That's honestly uber-confusing, and requires a bit of 3D chess -- right up AK's skill-alley!
Given what you laid out, I think the path is Caruso at 'point' with the starting group and whoever is left over on second unit, including a single or split MLE signing. I don't see any real point guard options and the first team needs Caruso's defense more than a non-point guard shooter.
Of course making a big-two trade plus potential s&ts with Coby or Ayo would be a bigger, necessary shakeup, but.....
The above 9 guys under contract likely make up the worst shooting rotation in the league. It's bonkers they're contemplating having a single additional poor shooter in the rotation.
Like if you're going to improve shooting you have to play new, different players in the same 240 minutes you played per game last year. The NBA isn't going to give you more minutes, so you have to change something in the minutes you have. Someone who played last season has to play less or preferably not at all. You have to start putting together the players that you need and giving them the playing time.
I feel like I'm kicking a puppy dog here but re-signing Ayo is a huge problem in that regard. He wasn't a good player who we wish could shoot better from 3. That's DeRozan. He was a bad point guard who couldn't shoot. The idea that you're going to have him do the same but for more money is hilarious. If you want another defender that can't shoot, the NBA values that very poorly and they're not hard to find for the minimum. Fucking Shaq Harrison is still hanging on.
Maybe he learns to shoot but there's no indication he can learn to do so here.
If this front office is insistent on keeping this core together, then bringing back Ayo just doesn’t make much sense.
His ceiling appears to be “quality role player”, which is perfectly fine for a second round pick. But his skillset does not fit this current team.
If Ayo wasn’t from Chicago, this fanbase would care at least 75% less about bringing him back. Couple that with the fact that Vuc is back just because AK doesn’t want to admit he lost the trade, and it’s looking like our front office is giving new contracts to basketball players for reasons that don’t have anything to do with basketball.
I am not a fan of Pat Beverley, but the fact that he came in cold and delivered the best PG play of the year is damning him with faint praise. It was that bad that one of the worst starting-level PGs in the league outplayed Ayo badly. At no point in those 22 games did I think, "I'd like to see what Ayo could do right here." The Lakers' 3rd best PG picked up off the waiver wire was so much better than Ayo had been and it wasn't even close.
I hope Ayo becomes a great rotation guy some day, he probably could be next season for someone with the right team, but right now he has yet to be as good as a 35 year old Pat Beverley.
MikeDC's created and approved list of guys who are available probably for cheap and can shoot
5 - Bamba, Bryant
4/5 -Wood, Jaxson Hayes
4 - Lyles, Bazley
3/4 - Taurean Prince
3 - Nwora, TBJr
2 - NAW
1 - Aaron Holiday
All of those guys except Hayes (who's young and big) have some hope to be or are plus shooters. They're all likely available for relatively little. Just clear out the bottom five slots on the roster and pick them up. Add shooters.
I wonder about JaMychal Green as the Dollar General version of a Naz Reid/Saric-type. He can push up near 40% on threes and would give the Bulls a second tall, strong person at the 4.
This is like Granville's all-scrub team, I love this. Prince, Bamba, Hayes, Bazley are all guys that could be incredibly cheap and, moreover, if they play well for you, you can pass on to a contender who needs what they've got. Use the NBA's lemming instinct against itself. Chris Duarte was another one, I don't know what the draft compensation the Kings gave up was but if it was a 2nd rounder I'm going to be pissed, that is a great gamble to take for a guy who started out pretty good and got derailed pretty badly.
Yeah. I saw that right after I posted as well. You're probably close to spot on at the $13M number. Seems foolish of AK to give him anything beyond the QO. Like you say, he sucks at the margins.
