, they have Bulls information every day...but the downside is they have Bulls information every day. There isn't actually that much information, so you get 'wow Dalen Terry workout video Instagram fire'
Yeah, the comments section just suck equally bad. Their baseball and football isn't much better, but at least in baseball there's some smart, level-headed people in the comments. (Or crazy nutcases I agree with, too.).
The thing I like best about all of it are the rumor and article aggregation. I don't have enough time (nor interest) to scour the webs to follow all this, but at least I can go there and see what's going on.
It's genuinely hard now. Like I don't stop thinking about the bulls and moves they can make... But, we know this ownership, and based off the lack of moves made when it was very possible to do something, I just don't have faith that any scenario I can concoct will have any chance in reality. The bulls are going to keep things as they are and maybe attempt to do something by the trade deadline.... I fear we all know this is the truth.
What I actually expect to happen at this point is
1. They overpay significantly for Vuc
2. Some team like the Spurs that has money to burn throws some at Coby, so we end up either losing him or paying more for him that we'd like, which closes off all be the most minor other upgrades.
I look at the Spurs and they've got $50M in cap space. Look around, and there's not a lot of good PG options. They've got Tre Jones, but he can't shoot. If I were them, I'd take a flyer on Coby to add there. You start looking at the available PGs and Coby looks pretty good.
Coby going to play for Pop basically guarantees another Bulls lottery pick leaving and then turning into a significantly better player than they were in Chicago.
Lol should have clarified. Bulls will TRY to keep their status quo, but it's no bulls fault other organizations, like the spurs, are constantly trying to better themselves and pickup good players.
I could see them offering Coby something outrageous that would be a 2-year contract at a 4-year price. See if he pans out. I guess it'd have to be 3-year? I don't know.
But I could also see them trying to trade back into the late lottery and grab Cason Wallace (best case) or Keyonte George, or Hood-Schifino. Cason Wallace's limitations would be less important on a team with Vassell, Johnson, and Wembanyama, and a team of Wallace, Sochan, and Wemby would be vicious in defense.
looked this up, minimum RFA contract is 2 years (no options)
Yeah, so like 2-years/$40 million. Bulls wouldn't match that. Not as a first option, maybe, but it wouldn't be a bad idea. He's still only 23. And if it doesn't work, he's still off the books when Wembanyama is still on his rookie contract.
White hasn't made huge strides as you'd like from a bonafide All Star, but he's slowly gotten better each season. I don't think Vassell and Johnson are nearly as good as people think they are, but they are still quite young. If it all works out, you could have four guys all under 25 to pair with Wembanyama
A year from now:
White (24+)
Vassell (23)
Johnson (24+)
Sochan (21)
Wembanyama (20)
And if it's clear it's not working, Vassell can be let go or whatever, Johnson is on a very tradeable contract, and they could rebuild from there. I just don't see going after a high-profile star but not a superstar in his prime in Brown. Even if Wembanyama is on the Derrick Rose, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Luka Doncic, trajectory, it's going to be at least two seasons - when Brown is entering age 29 season - before he's a true difference maker.
I think they will be trying to get that second star to put next to Wembanyama. They will not have that many chances like this again. I could see them making a strong offer for Brown.
they do have a lot of chances, Wemby is on a rookie deal for 4 years and they have nothing on their books
I'm at that point. I have practically zero faith in this FO, ownership, or star player leadership.
I liked this comment but I don't like like this comment :(
I wish we had a system like soccer in Europe, where disgruntled fans can break off to form our own team and then advance up the pyramid to replace the old one.
I think for about a decade the blogabull community at least has been clamoring for a second team in Chicago. We have the market for it, and it's hard to imagine a world where the reinsdorfs ever give up ownership of the bulls. JR has been very upfront of how easy running the bulls as a profitable franchise is, and it's crazy to see how the bulls are basically almost always a top ten profiting franchise despite all the mediocrity. Jordan didn't just do wonders for Nike, he and the bulls dynasty made Chicago bulls attire fashionable for generations. There's a reason the bulls have had no desire to update their logo or colors inbte past 30 years.
And different sport but similar, the Washington "Commanders" were just sold for like record profit, and were one of the worst run pro sports over the last couple decades. Goes to show, you don't need any actual results to make money in the bigger markets. Plus, as we see with LIV golf and the Saudi's, there's infinite investor money abroad just waiting for the opportunity to buy teams and sports here, when given the opportunity. Fans and championship incentive are the big losers in all this, so in a business sense, Reinsdorf is right that results don't really matter
goofy-ass leverage peddling (sorry, 'rumor') coming from LeBron that the Mavericks want to re-sign Kyrie and then also somehow get LeBron there.
If the Mavs were interested in cap space, but don't have picks to trade, Bulls could step in and offer this Lonzo poison carrot.
Bertans+Hardaway+McGee is $40.6M
they could take back a Vuc S&T (let's assuage his ego and say $15M this year but it escalates and is a 3-year deal) and Lonzo, who they waive-and-stretch. That'd be $17M in cap savings.
So why the Bulls would do this? They would trade one very good player and another who will probably never play again for one subpar and two bad players. And who's gonna start at center? It would be easier and more preferable to just sign a wing shooter in free agency.
could still get a shooter in free agency (or a center)
they need like 6 new players, and hope 3 stick
I remember one of the theoretical advantages of hiring Karnisovas was that he knew the european market. Three years later all he's got is Simonovic, a weak prospect from the get-go.
