In order for a team building strategy to work for the Bulls, it has to yield good results even when it's poorly executed. Since I am not aware of any strategy that can reliably do that, it follows that discussing team strategy is, even by sports chatter standards, kinda pointless.
Like, I was in favor of building a team around Jimmy. Then when he was traded and the team sucked, I was in favor of tanking and basically hated every move from Vucevic on. I later realized that, since they're going to do a shit job regardless of which door they open, then their direction doesn't really matter. They just gotta stop being bad at their jobs.
Funny because it's true! Cant draft. Cant develop. Cant sign or trade well. Even pretty bad at properly handling injuries. Starting to seem like the only good thing that's happened to this franchise since Jordan was Thibs, which worked because he was a hard ass coach who gets the most out of mediocre players, and because Thibs just ignored management so their incompetence was less damaging cause Thibs was the shield to the players
Thibs didn't learn from Gar - the most important thing in a mom and pop shop is how much the mom and pop in charge like you. The money still rolls in either way thanks to everything MJ did 30 years ago so being good at your job is irrelevant and ultimately meaningless to Bulls org decision makers.
This organization has never done anything right but fall ass backwards into talent. It's darkly comical that their endless whining about "organizations win championships" got a pud like Jerry Krause into the basketball HOF.
Pud! I haven't heard that word in forever, nice selection. Yeah seems like our hopes are pinned on either a coach who goes rogue and is at odds with management, which would obviously make his job security tenuous, or for Michael Reinsdorf to somehow save the team by selling or pulling a 180 when Jerry dies. Which, I think Jerry is 87? Tick tock.
Can't draft is harsh. They drafted a project which may or may not yet make good but was better as a bench player in his 3rd year. They found a 2nd round player, the standard for 2nd rounders is "do they even see the floor". They drafted another project in Dalen Terry who to my eyes looked promising but who couldn't get minutes, and the competitive minutes he got didn't add up enough for me to say, "look at his remarkably low TO%".
As of now, their drafting could most charitiably be construed as a wash. Which, fair enough, there's some merit to saying "wait and see". But the major error so far is the risk that PAW may never show anything significant upon completion of his first contract with which to value him for a second contract, so that fourth pick just becomes a miss. Ayo is a defensive combo guard who can't shoot, sure keep him around but no big deal if we need to find a replacement. And Dalen and Marko don't play so who knows. But thus far and especially 2023, AK has gotten very little production from his draft picks
Rating Karnisovas' draft abilities based upon a 2nd rounder thrown in way over his head because of the org's unwillingness or inability to actually find a competent PG this year is pure comedy. It's like looking at the Hornets and saying, wow, look at all those draft picks who have taken the floor! Not having someone better than Ayo is not great praise for the man who drafted Ayo. A dozen games of Patrick Beverley made Ayo Dosunmu look like he belonged in the G-League. Patrick Beverley, we know, is not very good.
"Cant' draft" seems like a better conclusion than "can draft" on admittedly meager evidence (mostly because he traded away all his fucking picks).
Moon we're trying to have some semblance of hope here! Not get hit with a heavy dose of hitting the nail on the head about this front office and ownership! (Ha!)
Building through the draft is probably the strategy that comes closest.
The thing they really need to do is to stop relying on a strategy that requires spending while being under a mandate to avoid the luxury tax. They chased a bunch of guys to get incrementally better, only to run into the luxury tax and immediately dead-end their strategy. So now they have to feed us this horseshit about continuity and "actually we're a good team it's just that we suck sometimes."
This is really hard to get around. As a fan, I was having this debate elsewhere, and I think you're right that it's just a matter of "they're bad decision-makers".
So I say, hey, AK and the Reinsdorf's suck, and the response I get is, a circular logic sort of, "well, you just want guys to always make good decisions, but really, it's all luck, so you're just being unrealistic".
To which I say, bullshit. Luck is for losers.
Some strategies are more tolerant of bad decisions than others. And some workplace cultures are more rewarding of successful traits than others.
The Bulls, a team that still has Jim Paxson on its payroll, are not one of the workplace cultures that consistently rewards success and under AK, they have not implemented fault tolerant strategies.
Honestly, I'd be stoked if the bulls made a move for any of the guys listed here (even trae!). The bar for roster moves has been set so low by this FO that I'd take basically anything at this point.
I agree with the sentiment of your comment. But if they were to swing a deal for Trae Young. It would tell me they really have no clue how to build out a contending championship roster. You simply cannot build a team for that. With the type of salary Trae gets. And his limitations and inefficiencies as a player.
I totally agree with you about Trae, but I think the ship for building a contending championship roster with AKME has long sailed. As a fan my goals have completely shifted. I'm just sick of watching this roster as it currently stands, and another year of this sounds really, really bad
Agreed. I don't get the love affair with Trae at all. Him as your best player is a recipe for mediocrity. People like the flashy playoff performance against the Knicks but for the supposed next Steph, he is not a good 3 pt shooter.
