Go Blazers
ah, the freedom to once again root for unequivocally good things
It’s been a weird week in this post-AKME era, in that I have to catch myself when cynically viewing any and all NBA news through a prism of “what is that dipshit Arturas Karnisovas going to smirk and mumble at me”. Yes, there is the head-scratching ‘competitive integrity’ ethos that hasn’t left, as that starts at ownership and usually is spoken through Head Coach Billy Donovan. But I don’t have to steel myself after seeing Lachlan Olbrich had a triple double.
And it also means that if something substantially good happens, like the Bulls obtaining a second first-round pick from the Portland TrailBlazers if they make it out of the Play-In Tournament this week, I don’t have to think: 1) how will AK dead-enders spin the Lauri Markkanen trade as actually good now^ and 2) how will AK screw up the additional draft selection
^Moved up from footnote since it got so long: In retrospect it looks worse, but that trade was far from the worst offense in the AKME era. Certainly one of the first of many self-scouting misses, in that AK quickly gave up on Lauri and his ability to play alongside ‘All-Star’ Nikola Vucevic. But it was a couple years and teams before Markkanen broke out. This is one of several moves where the Bulls get some credit for not being the worst participant, in this case that’s the Blazers for sending out this protected first round pick, and a pretty good role player in Derrick Jones Jr., for Larry Nance Jr.. They obviously had similar mindset to AK making that Vuc trade in thinking their team was good enough to where the pick conveyance wouldn’t matter. In their defense they had Damian Lillard, not Zach LaVine.
Fret no longer! Sure, ownership may lean on the wrong people and repeat the same mistakes in their new hire. But I certainly don’t want them to fail, and with perhaps the worst collection of assets in the league (pending lottery results) getting another mid-round first is something nice for the new hire. Whereas I was pretty much thinking any good thing that maybe kept AKME employed was a long-term negative thing.
The Blazers have two chances to make the playoffs and therefore convey that selection1 to the Bulls. Familiarize yourself with your new favorite team.
Tonight they’re in Phoenix as a slight underdog against the Suns, whose poor performance against the ‘not tanking, too proud to suck any way but genuinely’ Bulls really tugged at Michael Reinsdorf’s hoops heartstrings but for more legitimate purposes has me dubious of their chances in this game.
If they lose tonight, get another chance on Friday versus the Clippers/Warriors winner.
I think it’s locked in at #15 overall whether the Blazers enter the playoffs as a 7th or 8th seed?
Trying to just enjoy the moment for a minute here and not consider the possibility that this could be our high water mark for another half decade if a couple of idiots make an idiotic hire.
In a vacuum I actually think the Lauri trade was a decent deal -- I think the fact that AKME engineered it just takes it down a couple notches in fan communities like this one. The grass is always greener on the other side, and Lauri's "breakout" was really just another empty-calories scorer on a going-nowhere team. We look from afar and say "he made the All-Star team" and yet so did Zach LaVine -- twice! He's got different strengths and weaknesses than Zach but the one similarity is they're both players you lose with, not players you win with. Lauri has literally played in ZERO NBA playoff games. ZERO! He's average at best on the defensive end and a terrible rebounder for his height. He's constantly missing games due to injury. He averages 1.5 assists per game for his career -- that's exactly the same career number as Patrick Williams, whose usage rate is about half that of Lauri's.
Lauri would be an interesting complementary player on a good team, but as an exorbitantly paid franchise cornerstone? No thanks! I'd much rather have the 15th pick in the draft this year (fingers crossed!) than ~50 games a year of Lauri over the next three seasons at $46.1M, $49.8M, and $53.5M. That's not hyperbole, it's how I feel and it's not even close from my perspective.
Obviously we don't know the how the Bulls would have handled Lauri's next contract if he showed improvement in Chicago, so it's not a perfect comparison. But was the Lauri trade actually good? Yes. It wasn't "great", or a "game changer", or "fleecing the competition" and perhaps we could have gotten more by dealing him earlier or later, but the trade was looked at as good at the time to get any kind of 1st rounder, and it's still good now that that 1st rounder might actually convey.