They are complementary players, but you wonder how much better the Bulls would be if they had Gafford and WCJ sharing the center position providing real rim protection, surrounded by DeRozan, White, Ayo and whomever they would have drafted with the picks they gave to Orlando. (And Jones would clearly help off the bench.)
DJJ also starts for the Mavs, but no matter. Worth considering just how bad the transactions have been when the Bulls move on from young guys. Like, I don't think they have done a good move like that since moving Eddie Curry. I'm sure our guy Granville will correct me if I'm missing something. And the one that looked like it made the most sense at the time (Lauri) turned out to be the worst one yet lol.
Wendell now has 3x as many playoff wins as Vucevic. The worst thing you can say about him — that he's irrelevant to the Magic's success — is the same thing you can say about Vucevic, though with more sarcasm and air quotes around "success."
right it's astounding that AK looked at Vuc as a guy who'd vault them a level and keep their own draft picks less valuable. Anybody simply reading John Hollinger in 2009 would suspect Vuc was a paper All-Star at best (and then we got less than his best)
DJJ is an excellent role player. Wonder how much effort the Bulls made to sign DJJ to a new contract. DJJ would have really helped this season. This past season, the Bulls were so thin inside.
he originally had said he was going to exercise his option. I don't think they had much rights to him. Actually according to B-R his option with the bulls is more than he signed for with the mavs. Guess he knew a shitshow when he saw it.
I think we're kind of losing the plot if lamenting DJJ. Though he was younger than I thought (27) that is not the kind of thing that's holding back the team. He can start for the Mavs because they have better top-end talent.
Gafford is the bigger concern in how it illustrates AK's player evaluation. Which seems to be you start with Vuc is an All-NBA talent and everything and everyone else has to be subservient to that
As soon as we traded Gafford I saw what a huge mistake it was and how right some jagoff bloggers and commenters were about how foolish it is to try to evaluate a developing player without a competent point guard. Westbrook in his last really effective season was just throwing lobs for Gafford and everything he caught he slammed. It was obvious he was going to do exactly what Dallas needed with Irving and Doncic throwing the ball up for him.
Hilariously Lively was taken 1 pick after the 2nd pick we traded to Orlando for Vuc. I mean you can look at this team and see all these things that Karnisovas just threw away for no good reason.
May 4·edited May 4Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger
I fee like Rain Man now.
They probably did okay with Mirotic (a 1st and a nearly pointless 2nd round pick swap option that they used to draft Ayo, but they only moved up 2 places and he probably would have been available anyway) but blew it by wasting that pick on Chandler Hutchison.
But a year later the Pelicans flipped Nikola for 4 #2 picks so it's fair to say we probably got hosed there, too.
Hard to think of too many others. Sometimes they made the right call but after Curry they rarely profited very much from the good calls and often lost big on the bad ones. A common thread is constantly devaluing players who aren't elite defensively: they moved on from Crawford, Ben Gordon, Lauri, Bobby Portis, etc. almost with contempt. Sure there's only 1 all star season among them but they were far from trash and even if you hated those guys, they were never more valuable than they were on rookie scale contracts or extensions.
Edit: Thabo for the rights to Taj? That's probably a push, right? The irony is that Thabo was in his 3rd season but the rookie Taj was the same age lol
You completely missed the point, which was that the Bulls traded a young player here and evaluating the return. Here they traded a guy who had a long career (and who they continually tried to replace when they needed a defensive complement to Rose) for a draft pick who actually turned out. Which is better for what they got for Lauri, McDermott, or Gordon, for whom they got nothing at all, though trading up for the #13 overall pick and then sending that player out for a #26 pick 3 years later isn't exactly a high value transaction.
i was just making a funny comment mostly. though I'm interested, I'm not following your thoughts on this reply, thabo was here quite awhile and was pretty much just bad i thought. getting taj for him (which i didn't even remember) is a huge win, especially for the gd bulls, i completely agree they totally suck ass in almost every transaction they pull. I'm still livid about the doug crap, and i liked doug. not anywhere near as much as john fkn paxson did though, christ
Moon's comment was "Worth considering just how bad the transactions have been when the Bulls move on from young guys. Like, I don't think they have done a good move like that since moving Eddie Curry."
Here they actually got something when "moving on from a young guy," though just based on draft positions it was much less than what they started with (particularly considering Paxson moved up to draft Thabo, then just dumped him 2.5 years later). So it's not exactly a huge win. It looks very good in comparison to their usual dismissal of young players who are shoved around to different positions and then traded for garbage.
Thabo was a role player but started for 5 years on an OKC team that went to the Finals and averaged 55 wins a year. I would have rather have Thabo in those grim Keith Bogans/Rip Hamilton years when the team was trying to cheap out on finding a defender in the backcourt to put next to Rose (OKC had the same problem with Westbrook).