I hope this year he will seriously pursue Micic, the best point guard in Europe and maybe the best gettable point guard. Of course they Bulls have to buy a pick so they can trade it to the OKC for his rights.
And there are some guys who clearly have a place in the NBA and are cheaper than the current NBA players.
I agree with Mark Deeks about Tavares (the best center in Europe) and I really like Will Clyburn as a wing shooter who can drive to the basket, both of them are good vets who should mess well with the roster and Billy Donovan.
Who are these guys you're mentioning? Chances are whatever you write will be discovered after Karnisovas replaces all of his scouts with ChatGPT "prompt engineers" so we should all be interested in this.
AK is like when you think you bought Cubans only come to find later your cigars are Nicaraguan
In his latest podcast, Bill Simmons said the Bulls GM job is the worst in the league because they're stuck with middling assets, no apparent way to improve, and ownership that won't go into the tax.
Bulls are gonna give Vuc like $22M a year, right?
Well everything about that is A Choice, other than the ownership that won't go into the tax. I agree that's a problem, it was a really fucked up thing when Derrick Rose was injured and they immediately began selling everything else that wasn't nailed down. Shouldn't be a problem now because this team fucking sucks and there's no way I'd pay the tax unless it meant acquiring a top 5 player. That's about the only thing that could lead to a reasonably different situation this year compared to the last two seasons.
Not to do a Gordon Gekko speech but the knowledge that the tax is going to be an obstacle should be a reason for more activity in the transaction column. Oddly, instead it causes less, almost a lethargy.
Everything else wrong with the team that Simmons mentions comes down to Karnisovas being absolutely fucking mugged by the Orlando Magic. Had he never heard of Vucevic, or even just insisted on normal protections for the picks, or included only one, or excluded Carter, or, or, or, or ANYTHING, then you're looking a team with a #8 and a #11, or a young center, lots of pieces rather than one you probably don't want and which solves none of the problems you have and causes a few all on his own. Absolutely fucking bodied by a GM whose name I don't even fucking know.
Eh, I think fucking mugged is overstating things a bit. Would I do that trade again knowing what I know now? no.
But like, Wendell is pretty much the same guy now as he was when he was traded. I hear people freaking out about Franz Wagner, and he's a nice player, but not one I lose any sleep over missing out on.
The alternative timeline in which we use those assets for a different big (Myles Turner? Ayton? someone anyone?) is the one that gives me more regret. But in general those are the kinds of risks that the FO should make.
Two picks going on 3 years later for a guy you really don't even want is a big deal. Again, everything that Simmons has a problem with stems from that trade alone. Gave up nothing much at all for two of the three best players on the roster, DeRozan and Caruso. Got fucked by Lonzo's knee, but the situation isn't irreparable (unlike, say, Lonzo's knee). The cupboard is bare, and there was nothing left to send out because they sent it all out for Nikola.
Remember when YFBB and others were pushing this team in the 2020-21 season to "do something" and compete for a playoff spot instead of tank with LaVine, Coby, the most cap room of any team by a wide mile and all of their draft picks including a potentially high lottery one? I do. I remember people calling that plan dumb.
Imagine Mobley or Barnes with LaVine and Coby and maybe DeMar with still like $40M+ in cap space. Maybe trade WCJ and a 1st for someone else.
Competing that season was dumb. It was a year too early and has messed them up until at least 2026.
Yeah I do, I was one of those others. I was thrilled to see the team make a trade (actually two — the second one we failed to heed the ominous warning that the Bulls' were receiving back cash considerations not from one but two separate teams.) You were correct in stating at the time it was a terrible trade.
no, most people don't remember your comments. Except the one where you wanted to keep Jim Boylen to sabotage the team
Ah, and wouldn't the team of been better to have a tank commander for part of that season instead of pushing for the playoffs in a weird af bball year? Yeah.
Even the whole Boylen idea for part of the season and Fleming being interim for the rest of the year aside, you (and others) criticized the very idea of tanking because you were as a fan tired of the Bulls being bad. Problem is, they needed one more year of being really bad. Instead, they made a rash trade that altered their abilities the next 6 years.
LaVine would not have requested a trade in 2020-21 or that next offseason if the Bulls were projected to have a potential top 5 pick, the most cap space of anyone and all their picks. I feel the fans pushed ownership to push management to make a splash and we can argue the Vuc trade was bad and the wrong splash and I may even agree but yeah, making any move was premature and the bad move.
right, I said I remembered that dumb stuff, no need to repeat!
Your dumb stuff too you mean?
Any speculation on where this new CBA came from? I find it mildly suspicious that it essentially imposes 'Reinsdorf-rules' on the rest of the league.
Jerry is too busy dreaming up ways to get Scott Podsednik into the baseball hall of fame to throw his weight around in CBA negotiations.
actually I think this is what he lives for. Slightly behind getting Jermaine Dye a coaching job but ahead of anything else Bulls.
Can't help but think the small market teams got an ally in the Chicago market
Wasn't it a direct challenge to the GSW/Lacob since they was spending like $150mil in luxury tax dollars during that off year with DLO and Oubre? Props to Lacob since he's not even a billionaire outside of the Warriors.
There's thee FO moves. 1. Go for it, either acquire a star (Durant) or build smartly around one. 2. Rebuild. Dump it all for best chance at draft assets.