Thibs has never been the one dimensional coach people claimed. Routinely puts out top-10 offenses. He does not give rookies a long leash but he does give them minutes in very clearly defined roles that so they can affect the game within their limitations. I love the man.
This is the thing: in both Chicago and Minny he was lambasted for "not playing rookies" but, I mean, he was given shit to work with. He doesn't let the rookies loose until they're 100% ready. I mean, look at Jimmy's development arc, and how well Quickley and Grimes are doing now.
I hated that narrative. Went back and looked, and it was just wrong. In Chicago, he played Omer Asik and Jimmy Butler more than usual for 30th and 2nd-round picks. McDermott probably should have played more, but he was a really slow developer (I'm no fan of his, but Thibodeau was, and McDermott is at least decent). In Minnesota, it was a bad move to draft Justin Patton, but he played Kris Dunn a lot a year before that. Josh Okogie got plenty of run.
He's either had bad players who didn't "deserve" time, or he played the good ones a lot. The ONLY argument against it is Doug McDermott, but I don't think anyone is too worried about that one.
This was all in Minnesota, and even now: Toppin, Quickley, Grimes, McBride are all playing.
not only that, but they tied the Spurs for the best record in the league with a 2nd best defense, and a 5th best offense. It's hard to argue they should have played a rookie more.
To go along with the article exercise. My preferences from each tier would be
1: Jaylen Brown
2: Jarrett Allen
3: Malcom Brogdon
After thinking about it. Surprisingly, Brogdon seems like he would be a really nice fit for the Bulls. If they can get a player disability exception for Lonzo.
No Giannis, no Joel and the Bulls somehow match up well against the Celtics. You never really know who's going to be out in the playoffs, it feels like there's a path here that the Bulls could actually do something. But Bulls gotta Bulls.
I feel like I'd rather have the marginal chance of keeping our pick. Watching the bulls flake out during winnable games in the playoffs would be horrible.
I'm in the same camp. I remember last year when Middleton went down and a spark of hope was ignited but was quickly doused because the Bulls couldn't stop Grayson Allen of all people.
With the seemingly endless stream of talent coming in to the league every year, rebuilding becomes both easier and harder. Easier because there are more useful players out there; harder because every team now can fill their rosters with useful players, and so the margin between good and great is thinner. I've generally been more pro- management than the baseline sentiment here at BaB, but I think the amount of talent available in the league makes it harder than ever to find an edge. I don't have confidence that the current regime has anything like the sophistication to be better than their peers. And of course ownership doesn't care to try.
So sure, let's go get Jaylen Brown. He's good and feels underappreciated by the Boston org. But we need like 5 other good young guys to go with him that fit together synergistically to ever hope to challenge the top echelon of teams.
There's no use keeping DeMar IMO (despite YFBB thoughts) unless you plan to dump him at the NEXT mid-season trade deadline in a complete rebuild. The move is to get movable, aggregate-able contracts for him -- players that can keep you at a scrappy .500 but also position you to send them away for the next disgruntled superstar. You need the pieces to make that move. That should be AK's priority. If you do that well, you not only land a star but you have the depth to not wipe your self out (like the Suns this year) when you do the swap. THAT is the continuity play done right.
Forgot to add. If you do NOT do something like this (or on the other extreme, dump and rebuild) then you aren't really doing your job if you are AKME. You are just wishing-praying-putting off getting let go. Which seems to be the reality we live in.
SPOT ON. Unfortunately for the loyal fans. I fully expect AK/ME are going to choose the hope and pray, try to stave off getting fired route. Making minor moves around the edges that ultimately wont move the needle either way. Hoping they can advance to the 2nd round somehow, against the odds. Claim "success"! Knowing full well that is the absolute ceiling of this roster. If everything fell right for them. And some luck was on their side.
i'd be ok with that move if I thought those players would keep them at scrappy .500
no LaVine-led team, with Vuc, and low-usage players (including at point guard, which I assume they will just never acquire) plus Patrick Williams sniffs .500 IMO
Any discussion about delusions should start with some self-analysis.
If you guys were to go over to Hoops Hype and look, they've got a thing where they rank various players "all-in-one" stats by how NBA teams actually respect them. The two top ranking systems are EPM and DARKO.
If you look at the Bulls, this is how they rate out:
DARKO EPM Avg Player
80 43 61.5. Zach LaVine Starter
76 56 66. Alex Caruso Starter
92 40 66 DeMar DeRozan Starter
86 174 130. Javonte Green Starter
62 208 135. Derrick Jones Jr. Starter
102 175 138.5 Andre Drummond Starter/Role
147 189 168. Coby White Starter/Role
201 153 177. Nikola Vucevic Role
258 242 250. Patrick Williams Role
267 235 251. Patrick Beverley Role
291 328 309.5 Dalen Terry Bench
406 305 355.5 Ayo Dosunmu Fringe/Bench
I'm not going to quibble about particular ranks, but I'm going to point out that especially for a team with a cheap ass owner, you can't afford to overpay:
1. Zach is a problem because he's paid the max and he's not even an all-star level player. I don't forsee him making an all-star game again.
