the Bulls have rebuilt LaVine and Vucevic's reputation, not their trade value

what good does it do the Bulls if their "stars" perform three years too late?

I said 15 games wasn’t trends-worthy, but how about after 22 games?

Since our last check-in on this pointless (if not entirely hopeless¹) season, many aspects of it have remained fairly consistent:

• 1st in pace, 5th in 3PAr, terrible defense (27th)

• With 9 wins and seemingly unable to string together victories even when shooting well, they’re firmly in the top ten of the tank race and I’m not worried at all they will be “too good”²

• The “young players with experience” cohort that this season was supposed to be about³ are all worse and/or hurt⁴

What has improved since the last check-in post is the team’s offense, now up to 13th in basketball.

Though it’s almost entirely due to the hot starts from guys who shouldn’t be on the team anymore, Nikola Vucevic and Zach LaVine.

Always dangerous to assume what Arturas Karnisovas and crew are thinking, but another goal his season was to raise the trade value of both.

I’m not convinced that has been achieved. Instead more convinced that what we’re seeing (and Lonzo Ball’s year is a part of this too) is play that allows AKME retroactive self-congratulations for their last team that they built. But now, while the pseudo-stars are playing well, they’re three years older and worse defensively and don’t have DeMar DeRozan or Alex Caruso and so the team is bad.

I’ve been banging this drum for months, maintaining that there was no scenario where trade value would meaningfully increase. So I think this good-albeit-likely-unsustainable play more just stabilized the value to where it was before the end of last season: when LaVine+Ball were hurt, and Vuc was shooting <30% on threes. Due to their injury history, age, and contracts (especially in the new CBA), this doesn’t help enough.

Nikola Vucevic

Vuc - and you have to, under these circumstances, “hand it to him” - has been remarkable shooting the three this season. At 34 years old and always below 60% true shooting percentage, he’s at 68% TS% buoyed by not only making threes at a superlative rate (47.6%) but at the highest attempts in his career: 32.6% of his field goals are threes, up from 25.8% last year. That’s bona fide stretch five stuff!

The problem, and this has only gotten worse as he enters his mid-30s, is that Vuc is so slow defensively you can’t have him be your starting center. Shooting this well (which any acquiring team knows is unlikely to sustain anyway), and being a good defensive rebounder, screen-setter, and passer doesn’t make up for that. You can see that calculation play out on this current bad team.

Any contender knows they’ll likely be benching Vuc in the playoffs. Would any team want a $20M backup center?

Though teams facing injury issues may not worry about that yet and need someone to plug in now, acquiring Vuc means that team is obligating $21.5M the following season to a 35-year-old.

Vuc has played well. The public perception is shifting: heck, he may even get an All Star selection. But his trade value should still be very low. If the Bulls can simply get out from next year’s money (or receive someone younger and more athletic to make that money) they should take the deal.

Zach LaVine

LaVine’s had a bounce-back season. His counting stats are inflated due to the Bulls insanely high pace, but he’s shooting well and looks good physically. All this “bounce-back” means then is that he’s not injured, and isn’t behaving like a malcontent. He’s merely “back” to being an overpaid scorer-only player, plus now playing out of position so his defensive faults are even more glaring.

While Zach would fit in a playoff rotation better than Vuc, the problem there is he makes over double the salary. No contender has $40M in dead money to where LaVine is a no-brainer addition, instead he’d have to be an upgrade over someone already playing a lot of minutes. This makes it a lot tougher⁵ to think of suitors, and how AKME already botched this by not doing a deal in the offseason.

From third-tier rumormonger Jake Fischer, even with LaVine playing well the start of the season we can safely eliminate three prior suitors of the Kings, Warriors, and Pistons.

Prior speculation (if not outright rumor) suggested the Clippers and Heat would be interested. But, to reiterate, due to the salary structure within any team it wouldn’t be simply additive, LaVine has to mean a clear upgrade over their very similar players already in that role:

PER is far from perfect, but I feel a concise way to reflect several things that all three players don’t excel at: rebounding and playmaking. And it ignores defense which none of these players are good at either.

That brings us back, as always, to the Lakers. They’re a franchise more easily duped by goosed-up stats and star wattage. But even looking more precisely, LaVine would be that clear upgrade over who he’d be replacing in the rotation:

So, as always, it’s looking like Lakers or bust for LaVine. But, as I’ve said for months and months now, there’s nothing LaVine can do himself to make this happen. It’s all on the Lakers relative desperation.

And while the Lakers have had an up-and-down season ultimately looking Western Conference play-in bound yet again⁶ , their true needs are more on defense and at forward. LaVine (and Vuc) won’t help them there, and they really only have the trade capital to address one team weakness.

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Another major factor in speculating Bulls trades is that there are other sellers out there. The Nets, Jazz, Wizards, all have veterans who may not be better players or playing as well (Dennis Schroeder aside) but have more palatable contracts⁷.

So, is this all to say it’s “the market” and nothing the Bulls can do? I mean…yes, and they should really be reducing minutes for LaVine and Vuc as to lower injury risk.

But that’s unique to the Bulls, because AKME has been uniquely terrible at negotiating and trading. So I expect the Bulls to either never lower their asking price (including their reticence to take on salary) and continue to hold, or finally make a move with either but they’ll be trades that are stupid.

1. There was a very young player who put up a career high in that ‘contest’ versus the banged-up Nets. Matas Buzelis did as well.

2. As I said last week, it’s unreasonable to think the Bulls can out-tank those with such experience and aptitude at it. The East is dismal for the 25th year in a row, but play-in losers are set in the lottery by record. If they are actually in the play-in at the end of the season then we’ll have the hilarious discussion of whether they should throw the game.

3. beyond “home court advantage”, aka “make sure our paying customers keep paying”. Sure, their home record still stinks and most opponents will use their trip to Chicago as a time to rest their best players, but the NBA Cup meant that they could provide a fun night out for the patrons in that Celtics game.

4. except the oldest looking 24 year old in basketball, Talen Horton-Tucker

5. A lot of this post is discussion starting points for doing thing thing I love most in the comments: hypothetical trades the Bulls would never do

6. Eliminate conferences! Why does the league want to harm a big market team like the Lakers and subsidize hope for an irrelevant one like the Bulls?

7. Lonzo Ball makes $21M but is expiring. To his case I just think it’d be hard for a contender to convince themselves he can be relied upon in the spring, no matter what outright miracle his comeback has shown to be already