I think the Bulls are well positioned to do 3. Reset. They have a couple of good young assets to keep. Lavine. PW. Maybe Coby. Caruso although I think he's a better reset asset. Trade DDR. S&T Vic if possible. Trade high on Caruso. See if Lonzo can bring back anything. Target young players not totally wanted by their team but potential to be unlocked. RJ Barrett. Ayton. Kuminga. Simons/Sharpe. Find a desperate trade partner needing immediate gratification vs waiting on development. Try to catch lightning in a bottle. If that doesn't work out, Rebuild.
I think the move is trading LaVine and seeing what you can build over the next few years. LaVine is fine as a second or third option, but we’ve seen his ceiling as a “Star” and it’s not great.
Trade him for what? And keep DDR and Vuc alongside what you acquire? Not sure where that gets you, IMO.
I dunno, picks, whatever you can get for him. Waiting for Zach LaVine to be the franchise savior has been a fool’s errand and I’d rather see the Bulls move on from him.
Trade Lavine for a genuinely good PG. They will instantly make the rest of the team better. That raises their value for trades and makes the team more fun in the meantime.
Lavine for Ja Morant + a 2024 pick (+filler, if needed)? Ja is going to be suspended for a while and Memphis may want to move on from him. Jerry will like this because he won't have to pay Ja for half a season minimum.. maybe more.
Or maybe, Lonzo & Caruso for Ja? Not sure how much value Ja has right now. Memphis ends up with Caruso and Tyus Jones to share Ja's role and can save some money with a Lonzo DPE, while the Bulls end up with a high risk/high reward PG.
I think Ja still has much much higher value than this.
Maybe, but he's also a huge gamble at this point. The fact that he is going to be suspended for a long time will affect his value... the only question is how much? It will also depend on how highly Tyus is thought of by the Memphis org.
On their best days, Ja is probably better than Zach. But how many days is he going to give you on the court? That is the big question. If he straightens himself out, he'll be great for many years. If he doesn't, he'll disappear like Antonio Callaway (who you've probably never heard of, but would have been a first round NFL pick, had he not been a dolt in college and would have been a good to great starter in the NFL, except he couldn't stay out of trouble once he did make it there).
Those are the only FO moves. I'm not gonna bother litigating it, because there's no common ground to have with "Process" style tanking true believers, but there is also
"Be opportunistic"
The Bulls have generally been lazy and stupid whereas teams like the Raptors, Heat, Spurs and Celtics have been aggressive and smart and rigidly adhere to any of the categories you lay out.
Like, if the Bulls were going to tank, this year was the year of all years to be bad. Tanking next year, when the #1 pick is likely gonna be a dude who wouldn't be the top 5 in this draft is fucking dumb.
Spending time on these strategies without acknowledging that stuff is missing the point. Sometimes the #4 pick is Dwyane Wade. Sometimes it's Patrick Williams. Knowing which is which is very important.
+ Lavine is simply not a "good young asset". He's 28, and on the front end of a max deal that's viewed around the league as overpayment.
+ Caruso is also not young. He's 29.
+ Lonzo is not coming back.
Likewise, evaluations of the guys coming in matter. The default view should be that if other teams don't want these guys, they probably aren't that good. Some are worth a look, but just cause guys are available doesn't mean they're good. To do that right, again, you have to be good at evaluating talent. Very little suggests the Bulls are, and until that changes, no strategy will work.
>>"Be opportunistic"
IMO, Reset by definition should be about being opportunistic. In this case, the opportunity is to sell (semi)high on DDR (last trade deadline would have been better), S&T Vuc (if possible), dump Lonzo's contract, sell Caruso high (all-defense). The opportunity in the other direction is to sell-off those win-now assets for younger talent that would align with the windows of Lavine, PW and Coby.
>>>The Bulls have generally been lazy and stupid whereas teams like the Raptors, Heat, Spurs and Celtics have been aggressive and smart and rigidly adhere to any of the categories you lay out.
I think they are constantly 'Resetting'. You call them 'Opportunistic'. I think we largely agree.
>>Like, if the Bulls were going to tank, this year was the year of all years to be bad. Tanking next year, when the #1 pick is likely gonna be a dude who wouldn't be the top 5 in this draft is fucking dumb.Spending time on these strategies without acknowledging that stuff is missing the point. Sometimes the #4 pick is Dwyane Wade. Sometimes it's Patrick Williams. Knowing which is which is very important.
I am in complete agreement
>>+ Lavine is simply not a "good young asset". He's 28, and on the front end of a max deal that's viewed around the league as overpayment.
I don't agree with this assessment. I see him as an excellent, mature scorer. Is he a #1, arguably no. Is Booker #1 without Paul/Ayton/Bench and now Durant beside him. I'd argue he's not but he's a good compare for Lavine.
>>+ Caruso is also not young. He's 29.
I didn't mean to imply Caruso was young, only that he's at peak value for a contending team right now.
>>+ Lonzo is not coming back.
Well, yes. I mean as a dead contract
>>Likewise, evaluations of the guys coming in matter. The default view should be that if other teams don't want these guys, they probably aren't that good. Some are worth a look, but just cause guys are available doesn't mean they're good. To do that right, again, you have to be good at evaluating talent. Very little suggests the Bulls are, and until that changes, no strategy will work.
Again, I don't agree. I think you can steal a decently good today guy with possibly high upside for DDR and Caruso, in particular. The fact that, IMO, that opportunity exists means the Bulls are NOT stuck in no-asset, .500-team purgatory with hands-tied. I think they can RESET their roster in interesting ways (not championship ways, but new useful new directions). Teams like Knicks, Warriors, Blazers all would at least consider those two for their near-term impact, possibly shedding guys like Barrett, Kuminga, Simons, etc. who are not fully win-now. I'd take a flyer on those guys. If they pan out, you might have something. If they don't, you dump Lavine in a year and start over.
