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.
Coby was one shot away from being eliminated by the Heat in the last FOUR play in tournaments.
And speaking of the Heat, a few of their deeper playoff runs have obscured the fact that they've been living in the same circle of NBA Hell as the Bulls over the past several years, but their FO doesn't really get much criticism from the media.
Oh of course. And honestly I like the top 4 prospects this year way more than anyone ranked 5 and below.
I will be the first one on this site to suggest that if the Bulls don't jump up into the top 4, I think they should try as hard as possible to package #9 and #15 to move up for someone like Caleb Wilson at #4. It might take more than those two picks, but that depends on who's on the clock and their needs. And of course who else wants to make a similar move. If Memphis and Atlanta don't get a ping pong ball pulled, the Grizz will have #6 and #16, and the Hawks will have #7 and #19.
The best and most sustainable way to rebuild is to get a star, and I don't see those types of guys at 9 and 15 this year. And while guys drafted in that area have become stars, most of those guys only reached that "oh, this guy might be a stud" level after going to a 2nd team, and/or right around when their 2nd contract needed to be signed.
The Bulls are positioned to tank correctly for the first time since the immediate post Jordan era. Tanking is as much about selling your cap space for draft picks and prospects - not “young veterans” - *and* using your 19,680 minutes per season to actually play and develop those prospects as it is about lottery balls.
Monetizing the next two years of cap space should turn into several first round picks. When those selections are near term (2026, 2027), the team has the blue sky to grow those players into their NBA roles.
It would be unrealistic to assume this ownership group will hire a front office that will be cutting edge. However, the situation today is such that doing the obvious moves may also be the only moves available for the team and inherently push value into the future.
While I absolutely agree that's what the team should do, there's also another very obvious option that they'll likely do instead. They've got a bunch of cap space this summer and they have the excuse that the next couple of drafts are looking pretty meh. Add in pressure from ownership to get better as quickly as possible, my guess is they'll use their cap space this summer to add a few solid role players and get themselves stuck in the play-in for the next several years again.
With all that being said, it is kind of fun to have at least a little bit of hope again!
I hear you but I want you to go to Spotrac and look at the list of free agents and start putting actual names and contracts onto their cap sheet. The market is very dry.
It seems more likely that they could prefer to take salary dumps of viable players with less draft compensation attached. Orlando will have to shed a lot of salary to get out of the second apron. Would the Bulls take Suggs for nothing? They shouldn’t but we don’t know who is going to be calling the shots yet.
I'm just going off of what this team has historically done, regardless of who was in the front office. Again, I'd love for them to do what you're proposing. All I'm saying is they haven't shown a willingness to take on salary dumps in the past, so I'm hesitant to believe they'll do it now.
Different era, but the Bulls created a bunch of cap space and had nobody to use it on in a dry market (after TMac signed elsewhere) in 2000 so we overpaid for Ron Mercer. The next year we did the same thing with Eddie Robinson. There have been several other examples of this behavior since then. (And it's actually pretty common around the league -- too much cap room and stars staying put via Bird Rights means bad players get huge contracts).
I don't think the Bulls WILL do this, but historically that's the strategy they've favored under the 'Dorfs, whether Krause, Pax, Gar, or AKME were in charge. I am not confident they'll hire someone who thinks differently - remember, Michael Reinsdorf believes that he gave AK too MUCH autonomy.
I'd prefer a longer developmental arc, but if they go this route, depending on how the playoffs shake out, some other interesting names to watch in the same vein as Suggs would be Jalen Green and KAT. Isaiah Hartenstein, too, as a cost cutting move if the Thunder feel like they can't afford their roster with all those extensions kicking in.
It might just be a pathway to the middle, but I kinda like the idea of taking on Jalen Green and pushing for Maluach, too, in exchange for Tre Jones and maybe Jalen Smith (though the dream would be to pawn off PWill and include some draft compensation). This assumes the Suns want to re-allocate Green's money elsewhere, like paying Mark Williams. I think Mike DC wrote awhile back that he liked a lot about Green's statistical profile in terms of a fit with Giddey. Green can definitely get his own shot, which is something the Bulls really lack.
With the pending changes to the lottery odds, being absolute dog shit seems likely to have less value, so putting together a 32 win team that is “fun” and “competitive” looks to be less punitive to relevance than prior eras. It still is probably not an optimal use of cap space and minutes - Jalen Green is either good and needs to be extended at a huge number or is bad and then opts into a $40 million number next season. As long as they don’t maintain flexibility and accrue draft capital or prospects, they can at least make use of the time before Jerry signs off. Doesn’t seem like big picture changes are possible until ownership changes. Whether Michael will behave differently without Jerry is an open question. Whether Jerry is capable of behaving differently is very settled.