Jake Fischer's latest also mentions Bulls as a Harden destination, but simply because they have high-priced players, not due to any reported interest between the Bulls or Harden
a DeMar-for-Harden move would be the rare DDR idea I'd endorse, but Harden after trade kicker makes $12M more and also Philly probably needs more assets. I think Philly would do Harden for DeRozan+Caruso, but man the Bulls defense and vibes would go in the toilet. I suppose that doesn't matter when DDR's veteran leadership and Caruso's all-defense selection got you all the way to 10th place
LaVine-for-Harden would align Bulls for big reset in 2024 (except Vuc lol) while remaining competitive, but iffy on-court fit. Trading both DDR+LaVine for Harden would be treating LaVine as negative salary, which I don't think the Bulls agree with
I've been trying to noodle out how to work this, because I actually think the Sixers are one of the few places where LaVine is a legitimately good fit. I wonder if they'd just do a separate deal:
1. Bulls trade LaVine for Maxey and Harris
2. Clippers trade ??? would have to be either Kawhi or PG, right ??? for Harden? (Throw in RoCo and PJ Tucker swap.
Bulls
G- Maxey
G- Coby, Caruso
F- DeMar, Pat
F- Harris
C- Vuc
Not 100% terrible, and younger.
Sixers
G- Melton
G- Zach
F- PG
F- RoCo
C- Embiid
Clippers
G-?Westbrook?, Bones?
G- Harden, Powell
F- Kawhi
F- Batum, Morris, Tucker
C- Zubac
I think Harden for PG is interesting... PG's a better defender, but does it matter if he's always hurt?
Just for the record, I wouldn't do that Zach trade if I'm the Sixers. Maxey is 22 and probably almost as good as Zach is now. Harris is a solid starter. But if they just love Zach and buy into him being a true "2nd best player on a championship team" level thing, pairing him up with Embiid is about the most ideal possible situation.
Yeah, Sixers like Maxey. DDR and stuff for Harden has potential, especially in the regular season. We should be able to get to the playoffs and then we will get to watch Harden seize up. I think it would be an improvement.
Zach is a good player on a good contract, there should be no rush to trade him away. Keep him a year and see what happens. He will be worth more next year.
Whatever happens today, don't forget to celebrate that you live in a country where you will no longer have to look at Jalen Rose's plastic head, recoil at Max Kellerman's simpy face or have the greatest game in the world poisoned by Jeff Van Gundy's shouty voice.
Reinsdorf loves "white flag" mid-season trades. You don't actually pay the tax until the end of the year (unless they changed it), so you can be dubbed a "tax-paying team" until 1 second before midnight at the trading deadline and not pay the tax.
That's why it's sensible to either get players that you really see as multi-year contributors, regardless of the other players around them and direction of the team; or specifically aim at rehabilitating the reputation of players on the downswing in hopes of swapping them to teams that actually have, you know, "ambition."
1. He's not actually a PG. He's a 6'1" guy, so he's called a PG, but he seems pretty far behind Coby, Caruso, and pretty much everyone when it comes to actually hitting guys in stride and running a consistent PnR.
2. He's a good defender for a little guy, we've seen two years in a row that he's not a playoff player at all.
What he is, and this is good, is a tremendous spot up shooter. In the context of the Bulls, where you've got Zach, DeMar, Vuc, and Coby who are all willing passers that have some ability to create space for a shooter, this is a godsend. Having him out there instead of Ayo or Caruso will create a lot of space and gravity and make the offense better. Defensively, they'll be able to patch over the flaws in the regular season mostly.
I like the pick up, and I thought Bud really fucked up not playing him more, but i don't think it moves the needle too much for the Bulls shooting. He's good at spot-ups, but the Bulls shooting issues are only partially about not having enough guys who shoot.
Because, the thing is, the Bulls don't even get enough out of the shooters they have. Like, Zach takes 7.1 per36. That he's so far from like 10 per36 is preposterous. You're just leaving money on the table. Vuc and Patrick each take 4.5 per36. This is also ludicrous.
Why the underperformance? It's a shot creation problem as much as it is a shooting problem. As long as their creators are bad at the drive and kick game (and willing to pass or not, they aren't good at the drive and kick game) their team shooting will always be less than the sum of the players' skills.
I've thought about this, and while I think it's partly right, I've come to the conclusion a lot of it is, for some crazy reason, by design. How much is attributable to inability to drive and kick and how much is unwillingness I can't say, but I think it's roughly 50/50.
Why? DeMar isn't the best at this, but if you look at what he did with the Spurs, Mills (9.2), Derrick White (8.2) and Rudy Gay (7.4) were all shooting more 3PA/36 than any Bull. Lonnie Walker (6.4) and rookie Vassell (5.1) were willing shooters who would be major shooters by Bulls standards.