2. Vuc rates out as not even a starting level player. For the love of god, do not pay this fucking guy $20M. Even $15M is an overpay.
3. Javonte is pretty irrelevant because he looks cooked.
4. Drummond absolutely dies if he plays more than about 15 minutes, so don't go thinking he's the answer to anything.
5. I do not imagine any team trading significant value for DeMar. I can at least imagine a team talking itself into Zach.
Hence, my plan would be:
1. Trade Zach for everything we can get if we get a Murray/Mitchell/Gobert type offer. Don't expect this though. Would trade DeMar for a middle first and no bad salary coming back. Don't expect that to happen either.
2. Trade Caruso for everything we can get for him. Maybe a young player and a single later pick.
3. S&T Vuc if possible. If not, let him walk and replace him with cheaper guys. Sign him only if basically for the MLE for two years.
4. Resign Coby
5. With Vuc likely gone, use the MLE, BAE, and DPE (likely because they won't cut bait on Lonzo) to fill in on bigs and shooting.
Best case scenario would be something like:
Vuc S&T for RoCo
Coby for MLEish money
Naz Reid
Vasilie Micic for the DPE
Settle up Portland pick for this year's #23 (Draft Leonard Miller)
Trade Caruso to Kings for picks # 24 and #38 (Draft Trayce Jackson Davis and Brandon Podzienski)
G- Coby, Micic, Ayo
G- Zach, Podzienski
F- DeMar, Pat, Terry
F- RoCo, Miller, DJJ
C- Naz Reid, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Drummond
That ain't gonna set the world on fire, but it'd be a step in the right direction.
To me, with his contract, Zach is a negative asset. We can salary dump him, but not much else.
This is why I am on the Trey Young beat. It is bad enough in Atlanta that he may be gettable in a straight swap. And there is a player in there. Not sure if it will ever click, but has to be better than ... whatever this last season was.
Trade Caruso last trade deadline. His value was at an all-time high and there were a good 10 teams jockeying for extra pieces. Not sure we can get any value back now.
Trade DeMar last offseason. Signing him was the one good move they made but they could not capitalize on his value as they do not have the team in place. So swap him to someone who can use him. But I think that ship has sailed.
Honestly, all of these moves should have been made over the last year and a half. But AKME fell in love with a team that had clearly reached its high water mark and seem allergic to proactive actions.
Yes. But he is four years younger than Zach. More durable. Similar contracts.
And the difference between him and an efficient, productive player is not huge. I would not be surprised if he turned that corner within the duration of this contract.
So yeah, he is flawed. But I am not advocating giving anything up for him. Just swapping flawed players. Because I honestly think that years 24-29 for Trae are better than 28-33 for Zach.
I think this kind of move is a litmus test for clear thinking.
You can come up with all kinds of complicated reasons, that might matter some to say no.
But there are a several blatantly obvious reasons to say yes that there's no getting around.
1. He's much younger.
2. His inefficiency comes mostly trying to do stuff that Zach (and almost nobody else) has the ability to even try. I saw a stat showing he shoots like twice as many long 3s as anyone else in the league and makes a higher percentage than the other leaders.
3. His passing, handle, and court vision are, again, at the level where he routinely does a lot of stuff successfully that nobody else has the guts to try.
im not even trying to make an argument that Zach is better.
I'm just saying Trae Young isnt who i'd be going after.
He is a career 35% 3 point shooter...this is ok for a center but for a high volume shooting ball dominant guard, its pretty damn bad. He's had one truly above average 3 point shooting season out of 5.
And i know defense doesnt matter much but he is like a defenseless child out there...people search him out and attack him like starving dogs on a piece of steak.
fine with moving on from Zach but i just dont wanna hitch my wagon to Trae Young....there's no upside in that
Some of it is because these kinds of measures tend to give a lot of emphasis to +/- and defense stats. This is also why Drummond comes out higher than he probably "should", at least IMO.
I think for Caruso to really work, you need a Lebron/Luca type guy to play him off. I actually half wonder if we could get Dallas's pick for him.
Yeah, I get why it is but it's interesting to me that these measures haven't been able to take in mpg really. As you pointed out with Drummond as well, his numbers here look fine in his limited role, but isn't going to work if he's playing 30+mpg. It really is the problem with a lot of this team, it's a lot of dudes who can work situationally. Throw DJJ and Javonte in there too as dudes whose rankings look good here but were playing 15 mpg. Such a mess.