You know, at first I feel a bit embarrassed for the Bulls front office, but you know, then I'm reminded that I just don't care. This was all entirely predictable, and worse, avoidable. I could have finished under . 500 not made the playoffs, and spent my off-season having picks, promising young players in hand, and a strategy for rebuilding, or do the exact same same thing, but without the assets.
There's just no strategy. No plan. No execution. Just gut feelings, Stupid reactionary moves, shaky scouting, and treating your fan base like no one knows the time of day.
I can no longer care about this team. I'm paying attention now to see how dumb it gets. It's hard to imagine the Bulls being interesting again. Maybe in 10-15 years they'll fall ass backwards into another guard at the top of the draft that is too good for this cheap, dumb and lazy organization to f*** it up.
too much of bad history with the bulls picking players/drafts and they play for a couple years, get somewhat developed. Get traded and on to be star players. Brand, Gafford, Ron Artest, Tyson Chandler, and Jamal Crawford. AKME constantly preach about being competitive. Followed by the word "mediocre". And for intents and purposes that is what the team has become. Then you have the curse of career threatening injuries. Jay Williams, DRose, Lonzo
By saying there's no way out you let AK off the hook. Sign Williams under market and you have three young interesting cheap players. Looks like Zach may have some value now. Package hustle/injury winner Caruso to get off Vuc. Try to keep DeRozan at two years, let him average 35 and pawn him off at the trade deadline. Tank into the best lottery in years (outside of Wemby). That's a rebuild with pieces to add to and a potential rookie star. That's not a hopeless place to be at all. This is isn't A to C it's A to B to C... And yes AK has to realize he has to take some big first steps. I agree he's delusional but maybe ME or ME's replacement can light a fire under him.
I agree with you, it's not that I think (or even really said here) that there's no way out, it's that it is very difficult and AK has proven to be incapable of even simple things.
So I am not optimistic about executing any strategy, but will still use this space to pose them. And spoiler alert I happen to agree with a lot of your ideas. A brazen sell-off would let AK off the hook too
Yep. I was using the royal you/we. I actually wanted to disagree with you more as well but our thoughts are two sides of the same (rational) coin IMO...
Both Sixers and Bucks eliminated last night, I don't think they are going to do anything too drastic. Or at least anything resembling "taking on Zach LaVine" drastic
I'd love to get Brook Lopez but don't see how it's possible. This will be my next post, but the new CBA rules tightening spending by the big market (Milwaukee) teams were pushed by small market (Chicago) but unintentionally screwing themselves out of LaVine suitors. So the Bucks perhaps want to change out Middleton but Zach literally makes too much.
If Philly can't get George I wouldn't be shocked to see them pursue Demar. Old as he is, it's still a tremendous upgrade on the wing that they could get on a relative bargain.
yes I was thinking through what happens if George goes to Philly. They'd still be so far over the cap to where they'd only offer DeMar the taxpayer MLE. But could work out sign-and-trade.
They also could be a plausible LaVine destination then. Though I think for age+experience reasons they'd prefer DeRozan, in terms of playing style and fit LaVine could make more sense next to Kawhi+Harden
My preferred reset scenario is to let DeMar go (which sucks, but presuming there's no great S+T and he's not coming back on a sweetheart deal), hang on to Zach to let him play and get numbers to build his value back up, send Caruso and Vooch for Wiggins and Moody and draft capital. The cherry on top would be to send Dalen Terry and the Portland conditional 1st back to them for Timelord (if not re-sign Drummond to start). Re-sign Pat, draft BPA, and sign a backup C if you didn't draft one.
Team gets younger, taking swings on a handful of potential rehab and flip guys, and it's much more likely you're hanging on to your 1st round draft pick in 2025.
Yeah I totally get that. It's time for Zach to move on, and if somehow a decent deal appears in the off-season, they should jump on it. I'm just assuming that doesn't happen. But hey, maybe somebody like Orlando or Sacramento talk themselves into it.
Seeing Daniel Gafford start for the Mavs and Derrick Jones Jr. start for the Clippers sort of says it all for me.
They are complementary players, but you wonder how much better the Bulls would be if they had Gafford and WCJ sharing the center position providing real rim protection, surrounded by DeRozan, White, Ayo and whomever they would have drafted with the picks they gave to Orlando. (And Jones would clearly help off the bench.)
DJJ also starts for the Mavs, but no matter. Worth considering just how bad the transactions have been when the Bulls move on from young guys. Like, I don't think they have done a good move like that since moving Eddie Curry. I'm sure our guy Granville will correct me if I'm missing something. And the one that looked like it made the most sense at the time (Lauri) turned out to be the worst one yet lol.