> Is he a #1, arguably no.
No.
> Is Booker #1
Yes.
Plot LaVine and Booker on a graph and they both start out about the same and then Booker's line goes up like a hockey stick. Booker scores 28 a game in the playoffs across 43 games. LaVine scores 19 across uh 4 games. Booker is often completely unguardable. He was his team's starting PG for two years simply because they didn't have a better one. It's a scary situation to see Zach making any kind of decisions with the ball.
It's only a comparison if you haven't seen Booker lately.
> without Paul/Ayton/Bench and now Durant beside him
A huge number of those games came with Paul injured, without Durant on the team. (I'll grant you he had the phenomenon called "Ayton/Bench" beside him, though it's strange timing since Ayton and Bench were non-entities this year, when he averaged 34 a game in the playoffs.)
I've seen Booker, love him, of course. He has definitely risen to the occasion playing in big games the past few years. Zach is not as good right now, I agree. But skill-wise he's in the ballpark. If he improved (as Booker improved), they'd be close. Zach may no longer improve or clean up his faults. Yep. There's a chance in the right situation he could. I simply don't agree that Booker is head-and-shoulders above the best version of Lavine.
Booker's younger than he is. If you're putting money on which player will see more improvement in the next 2 years, I'm putting that money on Booker, despite already being better across the board.
Not sure how much better Booker can get, but in the end not sure why it matters. If you think there's no path for Zach being part of a good team (not as a standalone number 1 but part of a somewhat balanced roster), then this Bulls team needs a total restart. My idea was to try something between a clear-the-roster tank and an unrealistic go for it with this roster approach, both of which suck.
>>>The Bulls have generally been lazy and stupid whereas teams like the Raptors, Heat, Spurs and Celtics have been aggressive and smart and [ed: don't] rigidly adhere to any of the categories you lay out.
>>I think they are constantly 'Resetting'. You call them 'Opportunistic'. I think we largely agree.
Your 'Reset' just explicitly just boils down to "trade all the older players". But this is clearly not what Boston (Kemba, Kyrie, Horford) or Toronto did (keeping Siakam). If the Heat were doing that, they never would have signed Jimmy in the first place and would have traded him again. The Spurs tried to stay good one way by bringing in Aldridge and DeMar, then executed an obviously targeted rebuild the last two seasons. You could say they fit your idea then, but not on the attempt before.
And let's not get into all the teams that have won titles or come close (Lakers and Warriors, for example) long after the point where most fans and owners would have decided they needed to "reset".
1. No superstar player is coming here. Without a true 2nd star on the roster. That is simply just
how it is in this era.
2. This FO is not going to rebuild. Or they would've started within the 1st year on the job.
3. Was/is the best option. And they've already missed their best windows to have done so.
I saw a couple Twitter comments over the weekend (I know, I know) that "Vooch isn't the problem" and "Bulls issues aren’t Vuce related" and I give up at this point.
Those are lazy takes at best. I really hope this smoke of extension talks is just that, smoke.
what bothers me most is that they'll say (somehow) that DeRozan is the actual problem. When he's good! Part of their vaunted run to start 2021-22 season (banner pending) was not just Lonzo having working knees but DeMar playing out of his mind
To date, the DeMar DeRozan signing is turning out to be Karnisovas' only unequivocally good move. He acquired a 2x all star, clutch scorer and team leader in exchange for a protected mid-round 1st, and did so with no cap room. Low-key brilliant, in fact (though admittedly some will correct me that finding a back-up PG in the 2nd round is where he truly shined...)
yeah but to be fair, this is also why it would make sense to trade him. Like, he's way more valuable now than he was when he was mired in post-Kawhi Spurs obscurity.
I don't think he's way more valuable now than he was then. Might be about the same, might be a little less (we were getting him for his 32-34 seasons). A team trading for him now, assuming he signs an extension, is getting him for his age 34-36 seasons.
Is a team going to trade a mid first for that? Maybe the right team. But probably there aren't a lot of takers at that price.
And... given our performance, it's likely that we're trading a lottery pick (in 25 for him).
Anyway, in the bigger picture, I think DeMar's value points to the general problem of aligning player's "on court" value with their "overall value".
He was a great signing because he was a really good player the last two years and will probably still be a really good player for a couple more. On the court.
To say that it makes sense to trade him, then what we're really saying is we don't value what he's bringing on the court all that much, because we know we're mediocre and he's just a floor on our mediocrity.
But if that's the case, what's the point of having him? Do we want a floor on our mediocrity or not? If we don't, then getting him wasn't a great get. If we do, we shouldn't trade him. For the record, I don't want to be total shit, so I'm A-OK keeping him.
But what's his value to other teams? Well, outside of a maybe 5 teams that are desperately trying to win, he's a floor on another team's mediocrity too. Which many of them don't want for the same reasons Bulls fans don't want.
So we're left with a couple teams that really want to win, but they're already spending a lot and have a good roster so they probably don't have good picks and nearly $30M of salary to trade away for DeMar.
So I think the market for him is actually incredibly small, and if we only value him in terms of bringing back an asset and not in terms of what he can do on the court for us, his value is quite low.
yeah I have yet to see a DeMar trade that actually gets the Bulls potentially better, and like you said he is the 'mediocrity floor'. There's no way that , say, giving Patrick Williams more freedom will make up for DDR's productivity.