Ive got two thoughts on this. I thin that ratings themselves need to identify these disparities. Like, there are basically two kinds of ratings. Ones that look at totals and ones that look at rates. The ones that look at rates overestimate guys like Drummond who literally cant play 30+ minutes. One solution heres is to penalize fouling more heavily, whichi think has some other sensible justification. The ones that look at totals overestimate guys like Vuc, because he gets credit for being on the court a lot even if hes not really responsible for much of the winning.
Anyway… another thing i think is that having all of these misfit parts with really good numbers is an indicator of good coaching. What I think it shows is that the coach is actually really good at playing situational guys situationally and not mistaking them for guys who you can just throw out there whenever. But who knows
agreed on the ratings somehow taking that into account. that's obviously where i was going with it, since it is nonsensical that guys who play 15mpg are rated starter quality by the metric.
it's an interesting idea re: coaching. while i'm not a huge billy fan i do think there's something to that idea. but then it begs the question - if their ranking is that high, should they play more? if not starter minutes, until the metric more accurately portrays the level they contribute on the court? djj was benched for a bunch of games too. and the disparity between epm and darko is huge for him. plus, it may reflect that the guys were put in a position to succeed mostly, but it feels like the opposite of thibs where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts - these metrics seem to indicate we do actually have some individually decent performers even in a limited context but the team underachieved.
Probably they should. In the case of DJJ, I think there was just an organizational directive to prioritize Pat and Ayo. They were definitely on the "played too much" end and had terrible +/-
Overall, I was thinking about the difference between Donovan and Thibs the other day, and I really think it comes down to Billy being a "company man" and Thibs being all about winning.
I actually think Billy is a good coach as far as coaching goes, but he toes the company line on everything. Probably behind the scenes he demanded an extension to do it, because he knows one day the company will make him the scapegoat, but he still does it.
So when I think about WWTD?, I think Thibs would have pulled the plug on Ayo sooner and ramped up Coby. Probably would have played DJJ more and Vuc less.
My take on why Thibs always got more than the sum of the parts is that Thibs ALWAYS found a PG. I think he would have given Ayo about as long as he gave Marquis Teague, and then rolled with Coby, Dragic, and Caruso. Because he wants to win.
Billy doesn't think that way. Sure, he wants to win, but he's not going to bite the hand that feeds in order to do it.
Caruso is one of the 15 best defensive players in the league. That's pretty worthy of a starter role as long as you're not a detriment on offense, and he's not.
I think so. I mean, he has been his whole career. You can’t build around him, but I can look at the remaining 8 teams in the playoffs, and I think he’d have an argument to start for half of them. And then the 8 eliminated.
In the same way that defensive-minded bench units need a scorer who can just “get some buckets”, playoff-ready teams with multiple offensive weapons usually need at least one wing defender to make it work. (Cleveland would have loved to have him.)
I'm not arguing that he doesn't have value. But there's a reason he only avged 24 min a game. He wasn't as valuable as derozan to this team. Full stop.
he can be pretty detrimental to offense with his shaky shooting and overall reticence to shoot. he's not Thybulle out there but there were some games where it seems like it was 4 on 5 on offense bc nobody was actually guarding him bc they knew he wasn't a threat. That can clog up lanes and take away possible favorable matchups for your scorers.
he's a MLE-level player, and as you said he is so detrimental to roster construction because you have to play Vuc-ball on both ends (mid-post offense, attacking perimeter defense). It worked defensively this year but at the detriment of the offense, and as much discussion as DeRozan gets for not pairing with Zach, it's really with Vuc where you are limited.
And Vuc isn't even that good at what he's supposed to be unique for at center, 3-point shooting
AK has to swallow his pride here, but I don't know if it's pride anymore and just him not understanding Vuc as a player. He cited double-doubles!
Had Zach not started the 1st half of the season injured , he woulda made the ASG. He has a super slow start. I'm not sold on Zach as a #1 at all and he has a ton of flaws, but he is definitely an All-star caliber player. But I would easily trade him for a decent enough haul.
They really fucked themselves by not trading Vuc earlier this year.
I'd def trade Caruso, with the way he plays, he is going to start missing a lot of games over the next few years...we already saw it starting this year. You could easily get a mid 1st for him.
I'd trade DeMar for a 1st as well.
I like Naz Reid but i don't know about him being a plus starting center. And he isn't great shakes as a defender....better than Vuc but he seems more like a 20-25 minute really good backup center
Man, I can’t agree on Zach. Look at the all-stars this year and consider that Jimmy, Harden, Trae, Garland, and Brunson didn’t make it either.
In the East guys like AD and Fox didn’t make it. Can’t remember, maybe Ant too.
Point is, there are a whole lot of other other turns for filling those last couple allstar spots that are probably more deserving than Zach in any given year.
He has to jump like five to twn guys just to be the most notable guy to be snubbed.
he could make it over Harden and maybe Garland next year....but sure i hear what you're saying. i'm not saying he's a perennial Allstar guy, but he could make a few here and there
I would agree. Esp considering who knows how many if any more DDR will get. Kyrie is in the west now. KD as well. So some of the competition did thin out, I don't recall the east getting back anyone major of note.