What that's telling me is DeMar, at least, is good enough at creating to be generating more 3s than he does (yes, a counterpoint is that the Spurs didn't take a lot of 3s total, but I think this is largely attributable to Playing lots of DeMar/Poeltl/Murray combos. Surround DeMar with shooters, and he's capable of getting them shots.
Also, the Zach/Lauri/Coby triumvirate seemed to get up more shots under both Donovan and Egg head both.
All that leads me to question what the hell is really going on. Once the Bulls made the Vuc trade, it seems like the kind of philosophically deemphasized the 3.
Again, I'm not saying your point is wrong. I agree with it! But I think there's an element of the Bulls just deciding that threes weren't cool. If they'd prioritized it, Zach would have taken more, Coby would have played more, and maybe they would have kept guys like Troy Brown and maybe even Matt Thomas
I think that team actually re-enforces my point, actually. If I remember them correctly, they pretty much won games that year because their bench kicked the christ out of everyone. And the bench played a totally distinct style from the starters, too. They were basically doing their version of the Quinn Snyder drive and kick blender. Sometimes with Gay as the small ball 5. Sometimes with Poeltl crashing the rim and making plays off the roll like Gobert.
So while I don't have the tools to prove it, I would bet that if you looked at those guys' 3-point attempt rate across different lineups, their rates with Demar would be relatively lower than their rates without him.
That of course invites the question: okay, so why didn't the starters ape the more successful bench. And with Demar it seems likely that he either just didn't want to or that he couldn't. Maybe both.
And I don't mean to suggest that Demar is a jerk or doesn't want to win. He seems like a great guy and teammate. But Demar is a very stylistic player. And I think that for guys who have very stylistic games, playing in that style is a huge determinant of their comfort level. So it's much harder for them to be flexible.
I looked at the Spurs lineups, and to the extent I can tell, I think you're right.
That being said, I still think the Bulls are capable of better. Small sample size, but:
Zach/DeMar/Vuc
+ Pat & Coby -> 24.8 3pa/36
+ Caruso & Coby -> 28.1 3pa/36
League average was 24.8. The prior year, with Lonzo, I think the lineups were average to somewhat above avg.
I have the unpopular opinion that the Bulls were most likely better off just having Coby replace Lonzo's volume 3 point shooting instead of having Ayo largely replace Lonzo's D. As it turned out, I think the former was the more important think we missed.
Jevon Carter checks out: house in the area and agent is Mark Bartelstein. Between this and the Coby deal, the Bulls are done for free agency. See everyone next year!
NEW POST:
https://www.blogabull.com/p/the-bulls-made-their-free-agency?sd=pf
That's honestly uber-confusing, and requires a bit of 3D chess -- right up AK's skill-alley!
Given what you laid out, I think the path is Caruso at 'point' with the starting group and whoever is left over on second unit, including a single or split MLE signing. I don't see any real point guard options and the first team needs Caruso's defense more than a non-point guard shooter.
Of course making a big-two trade plus potential s&ts with Coby or Ayo would be a bigger, necessary shakeup, but.....
The above 9 guys under contract likely make up the worst shooting rotation in the league. It's bonkers they're contemplating having a single additional poor shooter in the rotation.
Like if you're going to improve shooting you have to play new, different players in the same 240 minutes you played per game last year. The NBA isn't going to give you more minutes, so you have to change something in the minutes you have. Someone who played last season has to play less or preferably not at all. You have to start putting together the players that you need and giving them the playing time.
I feel like I'm kicking a puppy dog here but re-signing Ayo is a huge problem in that regard. He wasn't a good player who we wish could shoot better from 3. That's DeRozan. He was a bad point guard who couldn't shoot. The idea that you're going to have him do the same but for more money is hilarious. If you want another defender that can't shoot, the NBA values that very poorly and they're not hard to find for the minimum. Fucking Shaq Harrison is still hanging on.
Maybe he learns to shoot but there's no indication he can learn to do so here.
If this front office is insistent on keeping this core together, then bringing back Ayo just doesn’t make much sense.
His ceiling appears to be “quality role player”, which is perfectly fine for a second round pick. But his skillset does not fit this current team.