Excellent point about the lottery odds -- one I keep trying to emphasize, as well. It hasn't actually *happened* yet but if the odds do flatten, suddenly "developing a young core while striving for the play-in" ends up being a decent and defensible strategy. (AK is going to be in high demand in the future NBA! LOL...). I am not saying the Bulls should try to put together a team with play-in aspirations, but it's nice that they don't have to have a fire sale just to try and "get really bad" to improve their draft standing. A smart, measured approach to acquiring good young assets should be the goal, regardless of whether that leads to 18 wins or 38 wins.
Side note, I don't like Jalen Green as a player at all. He's got a lot of Zach LaVine in him. A guy who puts up points but not a winner. We've had far too many of those both recently and historically.
Yeah - I hear that about Green being of the LaVine archetype. And tbh, I was kind of a Zach apologist due to his occasional bursts of aesthetic appeal. Anyway, I'm not here to die on Jalen Green Hill - I mostly want Maluach!
A good deal of the offset of Green's lack of value would be in getting Maluach on a rookie contract for a few more years. This assumes Bulls believe him to be a potential big of the future, of course.
In isolation, I'd guess Green slightly under-performs his contract from a value perspective the next couple of years but gives the Bulls a lot of things they sorely lack. So not a "good" or "bad" outcome - just... fine. But here's at least a small chance of a high-level outcome for him, which if it happens seems like a good problem to have. Green's next two years (I'm assuming he opts in to the 2nd) are both at $36m, which isn't a steal, but it could be worse.
All this to say, I agree this FA class is quite thin, as most tend to be nowadays. My hopes of the Bulls finding a star are via the draft, so it begs the question of the different ways they could use their cap space outside of FAs. I'm cautiously optimistic the new regime won't be you know, total morons.
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.
Agreed...watching the Blazers last night was the first time since Game 2 of the Celtics/Bulls playoffs in 2017 (or maybe the first 60 seconds of Bulls/Bucks 2022) that I remembered what it felt like to root really hard for an NBA team to win a game, and for that team to actually win.
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.
YESSS!!! Bulls thread the needle, locking in the 9th slot and finally get the Blazer's pick. Love to see it.
Plus Coby got some really nice shine in that win over the Heat. Helluva fun night of hoops.
Coby was one shot away from being eliminated by the Heat in the last FOUR play in tournaments.
And speaking of the Heat, a few of their deeper playoff runs have obscured the fact that they've been living in the same circle of NBA Hell as the Bulls over the past several years, but their FO doesn't really get much criticism from the media.
Let's hope the 9th slot is *not* locked in, if you catch my drift.
Hah - yes, I should have said "lottery slot". Anything of the top 4 picks would be so excellent.
Oh of course. And honestly I like the top 4 prospects this year way more than anyone ranked 5 and below.
I will be the first one on this site to suggest that if the Bulls don't jump up into the top 4, I think they should try as hard as possible to package #9 and #15 to move up for someone like Caleb Wilson at #4. It might take more than those two picks, but that depends on who's on the clock and their needs. And of course who else wants to make a similar move. If Memphis and Atlanta don't get a ping pong ball pulled, the Grizz will have #6 and #16, and the Hawks will have #7 and #19.
The best and most sustainable way to rebuild is to get a star, and I don't see those types of guys at 9 and 15 this year. And while guys drafted in that area have become stars, most of those guys only reached that "oh, this guy might be a stud" level after going to a 2nd team, and/or right around when their 2nd contract needed to be signed.
Thank you Blazers! Trade proposal:
Bulls send #4, #5, and #10 picks in the 2020 draft for the #9 pick in that draft. Seems more than fair.
But seriously Deni Avdija is kind of awesome and on an incredible contract the next 2 years. Portland is a fun team to watch.
The Bulls are positioned to tank correctly for the first time since the immediate post Jordan era. Tanking is as much about selling your cap space for draft picks and prospects - not “young veterans” - *and* using your 19,680 minutes per season to actually play and develop those prospects as it is about lottery balls.
Monetizing the next two years of cap space should turn into several first round picks. When those selections are near term (2026, 2027), the team has the blue sky to grow those players into their NBA roles.
It would be unrealistic to assume this ownership group will hire a front office that will be cutting edge. However, the situation today is such that doing the obvious moves may also be the only moves available for the team and inherently push value into the future.
While I absolutely agree that's what the team should do, there's also another very obvious option that they'll likely do instead. They've got a bunch of cap space this summer and they have the excuse that the next couple of drafts are looking pretty meh. Add in pressure from ownership to get better as quickly as possible, my guess is they'll use their cap space this summer to add a few solid role players and get themselves stuck in the play-in for the next several years again.
With all that being said, it is kind of fun to have at least a little bit of hope again!