While there's a ton of down in the dumps talk, honestly, there are some great suggestions here. If you could acquire a tier 2 and tier 1 player without giving up LaVine, DDR, or Williams, you probably have yourself a pretty good team. Let's say from tier 2 you get Jarrett Allen and from tier 3 you get Malcom Brogdon (though I think he might be more tier 2). You could start with:
PG - Brogdon
SG - LaVine
SF - DDR
PF - Williams
C - Allen
Perimeter defense is a bit lacking, but there's much better shooting than we currently start, and we add an elite interior defender. If you can manage to keep Caruso too, you can at least be competitive in the East. The real issue is salary. You are putting in 100mil into a starting lineup that probably doesn't win a championship, but they would be fun and probably pretty good.
trying to think of a team to take Lonzo's contract in return for more expensive players that are bad but not disabled
The Heat are interesting. Duncan Robinson's deal is nearly identical. Find a way to take Lowry ($29M, one year) to reduce MIA's 2023-4 cap number?
Oladipo is another $9.5M in dead money, though unlike Lonzo it's only for one year. Bulls also would acquire transfer rights to Shams reporting "optimism towards recovery"
Bulls problem is Lonzo contract. Worst in the league? Need to dump on a long term tank. Would Spurs take him for McDerrmot and Graham? Doubt it. Could we package with Caruso? That’s 30M some team would need to match by dumping even longer term contracts of non-playing garbage on us. Davis Bertans and Duncan Robinson come to mind…
Mikal Bridges, not sure where the Nets headed and they have lots of interesting starter fringe players. Seth Curry, Dinwiddie.
Yeah the fringe player options are there. I suppose Dinwiddie belongs in that Lowry/Conley group (better contract though)
Bridges I was thinking as untouchable but didn't realize next year is his age-27 season so if Nets may want to get younger, good call
In order for a team building strategy to work for the Bulls, it has to yield good results even when it's poorly executed. Since I am not aware of any strategy that can reliably do that, it follows that discussing team strategy is, even by sports chatter standards, kinda pointless.
Like, I was in favor of building a team around Jimmy. Then when he was traded and the team sucked, I was in favor of tanking and basically hated every move from Vucevic on. I later realized that, since they're going to do a shit job regardless of which door they open, then their direction doesn't really matter. They just gotta stop being bad at their jobs.
Moon this isn't good for subscriptions
Funny because it's true! Cant draft. Cant develop. Cant sign or trade well. Even pretty bad at properly handling injuries. Starting to seem like the only good thing that's happened to this franchise since Jordan was Thibs, which worked because he was a hard ass coach who gets the most out of mediocre players, and because Thibs just ignored management so their incompetence was less damaging cause Thibs was the shield to the players
Thibs didn't learn from Gar - the most important thing in a mom and pop shop is how much the mom and pop in charge like you. The money still rolls in either way thanks to everything MJ did 30 years ago so being good at your job is irrelevant and ultimately meaningless to Bulls org decision makers.
This organization has never done anything right but fall ass backwards into talent. It's darkly comical that their endless whining about "organizations win championships" got a pud like Jerry Krause into the basketball HOF.
Pud! I haven't heard that word in forever, nice selection. Yeah seems like our hopes are pinned on either a coach who goes rogue and is at odds with management, which would obviously make his job security tenuous, or for Michael Reinsdorf to somehow save the team by selling or pulling a 180 when Jerry dies. Which, I think Jerry is 87? Tick tock.
Can't draft is harsh. They drafted a project which may or may not yet make good but was better as a bench player in his 3rd year. They found a 2nd round player, the standard for 2nd rounders is "do they even see the floor". They drafted another project in Dalen Terry who to my eyes looked promising but who couldn't get minutes, and the competitive minutes he got didn't add up enough for me to say, "look at his remarkably low TO%".
As of now, their drafting could most charitiably be construed as a wash. Which, fair enough, there's some merit to saying "wait and see". But the major error so far is the risk that PAW may never show anything significant upon completion of his first contract with which to value him for a second contract, so that fourth pick just becomes a miss. Ayo is a defensive combo guard who can't shoot, sure keep him around but no big deal if we need to find a replacement. And Dalen and Marko don't play so who knows. But thus far and especially 2023, AK has gotten very little production from his draft picks
I'm convinced Marko is around as a money laundering scheme.
Rating Karnisovas' draft abilities based upon a 2nd rounder thrown in way over his head because of the org's unwillingness or inability to actually find a competent PG this year is pure comedy. It's like looking at the Hornets and saying, wow, look at all those draft picks who have taken the floor! Not having someone better than Ayo is not great praise for the man who drafted Ayo. A dozen games of Patrick Beverley made Ayo Dosunmu look like he belonged in the G-League. Patrick Beverley, we know, is not very good.
"Cant' draft" seems like a better conclusion than "can draft" on admittedly meager evidence (mostly because he traded away all his fucking picks).