If Ayo wasn’t from Chicago, this fanbase would care at least 75% less about bringing him back. Couple that with the fact that Vuc is back just because AK doesn’t want to admit he lost the trade, and it’s looking like our front office is giving new contracts to basketball players for reasons that don’t have anything to do with basketball.
I am not a fan of Pat Beverley, but the fact that he came in cold and delivered the best PG play of the year is damning him with faint praise. It was that bad that one of the worst starting-level PGs in the league outplayed Ayo badly. At no point in those 22 games did I think, "I'd like to see what Ayo could do right here." The Lakers' 3rd best PG picked up off the waiver wire was so much better than Ayo had been and it wasn't even close.
I hope Ayo becomes a great rotation guy some day, he probably could be next season for someone with the right team, but right now he has yet to be as good as a 35 year old Pat Beverley.
MikeDC's created and approved list of guys who are available probably for cheap and can shoot
5 - Bamba, Bryant
4/5 -Wood, Jaxson Hayes
4 - Lyles, Bazley
3/4 - Taurean Prince
3 - Nwora, TBJr
2 - NAW
1 - Aaron Holiday
All of those guys except Hayes (who's young and big) have some hope to be or are plus shooters. They're all likely available for relatively little. Just clear out the bottom five slots on the roster and pick them up. Add shooters.
That's a nice list ya got there, which means AK's gonna hard pass on all of them. Here comes the D. Rose homecoming train though! Choo choo!!
A few more names for your approval:
5 - Brook Lopez
4/5 - Dario Saric
3/4 - Georges Niang
3 - Yuta Watanabe
2 - Eric Gordon
1 - Seth Curry
I don't know how cheap they will be, but I doubt they getting the full MLE (well, maybe Curry)...
I'd pass on most of those guys as either too expensive or not young enough.
Saric seems like he'd be cheap enough and has real size, so I'd definitely give him a look though
I wonder about JaMychal Green as the Dollar General version of a Naz Reid/Saric-type. He can push up near 40% on threes and would give the Bulls a second tall, strong person at the 4.
This is like Granville's all-scrub team, I love this. Prince, Bamba, Hayes, Bazley are all guys that could be incredibly cheap and, moreover, if they play well for you, you can pass on to a contender who needs what they've got. Use the NBA's lemming instinct against itself. Chris Duarte was another one, I don't know what the draft compensation the Kings gave up was but if it was a 2nd rounder I'm going to be pissed, that is a great gamble to take for a guy who started out pretty good and got derailed pretty badly.
Jaxson Hayes can dunk but cannot shoot.
How do you get Coby White to a $13 mil cap figure when no one else wants him and he has a $7.78 qualifying offer?
I probably should've rounded down to the MLE
But I could see a cap space team doing a front-loaded contract
and yeah nobody reportedly wants him, but nobody reportedly wanted Vuc either, and he got way more than MLE
Vuc should have been (could he?) front-loaded as well, would have made it easier to trade down the line though would have cut into this year perhaps?
yep that's the trade-off, can have escalating or de-escalating salaries year over year
FWIW, Jake Fischer (second-tier rumormonger, but not nothing) suggests Coby coming back for 'north of' $30M for three seasons
https://sports.yahoo.com/2023-nba-free-agency-should-we-be-preparing-for-james-harden-to-end-up-with-the-clippers-171832820.html
Yeah. I saw that right after I posted as well. You're probably close to spot on at the $13M number. Seems foolish of AK to give him anything beyond the QO. Like you say, he sucks at the margins.
Jake Fischer's latest also mentions Bulls as a Harden destination, but simply because they have high-priced players, not due to any reported interest between the Bulls or Harden
a DeMar-for-Harden move would be the rare DDR idea I'd endorse, but Harden after trade kicker makes $12M more and also Philly probably needs more assets. I think Philly would do Harden for DeRozan+Caruso, but man the Bulls defense and vibes would go in the toilet. I suppose that doesn't matter when DDR's veteran leadership and Caruso's all-defense selection got you all the way to 10th place
LaVine-for-Harden would align Bulls for big reset in 2024 (except Vuc lol) while remaining competitive, but iffy on-court fit. Trading both DDR+LaVine for Harden would be treating LaVine as negative salary, which I don't think the Bulls agree with
I've been trying to noodle out how to work this, because I actually think the Sixers are one of the few places where LaVine is a legitimately good fit. I wonder if they'd just do a separate deal:
1. Bulls trade LaVine for Maxey and Harris
2. Clippers trade ??? would have to be either Kawhi or PG, right ??? for Harden? (Throw in RoCo and PJ Tucker swap.
Bulls
G- Maxey
G- Coby, Caruso
F- DeMar, Pat
F- Harris
C- Vuc
Not 100% terrible, and younger.