I hear you but I want you to go to Spotrac and look at the list of free agents and start putting actual names and contracts onto their cap sheet. The market is very dry.
It seems more likely that they could prefer to take salary dumps of viable players with less draft compensation attached. Orlando will have to shed a lot of salary to get out of the second apron. Would the Bulls take Suggs for nothing? They shouldn’t but we don’t know who is going to be calling the shots yet.
I'm just going off of what this team has historically done, regardless of who was in the front office. Again, I'd love for them to do what you're proposing. All I'm saying is they haven't shown a willingness to take on salary dumps in the past, so I'm hesitant to believe they'll do it now.
Different era, but the Bulls created a bunch of cap space and had nobody to use it on in a dry market (after TMac signed elsewhere) in 2000 so we overpaid for Ron Mercer. The next year we did the same thing with Eddie Robinson. There have been several other examples of this behavior since then. (And it's actually pretty common around the league -- too much cap room and stars staying put via Bird Rights means bad players get huge contracts).
I don't think the Bulls WILL do this, but historically that's the strategy they've favored under the 'Dorfs, whether Krause, Pax, Gar, or AKME were in charge. I am not confident they'll hire someone who thinks differently - remember, Michael Reinsdorf believes that he gave AK too MUCH autonomy.
I'd prefer a longer developmental arc, but if they go this route, depending on how the playoffs shake out, some other interesting names to watch in the same vein as Suggs would be Jalen Green and KAT. Isaiah Hartenstein, too, as a cost cutting move if the Thunder feel like they can't afford their roster with all those extensions kicking in.
It might just be a pathway to the middle, but I kinda like the idea of taking on Jalen Green and pushing for Maluach, too, in exchange for Tre Jones and maybe Jalen Smith (though the dream would be to pawn off PWill and include some draft compensation). This assumes the Suns want to re-allocate Green's money elsewhere, like paying Mark Williams. I think Mike DC wrote awhile back that he liked a lot about Green's statistical profile in terms of a fit with Giddey. Green can definitely get his own shot, which is something the Bulls really lack.
With the pending changes to the lottery odds, being absolute dog shit seems likely to have less value, so putting together a 32 win team that is “fun” and “competitive” looks to be less punitive to relevance than prior eras. It still is probably not an optimal use of cap space and minutes - Jalen Green is either good and needs to be extended at a huge number or is bad and then opts into a $40 million number next season. As long as they don’t maintain flexibility and accrue draft capital or prospects, they can at least make use of the time before Jerry signs off. Doesn’t seem like big picture changes are possible until ownership changes. Whether Michael will behave differently without Jerry is an open question. Whether Jerry is capable of behaving differently is very settled.
Excellent point about the lottery odds -- one I keep trying to emphasize, as well. It hasn't actually *happened* yet but if the odds do flatten, suddenly "developing a young core while striving for the play-in" ends up being a decent and defensible strategy. (AK is going to be in high demand in the future NBA! LOL...). I am not saying the Bulls should try to put together a team with play-in aspirations, but it's nice that they don't have to have a fire sale just to try and "get really bad" to improve their draft standing. A smart, measured approach to acquiring good young assets should be the goal, regardless of whether that leads to 18 wins or 38 wins.
Side note, I don't like Jalen Green as a player at all. He's got a lot of Zach LaVine in him. A guy who puts up points but not a winner. We've had far too many of those both recently and historically.
Yeah - I hear that about Green being of the LaVine archetype. And tbh, I was kind of a Zach apologist due to his occasional bursts of aesthetic appeal. Anyway, I'm not here to die on Jalen Green Hill - I mostly want Maluach!
A good deal of the offset of Green's lack of value would be in getting Maluach on a rookie contract for a few more years. This assumes Bulls believe him to be a potential big of the future, of course.
In isolation, I'd guess Green slightly under-performs his contract from a value perspective the next couple of years but gives the Bulls a lot of things they sorely lack. So not a "good" or "bad" outcome - just... fine. But here's at least a small chance of a high-level outcome for him, which if it happens seems like a good problem to have. Green's next two years (I'm assuming he opts in to the 2nd) are both at $36m, which isn't a steal, but it could be worse.
All this to say, I agree this FA class is quite thin, as most tend to be nowadays. My hopes of the Bulls finding a star are via the draft, so it begs the question of the different ways they could use their cap space outside of FAs. I'm cautiously optimistic the new regime won't be you know, total morons.
We want to do Zack LaVine part 2?
...(turns off Suns/Warriors game)... maybe?
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.
Agreed...watching the Blazers last night was the first time since Game 2 of the Celtics/Bulls playoffs in 2017 (or maybe the first 60 seconds of Bulls/Bucks 2022) that I remembered what it felt like to root really hard for an NBA team to win a game, and for that team to actually win.