Moon we're trying to have some semblance of hope here! Not get hit with a heavy dose of hitting the nail on the head about this front office and ownership! (Ha!)
Building through the draft is probably the strategy that comes closest.
The thing they really need to do is to stop relying on a strategy that requires spending while being under a mandate to avoid the luxury tax. They chased a bunch of guys to get incrementally better, only to run into the luxury tax and immediately dead-end their strategy. So now they have to feed us this horseshit about continuity and "actually we're a good team it's just that we suck sometimes."
"We were good for that half season before Lonzo had a knee injury and everybody else in the East made substantial upgrades."
This is really hard to get around. As a fan, I was having this debate elsewhere, and I think you're right that it's just a matter of "they're bad decision-makers".
So I say, hey, AK and the Reinsdorf's suck, and the response I get is, a circular logic sort of, "well, you just want guys to always make good decisions, but really, it's all luck, so you're just being unrealistic".
To which I say, bullshit. Luck is for losers.
Some strategies are more tolerant of bad decisions than others. And some workplace cultures are more rewarding of successful traits than others.
The Bulls, a team that still has Jim Paxson on its payroll, are not one of the workplace cultures that consistently rewards success and under AK, they have not implemented fault tolerant strategies.
They suck at everything.
Honestly, I'd be stoked if the bulls made a move for any of the guys listed here (even trae!). The bar for roster moves has been set so low by this FO that I'd take basically anything at this point.
I agree with the sentiment of your comment. But if they were to swing a deal for Trae Young. It would tell me they really have no clue how to build out a contending championship roster. You simply cannot build a team for that. With the type of salary Trae gets. And his limitations and inefficiencies as a player.
I totally agree with you about Trae, but I think the ship for building a contending championship roster with AKME has long sailed. As a fan my goals have completely shifted. I'm just sick of watching this roster as it currently stands, and another year of this sounds really, really bad
Agreed. I don't get the love affair with Trae at all. Him as your best player is a recipe for mediocrity. People like the flashy playoff performance against the Knicks but for the supposed next Steph, he is not a good 3 pt shooter.
Thibs watch:
Knicks hold Cleveland to 79 in a playoff game. In 2023. The man is a menace.
Cavs were shook in the first half. Defense was tough but they were just missing. Garland was bad.
Thibs, the young player hater - has Miles McBride playing playoff rotation minutes
Dalen Terry couldn't get more than 15 minutes in a tankfest end of season game
Thibs has never been the one dimensional coach people claimed. Routinely puts out top-10 offenses. He does not give rookies a long leash but he does give them minutes in very clearly defined roles that so they can affect the game within their limitations. I love the man.
hell yeah. i mean. i hate rooting for the knicks but still glad to see thibs do his thing!
This is the thing: in both Chicago and Minny he was lambasted for "not playing rookies" but, I mean, he was given shit to work with. He doesn't let the rookies loose until they're 100% ready. I mean, look at Jimmy's development arc, and how well Quickley and Grimes are doing now.
I hated that narrative. Went back and looked, and it was just wrong. In Chicago, he played Omer Asik and Jimmy Butler more than usual for 30th and 2nd-round picks. McDermott probably should have played more, but he was a really slow developer (I'm no fan of his, but Thibodeau was, and McDermott is at least decent). In Minnesota, it was a bad move to draft Justin Patton, but he played Kris Dunn a lot a year before that. Josh Okogie got plenty of run.
He's either had bad players who didn't "deserve" time, or he played the good ones a lot. The ONLY argument against it is Doug McDermott, but I don't think anyone is too worried about that one.
This was all in Minnesota, and even now: Toppin, Quickley, Grimes, McBride are all playing.
And the Jimmy one is skewed because his rookie season had the lockout and no training camp.
not only that, but they tied the Spurs for the best record in the league with a 2nd best defense, and a 5th best offense. It's hard to argue they should have played a rookie more.
To go along with the article exercise. My preferences from each tier would be
1: Jaylen Brown
2: Jarrett Allen
3: Malcom Brogdon
After thinking about it. Surprisingly, Brogdon seems like he would be a really nice fit for the Bulls. If they can get a player disability exception for Lonzo.
Let Vuc walk. Sign Christian wood, azubuike, Lyles, Nunn, Coby. Trade derosan for Jon issac. Maintain consistency…we’ll still suck
Terry blossoms over the summer and we're halfway there? Maybe that is the hope?
Livin' on a prayer!
We'll skip this draft, but we'll make it I swear.
No Giannis, no Joel and the Bulls somehow match up well against the Celtics. You never really know who's going to be out in the playoffs, it feels like there's a path here that the Bulls could actually do something. But Bulls gotta Bulls.
I feel like I'd rather have the marginal chance of keeping our pick. Watching the bulls flake out during winnable games in the playoffs would be horrible.