Whereas if they traded LaVine they could still be 'competitive' in the way AK+ownership wants, with one reason being they'd get more for him
I think, like, the Knicks could want DeMar and have the salary structure to do it. Now, if the Bulls could get Immanuel Quickley that's interesting if you believe he can be a starting PG (I honestly don't know). But getting a lotto-protected first and, like Evan Fournier's contract, puts a mediocre 'ceiling' on the team AND removes the floor.
(obviously some want to trade DeRozan not to 'reset' but just to tank, but I'm not speculating under that motivation)
I haven't seen anyone come up with a (realistic) hypothetical trade that even gets Chicago something where you say, wow, I have no choice but to trade DeMar DeRozan for this. Instead the trade is presented as almost like a chore, or a routine but somewhat unpleasant medical procedure that's good for us and we have to do it anyway.
Yeah, I was very against that move, and I still wouldn't actually do it. I thought they should have spread that remaining money around to try to get role players that were good on defense like Jared Vanderbilt. It would have provided more flexibility. You could see the impasse they're at now coming as soon as they signed him. 3 big contracts without one dominant star (let alone 2) would never cut it.
That said, it was still a great signing in a vacuum, and he could still use that asset for good if they wanted. They got 1 All-NBA season adn 2 All-Star seasons out of him. Certainly more than I ever expected.
To be fair, it's Twitter. 😂 With that being said, I do think Vooch becomes a better player without DeMar. Does he become so much better that it makes losing DeMar worth it? Definitely not. But I do understand why some people think trading DeMar for young assets and allowing Vooch a little more freedom to operate isn't the worst idea.
ultimately you're a worse team, and with a 33 year old center making > $20M
if you want to be a worse team, also let Vuc go
Totally agree. Just saying I see what people are trying to say. Trading one old player for younger players or draft capital while freeing up room for another old player does make some sense. I'm not sure it really moves the needle much now or in the future though to make it worth it.
I hope it is just smoke also. But it isnt. We all know its going to happen. Disappointing as it may be.
Thanks for the shout out, Matt. I'm going to write up a more fleshed out offseason plan probably after the Finals are over with a list of cheapo shooters that the Bulls could target.
Also really good idea on waiving and stretching Lonzo's number. There are ways to be creative and get real talent through the doors!
The way i see it, the likely case is they end up with the career ending injury exemption from the cap. Waiving and stretching him would just be insurance if they dont.
But they will, because guys dont come back from cartilage transplants
if they waive and stretch him, they can still do the career ending injury exemption
the benefit is it lowers his cap number now, with the potential to go to zero later
Exactly
That leak saying that some in the Bulls org think that he'll never play again gives me some hope that they might actually do something to open up some space.
That Dan Bernstein interview w/ Bulls Talk was so cringey, played automatically while I was working and almost knocked the jack stand out from under my car leaning to turn it off. Have never understood why that guy has kept a job so long, his kind were the absolute doldrums of sports radio in Chicago history. Just snarky useless comment after pithy useless observation, the king of pseudo-intellect, never interesting. Like sports Seinfeld, a show about nothing, but except without the humor or wit. All the more proof that major sports media, especially in Chicago, remains to this day an old boys club, which preserve their dusty mantle with the likes of the Reinsdorfs. And why the only interesting content is in underground corners of media like this Blog and Cash Considerations. Guys like Dan Bernstein, and often times the Bulls "beat" reporters themselves (more often like Approved Bulls Biographers though than beat reporters) are so at odds with modern Bulls fans it's almost like there's animosity between the brand and the fans, and yet on air Bernstein and the old Bulls reporters are revered as if they're all time titans. They're gate keepers closely maintaining narratives, only willing to state the obvious on topics like Lonzo's knee, the extremely low ceiling and flexibility of the roster (obvious last off-season), AK's job performance, etc about a season after it's obvious to honest observers. They deserve every bit as much scorn as the Reinsdorfs, Chicago deserves more. Or maybe we dont? It has always been a town centered around grift and self- serving promotion at the expense of the greater good.
I logged into rec this comment. That was the worst interview I've ever seen. Tony Gil interviewed him about his son for 15 minutes. I was flabbergasted. I almost wrote in to demand he be fired. Does that show have a producer?
I don't live in Chicago anymore but the sports coverage is laughable. You think about a guy like KC who has been covering the team for 15 years and he has no insights, no sources, no sense of fan service
And it bleeds into the lack of urgency with the team. The sports writers should be lighting the Bulls up. Instead we get 15 minutes convos with Bernstein son. Embarrassing.
The thing is too, you'll have plenty of people who make excuses for Bernstein and KC, saying some variation of "What do you expect them to do?" or "You think you would be different in their shoes?" When in Chicago, there's probably dozens of not hundreds of very qualified young journalist talent to replace them. KC has said before, he considers himself more of a "Bulls historian" than an actual beat writer. Only problem with that is he's taking up a rare Bulls beat reporters spot on the payroll, and the fans need a real beat reporter/ analyst/ investigator trying to get info anyway they can. And Bernstein.... Guy has been getting high inhaling his own farts on air for 30 years so nothing to say there. It was a shame when people actually listened to Bernstein and thought he was some form of intellectual Seinfeldian sports humor, but thankfully now I don't even think he's even got those listeners. The Bulls fandom has the talent to replace these guys but they're in self preservation mode like everyone else in the org
Worst interviews of the year candidates so far: KC interviewing AK about his back story right around the trade deadline when the team was in a death spiral, never asking him real current Bulls questions. And NBC Sports doing a puff piece on Dan Bernstein's son, probably initiated by Dan Bernstein trying to get his son into the "family business"
well, it 1) is the Bulls-owned media partner
2) they already fired a bunch of people
They fired the wrong guy. I was a fan of the guy they let go. I just don't think Tony brings anything different than KC.