They dumped Tyrus Thomas at the right time. Though the conditional first in return became seconds
And I don't think WCJ will come back to haunt them. The Vuc trade wouldn't have been a problem if Vuc didn't suck
They should include Dalen Terry in an outgoing package if he has any positive value.,bc that will not be the case in a year
Wendell now has 3x as many playoff wins as Vucevic. The worst thing you can say about him — that he's irrelevant to the Magic's success — is the same thing you can say about Vucevic, though with more sarcasm and air quotes around "success."
right it's astounding that AK looked at Vuc as a guy who'd vault them a level and keep their own draft picks less valuable. Anybody simply reading John Hollinger in 2009 would suspect Vuc was a paper All-Star at best (and then we got less than his best)
DJJ is an excellent role player. Wonder how much effort the Bulls made to sign DJJ to a new contract. DJJ would have really helped this season. This past season, the Bulls were so thin inside.
he originally had said he was going to exercise his option. I don't think they had much rights to him. Actually according to B-R his option with the bulls is more than he signed for with the mavs. Guess he knew a shitshow when he saw it.
I think we're kind of losing the plot if lamenting DJJ. Though he was younger than I thought (27) that is not the kind of thing that's holding back the team. He can start for the Mavs because they have better top-end talent.
Gafford is the bigger concern in how it illustrates AK's player evaluation. Which seems to be you start with Vuc is an All-NBA talent and everything and everyone else has to be subservient to that
As soon as we traded Gafford I saw what a huge mistake it was and how right some jagoff bloggers and commenters were about how foolish it is to try to evaluate a developing player without a competent point guard. Westbrook in his last really effective season was just throwing lobs for Gafford and everything he caught he slammed. It was obvious he was going to do exactly what Dallas needed with Irving and Doncic throwing the ball up for him.
Hilariously Lively was taken 1 pick after the 2nd pick we traded to Orlando for Vuc. I mean you can look at this team and see all these things that Karnisovas just threw away for no good reason.
I fee like Rain Man now.
They probably did okay with Mirotic (a 1st and a nearly pointless 2nd round pick swap option that they used to draft Ayo, but they only moved up 2 places and he probably would have been available anyway) but blew it by wasting that pick on Chandler Hutchison.
But a year later the Pelicans flipped Nikola for 4 #2 picks so it's fair to say we probably got hosed there, too.
Hard to think of too many others. Sometimes they made the right call but after Curry they rarely profited very much from the good calls and often lost big on the bad ones. A common thread is constantly devaluing players who aren't elite defensively: they moved on from Crawford, Ben Gordon, Lauri, Bobby Portis, etc. almost with contempt. Sure there's only 1 all star season among them but they were far from trash and even if you hated those guys, they were never more valuable than they were on rookie scale contracts or extensions.
Edit: Thabo for the rights to Taj? That's probably a push, right? The irony is that Thabo was in his 3rd season but the rookie Taj was the same age lol
taj is one of the greatest players to ever put on this uniform. I'm shocked and appalled you could even call him close to the likes of...ugh, thabo
*spits*
lol k then
You completely missed the point, which was that the Bulls traded a young player here and evaluating the return. Here they traded a guy who had a long career (and who they continually tried to replace when they needed a defensive complement to Rose) for a draft pick who actually turned out. Which is better for what they got for Lauri, McDermott, or Gordon, for whom they got nothing at all, though trading up for the #13 overall pick and then sending that player out for a #26 pick 3 years later isn't exactly a high value transaction.
i was just making a funny comment mostly. though I'm interested, I'm not following your thoughts on this reply, thabo was here quite awhile and was pretty much just bad i thought. getting taj for him (which i didn't even remember) is a huge win, especially for the gd bulls, i completely agree they totally suck ass in almost every transaction they pull. I'm still livid about the doug crap, and i liked doug. not anywhere near as much as john fkn paxson did though, christ
Moon's comment was "Worth considering just how bad the transactions have been when the Bulls move on from young guys. Like, I don't think they have done a good move like that since moving Eddie Curry."
Here they actually got something when "moving on from a young guy," though just based on draft positions it was much less than what they started with (particularly considering Paxson moved up to draft Thabo, then just dumped him 2.5 years later). So it's not exactly a huge win. It looks very good in comparison to their usual dismissal of young players who are shoved around to different positions and then traded for garbage.
Thabo was a role player but started for 5 years on an OKC team that went to the Finals and averaged 55 wins a year. I would have rather have Thabo in those grim Keith Bogans/Rip Hamilton years when the team was trying to cheap out on finding a defender in the backcourt to put next to Rose (OKC had the same problem with Westbrook).