I'm in the same camp. I remember last year when Middleton went down and a spark of hope was ignited but was quickly doused because the Bulls couldn't stop Grayson Allen of all people.
With the seemingly endless stream of talent coming in to the league every year, rebuilding becomes both easier and harder. Easier because there are more useful players out there; harder because every team now can fill their rosters with useful players, and so the margin between good and great is thinner. I've generally been more pro- management than the baseline sentiment here at BaB, but I think the amount of talent available in the league makes it harder than ever to find an edge. I don't have confidence that the current regime has anything like the sophistication to be better than their peers. And of course ownership doesn't care to try.
So sure, let's go get Jaylen Brown. He's good and feels underappreciated by the Boston org. But we need like 5 other good young guys to go with him that fit together synergistically to ever hope to challenge the top echelon of teams.
There's no use keeping DeMar IMO (despite YFBB thoughts) unless you plan to dump him at the NEXT mid-season trade deadline in a complete rebuild. The move is to get movable, aggregate-able contracts for him -- players that can keep you at a scrappy .500 but also position you to send them away for the next disgruntled superstar. You need the pieces to make that move. That should be AK's priority. If you do that well, you not only land a star but you have the depth to not wipe your self out (like the Suns this year) when you do the swap. THAT is the continuity play done right.
Forgot to add. If you do NOT do something like this (or on the other extreme, dump and rebuild) then you aren't really doing your job if you are AKME. You are just wishing-praying-putting off getting let go. Which seems to be the reality we live in.
SPOT ON. Unfortunately for the loyal fans. I fully expect AK/ME are going to choose the hope and pray, try to stave off getting fired route. Making minor moves around the edges that ultimately wont move the needle either way. Hoping they can advance to the 2nd round somehow, against the odds. Claim "success"! Knowing full well that is the absolute ceiling of this roster. If everything fell right for them. And some luck was on their side.
i'd be ok with that move if I thought those players would keep them at scrappy .500
no LaVine-led team, with Vuc, and low-usage players (including at point guard, which I assume they will just never acquire) plus Patrick Williams sniffs .500 IMO
Any discussion about delusions should start with some self-analysis.
If you guys were to go over to Hoops Hype and look, they've got a thing where they rank various players "all-in-one" stats by how NBA teams actually respect them. The two top ranking systems are EPM and DARKO.
If you look at the Bulls, this is how they rate out:
DARKO EPM Avg Player
80 43 61.5. Zach LaVine Starter
76 56 66. Alex Caruso Starter
92 40 66 DeMar DeRozan Starter
86 174 130. Javonte Green Starter
62 208 135. Derrick Jones Jr. Starter
102 175 138.5 Andre Drummond Starter/Role
147 189 168. Coby White Starter/Role
201 153 177. Nikola Vucevic Role
258 242 250. Patrick Williams Role
267 235 251. Patrick Beverley Role
291 328 309.5 Dalen Terry Bench
406 305 355.5 Ayo Dosunmu Fringe/Bench
I'm not going to quibble about particular ranks, but I'm going to point out that especially for a team with a cheap ass owner, you can't afford to overpay:
1. Zach is a problem because he's paid the max and he's not even an all-star level player. I don't forsee him making an all-star game again.
2. Vuc rates out as not even a starting level player. For the love of god, do not pay this fucking guy $20M. Even $15M is an overpay.
3. Javonte is pretty irrelevant because he looks cooked.
4. Drummond absolutely dies if he plays more than about 15 minutes, so don't go thinking he's the answer to anything.
5. I do not imagine any team trading significant value for DeMar. I can at least imagine a team talking itself into Zach.
Hence, my plan would be:
1. Trade Zach for everything we can get if we get a Murray/Mitchell/Gobert type offer. Don't expect this though. Would trade DeMar for a middle first and no bad salary coming back. Don't expect that to happen either.
2. Trade Caruso for everything we can get for him. Maybe a young player and a single later pick.
3. S&T Vuc if possible. If not, let him walk and replace him with cheaper guys. Sign him only if basically for the MLE for two years.
4. Resign Coby
5. With Vuc likely gone, use the MLE, BAE, and DPE (likely because they won't cut bait on Lonzo) to fill in on bigs and shooting.
Best case scenario would be something like:
Vuc S&T for RoCo
Coby for MLEish money
Naz Reid
Vasilie Micic for the DPE
Settle up Portland pick for this year's #23 (Draft Leonard Miller)
Trade Caruso to Kings for picks # 24 and #38 (Draft Trayce Jackson Davis and Brandon Podzienski)
G- Coby, Micic, Ayo
G- Zach, Podzienski
F- DeMar, Pat, Terry
F- RoCo, Miller, DJJ
C- Naz Reid, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Drummond
That ain't gonna set the world on fire, but it'd be a step in the right direction.
To me, with his contract, Zach is a negative asset. We can salary dump him, but not much else.