I'm not sure why we bother talking about Lonzo. The Bulls are going to keep him and keep saying they are monitoring this next season. Then they will say after the season they were really hopeful but they are hopeful for the 24-25 season.
They will not apply for the DPE because then they would be pressured to use it, which they won't do because that could put them in the luxury tax. They are never going into the luxury tax so why would we consider otherwise?
Was also thinking the waive & stretch would be best for Lonzo, but Dorf hates paying for players not on the roster (was surprised he signed off on waiving Bradley). What about Lonzo/Caruso for Ben Simmons? I know he’s a mess, but maybe a risk worth taking? I think we need more ball movement and less ISO. Ben fits positional needs for PG/PF. Then use exceptions for shooters - strus?
No thanks. I prefer my basketball billionaires to be capable of making a jump shot. I know the Chicago Bulls don't value that skill over the last 25 years or so, but they really need to change that.
Bulls need a huge talent infusion. It sure seems like the right place to look is a DeMar trade to OKC. They've got all this young talent and cap space, and a cerebral, efficient offensive player like DeMar would fit right in.
Could Demar return Jalen Williams and their 1st (#12) or something?
Or for Kenrich and Jaylin. We should probably trade him to LA. To clippers for
Batum, Covington, Boston/Coffey, and Hyland? Covington, Powell/Gordon, and 30th pick? To Lakers for Bamba, Beasley, Vanderbilt, and/or 17th pick?
Man... those are all terrible. You need at least one premium asset, and one useful asset back for DDR, otherwise why bother?
Of course not!
No way in hell OKC is gonna do anything like that. Not even on their radar as an idea.
Yeah it's definitely too rich, but I still think the fit makes sense. A Giddey-Shai-DDR-Chet core would have the potential to be awesome.
Also I may be overvaluing Demar, but I think others here are undervaluing him. Consider that Kyrie, even with all his baggage, just returned Dinwiddie, Finney-Smith a first rounder and two seconds. Kyrie is only like a year and a half younger, and has a way longer injury history.
DeMar should absolutely be worth a solid rotation player and a first rounder
I think the difference is that Kyrie, for all his flaws, was still viewed by the Mavs as a difference maker in a really important position in the modern NBA (guard who can shoot at an elite level, plus drive and finish with high efficiency). DeMar, while really good on the court, is still viewed as being from a past era (mid-range heavy).
I guess, but I think most GMs know that the heuristics about shot charts and efficiency don't really apply to a subset of scorers who can kill you in the midrange. DDR's ISO efficiency is well documented.
And I wouldn't underestimate the value of wing creation in today's NBA either.
The fit makes no sense at all!
DeMar will be 34. Literally 10 years older than SGA, who's the oldest of their current lineup. Nobody except I guess the Bulls would entertain that kind of thing even for a second.
No. OKC wouldn't trade a franchise building-block like Jalen Williams for Demar straight up, let alone squeezing a draft pick out of them.
No. OKC would hang up on them. And have a round of laughs. Jalen Williams ceiling is high AND you're asking for a 1st round pick in return also.
For a soon to be 34 year old ball dominant, mid range shooting, bad defensive player. That would take the ball out of SGA and Giddey's hands. Thus slowing their growth.
Are you actually pining for Duncan Robinson? May as well just bring back Doug McDermott...
I'm pining for anyone who is a movement, volume 3-point shooter. Lonzo can do none of those things since he has one working leg.
Bring back dog, why not.
The thing about The Spurs is they do have some interesting veterans making money and no long-term commitments, so they theoretically could help the Bulls out of their own cap hell, but San Antonio is SO UNDER the cap and have such breathing room with Wemby being 19 or whatever, there's no incentive for them to move money and would probably require a pick. Dog is probably a solid player to put around Wemby because he can add spacing.
Just read that Drummond is opting in... WTF?
always great when the player option is picked up by a player with no other options
Okay, I must be missing something. Why did everyone think he'd opt out? It's not like he was going to get a better offer somewhere else.
Bc he was pissed about the playing time. And sixers seemed to want him back.
Ah okay, that makes sense. I didn't realize Philly had said they wanted him back.
that was the trade deadline rumor at least. idk.
I don't think he was pissed about playing time. He's not a serious player IMO. Multiple times this season he had to delay checking in to take out jewelry.
I suppose he could want more playing time to get a bigger contract, but I think he can more effectively dupe executives (and KC Johnson) when he has 5 boards in 3 minutes and needs to sit after being winded.
I just remembered comments after a few DNPs in Jan/Feb when asked about whether he was effective and he was basically like "you tell me" which came off as annoyed, imo.
I'm sure he'd rather play than not play, I just don't think he's going to give up money or even take the risk of doing so to find out
Fair. Maybe because it seemed like he was as good as gone at the deadline, but then the bulls didn't trade him so 🤷♀️
The Athletic article predicted opt out, for what that’s worth.
yeah I wouldn't be surprised if he just said he was opting in and then his agent informs him that he can get the minimum (which I don't think is announced yet but for him would be < $500k less than his player option) in a better situation, or slightly more (bi-annual?) somewhere else
Have you ever stopped to think about how silly the Drummond and DJJ contracts were in the context of a team that was right up against the LT threshold and already had $20M in dead money on its books?