Jimmy Johns is still on a playoff roster. Let that one sink in.
You know, at first I feel a bit embarrassed for the Bulls front office, but you know, then I'm reminded that I just don't care. This was all entirely predictable, and worse, avoidable. I could have finished under . 500 not made the playoffs, and spent my off-season having picks, promising young players in hand, and a strategy for rebuilding, or do the exact same same thing, but without the assets.
There's just no strategy. No plan. No execution. Just gut feelings, Stupid reactionary moves, shaky scouting, and treating your fan base like no one knows the time of day.
Sad.
"stupid reactionary moves" doesn't even work here because there would have to be any moves to begin with!
I can no longer care about this team. I'm paying attention now to see how dumb it gets. It's hard to imagine the Bulls being interesting again. Maybe in 10-15 years they'll fall ass backwards into another guard at the top of the draft that is too good for this cheap, dumb and lazy organization to f*** it up.
too much of bad history with the bulls picking players/drafts and they play for a couple years, get somewhat developed. Get traded and on to be star players. Brand, Gafford, Ron Artest, Tyson Chandler, and Jamal Crawford. AKME constantly preach about being competitive. Followed by the word "mediocre". And for intents and purposes that is what the team has become. Then you have the curse of career threatening injuries. Jay Williams, DRose, Lonzo
By saying there's no way out you let AK off the hook. Sign Williams under market and you have three young interesting cheap players. Looks like Zach may have some value now. Package hustle/injury winner Caruso to get off Vuc. Try to keep DeRozan at two years, let him average 35 and pawn him off at the trade deadline. Tank into the best lottery in years (outside of Wemby). That's a rebuild with pieces to add to and a potential rookie star. That's not a hopeless place to be at all. This is isn't A to C it's A to B to C... And yes AK has to realize he has to take some big first steps. I agree he's delusional but maybe ME or ME's replacement can light a fire under him.
I agree with you, it's not that I think (or even really said here) that there's no way out, it's that it is very difficult and AK has proven to be incapable of even simple things.
So I am not optimistic about executing any strategy, but will still use this space to pose them. And spoiler alert I happen to agree with a lot of your ideas. A brazen sell-off would let AK off the hook too
Yep. I was using the royal you/we. I actually wanted to disagree with you more as well but our thoughts are two sides of the same (rational) coin IMO...
Both Sixers and Bucks eliminated last night, I don't think they are going to do anything too drastic. Or at least anything resembling "taking on Zach LaVine" drastic
I'd love to get Brook Lopez but don't see how it's possible. This will be my next post, but the new CBA rules tightening spending by the big market (Milwaukee) teams were pushed by small market (Chicago) but unintentionally screwing themselves out of LaVine suitors. So the Bucks perhaps want to change out Middleton but Zach literally makes too much.
If Philly can't get George I wouldn't be shocked to see them pursue Demar. Old as he is, it's still a tremendous upgrade on the wing that they could get on a relative bargain.
yes I was thinking through what happens if George goes to Philly. They'd still be so far over the cap to where they'd only offer DeMar the taxpayer MLE. But could work out sign-and-trade.
They also could be a plausible LaVine destination then. Though I think for age+experience reasons they'd prefer DeRozan, in terms of playing style and fit LaVine could make more sense next to Kawhi+Harden
My preferred reset scenario is to let DeMar go (which sucks, but presuming there's no great S+T and he's not coming back on a sweetheart deal), hang on to Zach to let him play and get numbers to build his value back up, send Caruso and Vooch for Wiggins and Moody and draft capital. The cherry on top would be to send Dalen Terry and the Portland conditional 1st back to them for Timelord (if not re-sign Drummond to start). Re-sign Pat, draft BPA, and sign a backup C if you didn't draft one.
Team gets younger, taking swings on a handful of potential rehab and flip guys, and it's much more likely you're hanging on to your 1st round draft pick in 2025.
Coby / Ball
Zach / Ayo / Bitim?
Wiggins / Moody / Green?
PWill / Craig? / Phillips
Timelord / ???
+BPA draft and FAs.
i know you have to play him but, god i just don't want to watch zach anymore
Yeah I totally get that. It's time for Zach to move on, and if somehow a decent deal appears in the off-season, they should jump on it. I'm just assuming that doesn't happen. But hey, maybe somebody like Orlando or Sacramento talk themselves into it.
I'm crossing my toes
Derrick Jones plays for Dallas
I posted on here where I recommended we pay up to get Brunson and trade Lavine before we need to pay him. Everyone thought I was crazy
Wow I feel bad I can't access the archives for this great story to be confirmed
sucks that we won't even know if Coby White could handle the playoffs better than Darius Garland is, and won't find out for years(?)