the Bulls are sticking with their direction: aimless incompetence losing on the margins (and more)

Alex Caruso for Josh Giddey can be judged, now: bad

While it’s not fair to clamor for nearly 3 years (!) that the Bulls to DO SOMETHING and then immediately be mad when they do, it’s entirely fair to give it a few minutes and then get mad.

It’s rare that a Bulls move could get such a high percentage of disapproval as this pre-draft deal of Alex Caruso straight-up to the OKC Thunder for Josh Giddey has engendered. Anecdotally, reading local beat and trade graders and even “Bulls Twitter” (gag), there are typically pretty entrenched camps of those who want the Bulls to just do anything ASAP to actively get a lot worse, and others (of which I am a part of) who see the fruitlessness and outright lame-ness of that¹.

It appears both “sides” hate this trade: it is a low return for their best trade asset which didn’t move much money (just $1.5M difference and same contract length) and limits their options in possible summer ‘retool’ moves, yet also doesn’t include future draft picks for a more proper ‘rebuild’.

It is truly mind-blowing that the Bulls did a trade with the Thunder, a team that has literally more future picks than they can roster on the team, and came away with none of them. And as for the other side of that coin: that Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley, who’ve made it their signature move to send out picks in trades to get those transactions over the finish line, did a trade of their highest-valued asset and couldn’t even get a “fake” first or second rounder (they’re out of those for the next few years!).

The rare counter to this near consensus flogging of this trade you may come across are these two ideas: 1) Caruso’s value wasn’t actually that high, or 2) We can’t judge this move in isolation if the Bulls are going to have a whole new team going forward.

To that first bit: it reminds me of the Jimmy Butler trade when the Bulls also received zero additional picks (in fact, sold one shortly after) and GarPax apologists mentioned “the market” like it was this perfectly logical space. NBA transactions have immediate winners and losers because they involve different calibers of executives. I have long derided the Thunder under their GM Sam Presti as a cheapass money-laundering operation, but they have shown to know value. And it is perfectly logical to think, based on their respective histories, that Presti is better at assessing value (and talent) than AKME. It’s probably also telling that now the rumors of a Zach LaVine trade include the reputationally-shrewdest GMs in the league². Presti isn’t perfect, and admitted as much in his failed deadline deal for Gordon Hayward, but that even shows that Charlotte, who had a lame-duck executive at the time, was able to be better at this than Chicago.

Then as to the possibility that the Bulls are totally changing their direction and thus receiving Josh Giddey is merely one piece that’s unfair to look at in isolation and will look better in this hypothetical larger context of a rebuild: nah.

Giddey is indeed very young, younger even than several prospects in next week’s draft³. That means he has potential to be sure and has showed more raw productivity in his first few years than other players at his age, but he also has displayed very glaring holes.

Our old pal Ricky at SBNation has this scouting report that suggests Giddey is a guard version of Nikola Vucevic (Bulls version):

Giddey has an excellent combination of size (6’8) and passing vision. He hits the glass hard as a rebounder, and has some skill in transition. The problem with Giddey is that he simply doesn’t threaten the defense much as a scorer whether he’s on or off the ball. He’s not just a bad outside shooter — he’s a reluctant one, too. Giddey often turned down open shots last season. Eventually, teams just stopped covering him in the halfcourt.

Giddey also just doesn’t offer much power as a driver. He averaged only 2.2 free throw attempts per-36 minutes last season, a stunningly low number for a tall guard. His lack of speed and strength has always been a handicap, and the lack of improvement in his jump shot has made him almost unplayable in high leverage situations.

Indeed, Giddey was effectively played off the court when put in higher pressure situations, not only as a non-threat on offense but attackable defensively:

When put under the bright lights of the playoffs as the Thunder somewhat-unexpectedly made it to the Western Conference (the real conference!) finals, it was a frequent and loud analysis that Giddey couldn’t hang. It was such a glaring weakness that Nate Duncan suggested (I think somewhat jokingly) today that Presti was playing a long game by keeping Giddey in the starting lineup to keep his trade value high. And indeed you can see some facile evaluation out there overvaluing counting stats, and designation of ‘starter on a great team’ versus the ‘role player on a bad team’ like Caruso.

I’m actually not that concerned about Giddey’s exposed flaws. Giddey won’t be put in a position to be exposed here, because the Bulls are not in that league. They are a second-division club aspiring to be average and maintain a low payroll, or perhaps after this summer a non-aspiring tanker with an even lower payroll. Caruso is a ceiling-raiser that helped gain last year’s Bulls up to ten lucky victories and it still wasn’t close to enough. Giddey is now moving off of a contending Thunder team to the Bulls, where he can have the ball more and given more space to grow. I don’t have any faith it’ll be a better facility to grow, because though they did finally hire a shooting coach the AKME Bulls have not shown any player development successes to the level of the Thunder.

The trade return analysis here is less about Giddey as a single prospect, and more to philosophy of AKME roster construction where they only received a single prospect. What appears to be consensus around actually-good executives is humility in the face of the great unknown that is young players and thus it’s better to have multiple shots, many multiple shots, at getting one of these evaluations correct. The Bulls, in contrast, seem to intentionally limit their attempts and laser-focus their criteria when they do make one. In the immediate aftermath of this trade, it was leaked to Woj (you thought he had an independent thought on basketball?) that Giddey is a replacement for Lonzo Ball. Nevermind the inaccuracy of that (though like I said, Giddey is still so young that it’s not impossible that he improves like Ball did), but why are the Bulls not being more broad? They need any and all young talent, full stop. And while I do think Giddey’s contract situation is overblown as a negative⁴, it does put more urgency on getting this single player right.

The AKME era has seen bad transactions, then no transactions, now bad ones again. We can’t gain complete insight in the NBA trade market, but it very quickly came out from sources and one of the principals themselves⁵ sure looks like Caruso had more value than this whereas Giddey was declining in value. And why did the Bulls feel the urgency to get this deal done before the draft and free agency, especially when there were no 2024 picks involved?

One thing to remember when you have morons running your favorite NBA team is that there is still a chance they get lucky. So it makes them even bigger morons that they don’t know they’re morons, and thus instead are further relying on their failed processes, instead of gaining more chances to obviate them.

1. another reminder to be careful what you wish for: if this is their version of a rebuilding trade, another indicator that AKME would screw up a rebuild

2. Utah (Danny Ainge) and Philadelphia (Darryl Morey)

3. including the next promise recipient, Devin Carter, who now looks to be even more telegraphed as the Bulls pick after his veteran comp Caruso has been shipped out

4. Giddey only has one year left on his rookie deal, but after which will be a restricted free agent. So even if the Bulls give Giddey a substantial raise it’ll probably be less than he would get on the open market, and you’re paying for his prime seasons.

5. not AK, of course, he doesn’t even offer a ‘good luck’ to Caruso in the Bulls press release