The real story here is the Bulls continued lazy cap, salary and roster (mis)management.
Remember, or understand that under the CBA, a player who signs a one-year veteran minimum contract has his salary partially offset by a payment from the league.
Drummond made $3.2M last year, which just under $300k over his minimum amount of $2.9M. If we'd signed him for the one year minimum though, his cap number (and the true price paid by the Bulls) would only have been $1.84M. That is, the Bulls cost themselves an extra $1.36M this past year to sign Drummond to this two year deal.
Did the same thing with Jones too.
This year his $3.36M is just $200k over his $3.15M estimated vet min amount. If we'd just signed him to a minimum deal, his cap number and the Bulls portion of his salary would be $1.99M. So again, they are basically costing themselves a roster spot ($1.37M) for both of these guys.
It's not just the cap either. It's actual salary paid out since the Bulls aren't availing themselves of the league offset for veteran players.
Taken together, they are paying $13.1M for Drummond and Jones.
If they'd signed them both to consecutive one year minimum deals, Drummond and Jones would (combined) have still made $12.1M dollars. However the Bulls would only have paid $5.46M dollars!
That's right, AKME's mismanagement let the Bulls to spend an extra $7.66M dollars in order to pay these two guys an extra $1M. At a time when they were right up against the LT.
This is why I say the Bulls aren't always stereotypically cheap. They're penny-wise and pound foolish in a lot of ways, and their management team just isn't very good at cap minutiae.
it also limited trade options, as you can deal players making the minimum without matching salary
I'd say both Drummond and Jones were more valuable than the minimum, but not much more to where they had to be given extra to sign. Find the new guys who will play above the contract.
I swear... I point this out in other places, and people jump to say somehow this is a brilliant maneuver that's going to save the Bulls money and make them better.
People are really determined to believe what they want in spite of it all
They do some really dumb shit. Like hardcapping themselves with hinrich. I don't really get into the cap stuff and I hadn't seen the angle before about the bulls screwing themselves over by avoiding signing to the minimum, but it is on brand for them to do something that stupid.
I think some of it is arrogance in their player evaluation
they target 'their guys' because they think it'll overcome whatever they compromised to get them. Not humble and realizing that a lot of it is a crapshoot so you have to accommodate being wrong
Thanks for linking the Cash Consideration pod with Stephen Noh. Found myself tickled that a few of the players he mentioned as cheap pick-ups are some of my current scrub obsessions (Yuta Watanabe, Torrey Craig) and a few others who are probably even better pick-ups.
The other good part about pursing this strategy is if a few of those players turn out useful but you're not going anywhere, you've just added second round picks you can flip them for at the deadline from a playoff-bound team that needs shooting (aka almost all of them). Similarly, there's no good reason why any team would voluntarily trade a competent back-up PG or C - the positions where every team needs someone that fits in roughly those shapes and sizes. Who is like "Man, we have too many backup Cs and PGs, we are oozing with too much competence and it is a problem"? But they might part with them if you've got some scrub that is shooting 41% from 3.
idk why I feel like I need to spell this out but "having things that other teams want is good for you."
Agree 100% on Dosunmu and a few others. They're not unusable players or anything, they're just on the worst possible team to be a non-shooter. I have a vision in which Dosunmu is the leader of a revamped Bench Mob which comes in and fucks with the other team's best players by getting in their jerseys and being all gritty-like... But you can't perfect your bench when your starting lineup is such a mess. And what I'm willing to pay for that isn't really different than what I'd pay for Kris Dunn.
So are we going to cook up some microwave excitement around the new Phoenix bonehead hiring a worse coach than the one he fired and now trying to get rid of Chris Paul?
yeah I like Ayo and Javonte a lot, but being this close to the tax they can't be spending more than the minimum on these guys who are redundant with others already on the roster (Jones, Terry...could try and dump them I suppose) and they need roster space for trying their luck at shooters in those roles
Man, I just started going to BleacherNation in August of last year, and felt it sort of level-headed. The season was "over" and they seemed to have good takes. It was all downhill from there.
Anyway, there Bulls coverage is atrocious. They tried to say that keeping Vucevic is a no-brainer and Front Office 101. I wouldn't keep Vuc at any price, especially with Drummond opting in to his contract. Go after Naz Reid somehow, or just get a bouncy young center and hope for the best. Try to strike gold on a defensive mistake-eraser and don't worry about offense. Spend your money elsewhere.
My ideal off-season is to get Van Vleet and Reid, though I haven't even looked into if that's really, really, really unlikely or impossible.
But:
VanVleet - Dosunmu
LaVine -
Caruso - Terry
DeRozan - Williams
Reid - Drummond
Would kind of be about as good as you could expect. Yuo could try for Reid with the MLE, but I don't know how you get VanVleet without trading valuable players in LaVine, Caruso or DeRozan. Maybe some form of Patrick Williams and Lonzo Ball to start. I'd definitely do that.
We’d have to double S&T Vuc for VV. I doubt Toronto does that considering they traded for a center last year.
Yeah, fair. I have no way of getting this done. It’s just the one almost plausible scenario I can think of that would actually shake things up and make the team better at the same time.