Sixers
G- Melton
G- Zach
F- PG
F- RoCo
C- Embiid
Clippers
G-?Westbrook?, Bones?
G- Harden, Powell
F- Kawhi
F- Batum, Morris, Tucker
C- Zubac
I think Harden for PG is interesting... PG's a better defender, but does it matter if he's always hurt?
Just for the record, I wouldn't do that Zach trade if I'm the Sixers. Maxey is 22 and probably almost as good as Zach is now. Harris is a solid starter. But if they just love Zach and buy into him being a true "2nd best player on a championship team" level thing, pairing him up with Embiid is about the most ideal possible situation.
Yeah, Sixers like Maxey. DDR and stuff for Harden has potential, especially in the regular season. We should be able to get to the playoffs and then we will get to watch Harden seize up. I think it would be an improvement.
Zach is a good player on a good contract, there should be no rush to trade him away. Keep him a year and see what happens. He will be worth more next year.
I think the DDR for Harden idea has no chance at all. Morey isnt even remotely contemplating DDR.
That's good to know. Who did he tell you he is considering.
Your mom!
Nah. That's crazy. He wouldn't tell me anything... he's too busy with your mom to talk to me.
It really is frustrating that Zachs camp has a beef with NYK, cause that seems to be the team that would be willing to take him.
Whatever happens today, don't forget to celebrate that you live in a country where you will no longer have to look at Jalen Rose's plastic head, recoil at Max Kellerman's simpy face or have the greatest game in the world poisoned by Jeff Van Gundy's shouty voice.
All hail King Neptune and his Water Breathers
I think you mean Mr Nimbus
I don't think AK is, like, horse-trading with player agents. But he IS lazy.
So here are some clients repped by Vuc's (very good) agent Bill Duffy, a list that also includes Goran Dragic and Patrick Beverley hmmm
Aaron Holiday
Grant Williams
Josh Richardson
Jalen McDaniels
Jaxson Hayes
Nice thinking, we’ll sign at least one of these guys
After the Vuc deal, Duffy owes us signing like, some all star, not fucking Josh Richardson
Vuc is an all star, very special player for us
Dislike
Are we 100% sure AKME knows the Bulls need a point guard not already in the building?
I could see this team going into the tax getting the 8th seed and then using that as a reason to not go into the tax again for the next 20 years
Reinsdorf loves "white flag" mid-season trades. You don't actually pay the tax until the end of the year (unless they changed it), so you can be dubbed a "tax-paying team" until 1 second before midnight at the trading deadline and not pay the tax.
That's why it's sensible to either get players that you really see as multi-year contributors, regardless of the other players around them and direction of the team; or specifically aim at rehabilitating the reputation of players on the downswing in hopes of swapping them to teams that actually have, you know, "ambition."
Could we trade DeRozan for S&T Kuzma? 4/80 and then they include Wright for salary match.
OK, CHAT IS UP
https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/4fe4690c-720b-4e48-a088-49e36cfc21ca
I’m a huge Jevon Carter fan. I think could be a solid starting PG for the Bulls.
I'm surprised the Bucks let him walk, their PG depth isn't looking good. I guess Pat Bev is pretty much out now. I wonder how this will affect Ayo.
Starting PG on the Bulls and backup PG anywhere else.
Well when they have to pay Lonzo to not play. You have to work with what you got. It’s Carter or Coby
This is, as with all self-inflicted restrictions on this org, A Choice.
I think he's ok, but
1. He's not actually a PG. He's a 6'1" guy, so he's called a PG, but he seems pretty far behind Coby, Caruso, and pretty much everyone when it comes to actually hitting guys in stride and running a consistent PnR.