I could see DeMar possibly going back to Toronto, with FVV coming back to the Bulls in a S+T. Then you'd use the MLE to sign Reid, or re-sign Vooch. Doesn't seem crazy for either side.
I read Bleacher Nation as I'm a fan of Elias's writing. He's not as down on things as Matt (no disrespect, yfbb), but he's also not at the level of stupidness most beat writers are. I read BaB and Bleacher Nation to get a more balanced view of things.
With regard to his article about Vooch's extension, I tend to lean more towards what Elias said. From a strictly financial perspective, it's dumb to let go of an asset for nothing. That obviously doesn't translate perfectly to basketball contracts, but it's not a bad framework to start from.
I do like your thoughts on Reid though. If we could get him for the right price, I'm totally fine with letting Vooch walk. But you can't just do nothing with Vooch until that time because you have no idea if you'll land Reid or not.
And no matter how you look at it, working out a sign and trade with Vooch for another center that fits this team better, as well as at least one other piece would always be better than just signing Reid and letting Vooch walk. Essentially you're just flushing money down the drain if you let Vooch walk. For a team so strapped for money, that doesn't make a lot of sense. I think that's what Elias was saying in that article.
It's equally dumb to overpay a "guy in our building" and then have to attach assets to get rid of his awful contract. That's what I'm more worried about with Vuc. Sign him, don't sign him, the team is still going absolutely nowhere next year. I'd hope they can avoid paying him $25 million for the 25-26 season, at which point maybe Jerry will have croaked and there could be a new GM who can stay awake during the season.
For sure. It's definitely not a perfect move either way. I do think Vooch still has value on the right team though. He's not worth $20 million a year for three years to us because he doesn't fit this team. He certainly could be worth that to another team though.
there was no interest in Vuc at the trade deadline* when he was on an expiring deal. I understand some teams want long-term security for players, but also Vuc is only going to get slower and less durable as he ages
*or there was and AK was so against 'selling' that it didn't even come out in rumors
Yeah, that's the conundrum. I'd wager a team would have taken a crack at him had AK bothered to turn his phone while at whatever his preferred beach is. Oh well.
A 3 man rotation of Vucevic, Green and Looney in Golden State would be devastating, but they can't spend $20 million on him either so they'll instead get a journeyman a little shorter and much cheaper and probably be okay.
Here's the weird thing: just putting someone like Jeff Green in a C rotation (for instance) won't actually give up that much in size. Vucevic has somehow lost 1.5 to 2 inches in height since joining the NBA:
https://www.draftexpress.com/profile/nikola-vucevic-5828/
https://www.ridiculousupside.com/2011/5/23/2185010/nikola-vucevic-nba-draft-minnesota-workout
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/v/vucevni01.html
What the actual heck 😂
Maybe they measured his hair, which used to be quite pointy?
Back in Sep/Oct 2019 the NBA made everyone record heights more accurately. It was a whole thing.
the difference with Vuc's "bird rights trap" is that while correct the Bulls can't spend $20M in cap exceptions on a replacement for Vuc, if they re-sign Vuc they can't even spend their full exceptions because of how close they are to the tax
letting Vuc walk (and clearly I'd prefer a sign/trade, even for a trade exception) would open up the full $12M mid-level. I mean it was always 'open' but now they'd actually use it.
For sure. It's not really a great situation either way. I just think there are a lot of people who think re-signing Vooch is absolutely the worst possible move and I just don't know if it's that black and white.
Black and white, no? But one definitely better than the other? Sure.
Vucevic is not an asset for the Bulls. If he were on the open market (and the Bulls could sign him somehow), what is the max you would pay and how much does he affect winning? 2 or 3 games, at most? And people want to pay him $20 million to go from a below .500 team to a .500 team?
From a financial perspective, that's dumb.
The worst thing any team can do is overpay mid-tier guys. NBA wins cost just under $4 million dollars. They're already overpaying both DeRozan and LaVine (one way more so than the other), a team can't be competitive and overpay another player.
And let's be clear: this "they can't lose an asset for nothing" line is hogwash. They made their choice. The price they pay for being in this situation is that they got to run the season out and almost beat an NBA finals team. That was value they got back for keeping Vucevic past the trade deadline. That's not nothing, so letting him walk wouldn't be letting him walk for nothing. The Bulls kept him because they wanted to be "competitive." They got what they wanted by keeping him.
wrote about this in NOTES (and I guess Twitter too)
https://substack.com/@blogabull/note/c-17082253
Hollinger just published his free agent valuations. Vucevic isn't even in the top 25, so we don't know what his projected value is but it's under $15M (Grant Williams)
I'd love to see where he actually ranks lol.
18 mil for Coby seems a bit much though...
I think BleacherNation/Bulls is good, and they've cut out some of the fanboy writing as even the most diehard AK stans feel let down at this point
And as a site, they have Bulls information every day...but the downside is they have Bulls information every day. There isn't actually that much information, so you get 'wow Dalen Terry workout video Instagram fire'
Yeah, the comments section just suck equally bad. Their baseball and football isn't much better, but at least in baseball there's some smart, level-headed people in the comments. (Or crazy nutcases I agree with, too.).
The thing I like best about all of it are the rumor and article aggregation. I don't have enough time (nor interest) to scour the webs to follow all this, but at least I can go there and see what's going on.
Are we going to get the phony "Bulls inquire about Chris Paul" rumors now?
Absolutely! Gotta keep the fans interested somehow.