2. He's a good defender for a little guy, we've seen two years in a row that he's not a playoff player at all.
What he is, and this is good, is a tremendous spot up shooter. In the context of the Bulls, where you've got Zach, DeMar, Vuc, and Coby who are all willing passers that have some ability to create space for a shooter, this is a godsend. Having him out there instead of Ayo or Caruso will create a lot of space and gravity and make the offense better. Defensively, they'll be able to patch over the flaws in the regular season mostly.
And the price is pretty reasonable.
I like the pick up, and I thought Bud really fucked up not playing him more, but i don't think it moves the needle too much for the Bulls shooting. He's good at spot-ups, but the Bulls shooting issues are only partially about not having enough guys who shoot.
Because, the thing is, the Bulls don't even get enough out of the shooters they have. Like, Zach takes 7.1 per36. That he's so far from like 10 per36 is preposterous. You're just leaving money on the table. Vuc and Patrick each take 4.5 per36. This is also ludicrous.
Why the underperformance? It's a shot creation problem as much as it is a shooting problem. As long as their creators are bad at the drive and kick game (and willing to pass or not, they aren't good at the drive and kick game) their team shooting will always be less than the sum of the players' skills.
I've thought about this, and while I think it's partly right, I've come to the conclusion a lot of it is, for some crazy reason, by design. How much is attributable to inability to drive and kick and how much is unwillingness I can't say, but I think it's roughly 50/50.
Why? DeMar isn't the best at this, but if you look at what he did with the Spurs, Mills (9.2), Derrick White (8.2) and Rudy Gay (7.4) were all shooting more 3PA/36 than any Bull. Lonnie Walker (6.4) and rookie Vassell (5.1) were willing shooters who would be major shooters by Bulls standards.
What that's telling me is DeMar, at least, is good enough at creating to be generating more 3s than he does (yes, a counterpoint is that the Spurs didn't take a lot of 3s total, but I think this is largely attributable to Playing lots of DeMar/Poeltl/Murray combos. Surround DeMar with shooters, and he's capable of getting them shots.
Also, the Zach/Lauri/Coby triumvirate seemed to get up more shots under both Donovan and Egg head both.
All that leads me to question what the hell is really going on. Once the Bulls made the Vuc trade, it seems like the kind of philosophically deemphasized the 3.
Again, I'm not saying your point is wrong. I agree with it! But I think there's an element of the Bulls just deciding that threes weren't cool. If they'd prioritized it, Zach would have taken more, Coby would have played more, and maybe they would have kept guys like Troy Brown and maybe even Matt Thomas
I think that team actually re-enforces my point, actually. If I remember them correctly, they pretty much won games that year because their bench kicked the christ out of everyone. And the bench played a totally distinct style from the starters, too. They were basically doing their version of the Quinn Snyder drive and kick blender. Sometimes with Gay as the small ball 5. Sometimes with Poeltl crashing the rim and making plays off the roll like Gobert.
So while I don't have the tools to prove it, I would bet that if you looked at those guys' 3-point attempt rate across different lineups, their rates with Demar would be relatively lower than their rates without him.
That of course invites the question: okay, so why didn't the starters ape the more successful bench. And with Demar it seems likely that he either just didn't want to or that he couldn't. Maybe both.
And I don't mean to suggest that Demar is a jerk or doesn't want to win. He seems like a great guy and teammate. But Demar is a very stylistic player. And I think that for guys who have very stylistic games, playing in that style is a huge determinant of their comfort level. So it's much harder for them to be flexible.
I looked at the Spurs lineups, and to the extent I can tell, I think you're right.
That being said, I still think the Bulls are capable of better. Small sample size, but:
Zach/DeMar/Vuc
+ Pat & Coby -> 24.8 3pa/36
+ Caruso & Coby -> 28.1 3pa/36
League average was 24.8. The prior year, with Lonzo, I think the lineups were average to somewhat above avg.
I have the unpopular opinion that the Bulls were most likely better off just having Coby replace Lonzo's volume 3 point shooting instead of having Ayo largely replace Lonzo's D. As it turned out, I think the former was the more important think we missed.
Jevon Carter checks out: house in the area and agent is Mark Bartelstein. Between this and the Coby deal, the Bulls are done for free agency. See everyone next year!
wow um rockets
Excited to see our death lineup of Vuc/Carter/White/Zach/Debo. That’s a lot of 3pt shooting to give Demar space to operate.