This is why I am on the Trey Young beat. It is bad enough in Atlanta that he may be gettable in a straight swap. And there is a player in there. Not sure if it will ever click, but has to be better than ... whatever this last season was.
Trade Caruso last trade deadline. His value was at an all-time high and there were a good 10 teams jockeying for extra pieces. Not sure we can get any value back now.
Trade DeMar last offseason. Signing him was the one good move they made but they could not capitalize on his value as they do not have the team in place. So swap him to someone who can use him. But I think that ship has sailed.
Honestly, all of these moves should have been made over the last year and a half. But AKME fell in love with a team that had clearly reached its high water mark and seem allergic to proactive actions.
Any takers on Trae after last night?
nope
flaws were still loud and clear. he can be clutch at times but i can't over his inefficient scoring, awful defense and mid 3 point shooting
Yes. But he is four years younger than Zach. More durable. Similar contracts.
And the difference between him and an efficient, productive player is not huge. I would not be surprised if he turned that corner within the duration of this contract.
So yeah, he is flawed. But I am not advocating giving anything up for him. Just swapping flawed players. Because I honestly think that years 24-29 for Trae are better than 28-33 for Zach.
I think this kind of move is a litmus test for clear thinking.
You can come up with all kinds of complicated reasons, that might matter some to say no.
But there are a several blatantly obvious reasons to say yes that there's no getting around.
1. He's much younger.
2. His inefficiency comes mostly trying to do stuff that Zach (and almost nobody else) has the ability to even try. I saw a stat showing he shoots like twice as many long 3s as anyone else in the league and makes a higher percentage than the other leaders.
3. His passing, handle, and court vision are, again, at the level where he routinely does a lot of stuff successfully that nobody else has the guts to try.
im not even trying to make an argument that Zach is better.
I'm just saying Trae Young isnt who i'd be going after.
He is a career 35% 3 point shooter...this is ok for a center but for a high volume shooting ball dominant guard, its pretty damn bad. He's had one truly above average 3 point shooting season out of 5.
And i know defense doesnt matter much but he is like a defenseless child out there...people search him out and attack him like starving dogs on a piece of steak.
fine with moving on from Zach but i just dont wanna hitch my wagon to Trae Young....there's no upside in that
I am absolutely, 100% expecting them to pay Vucevic more than $20M.
Ugh.
I mean it's kind of wild to me that Caruso ranks that highly. Love the guy but he avged like 5ppg and doesn't play starter minutes.
Some of it is because these kinds of measures tend to give a lot of emphasis to +/- and defense stats. This is also why Drummond comes out higher than he probably "should", at least IMO.
I think for Caruso to really work, you need a Lebron/Luca type guy to play him off. I actually half wonder if we could get Dallas's pick for him.
Yeah, I get why it is but it's interesting to me that these measures haven't been able to take in mpg really. As you pointed out with Drummond as well, his numbers here look fine in his limited role, but isn't going to work if he's playing 30+mpg. It really is the problem with a lot of this team, it's a lot of dudes who can work situationally. Throw DJJ and Javonte in there too as dudes whose rankings look good here but were playing 15 mpg. Such a mess.
Ive got two thoughts on this. I thin that ratings themselves need to identify these disparities. Like, there are basically two kinds of ratings. Ones that look at totals and ones that look at rates. The ones that look at rates overestimate guys like Drummond who literally cant play 30+ minutes. One solution heres is to penalize fouling more heavily, whichi think has some other sensible justification. The ones that look at totals overestimate guys like Vuc, because he gets credit for being on the court a lot even if hes not really responsible for much of the winning.
Anyway… another thing i think is that having all of these misfit parts with really good numbers is an indicator of good coaching. What I think it shows is that the coach is actually really good at playing situational guys situationally and not mistaking them for guys who you can just throw out there whenever. But who knows
agreed on the ratings somehow taking that into account. that's obviously where i was going with it, since it is nonsensical that guys who play 15mpg are rated starter quality by the metric.
it's an interesting idea re: coaching. while i'm not a huge billy fan i do think there's something to that idea. but then it begs the question - if their ranking is that high, should they play more? if not starter minutes, until the metric more accurately portrays the level they contribute on the court? djj was benched for a bunch of games too. and the disparity between epm and darko is huge for him. plus, it may reflect that the guys were put in a position to succeed mostly, but it feels like the opposite of thibs where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts - these metrics seem to indicate we do actually have some individually decent performers even in a limited context but the team underachieved.
Probably they should. In the case of DJJ, I think there was just an organizational directive to prioritize Pat and Ayo. They were definitely on the "played too much" end and had terrible +/-
Overall, I was thinking about the difference between Donovan and Thibs the other day, and I really think it comes down to Billy being a "company man" and Thibs being all about winning.
I actually think Billy is a good coach as far as coaching goes, but he toes the company line on everything. Probably behind the scenes he demanded an extension to do it, because he knows one day the company will make him the scapegoat, but he still does it.
So when I think about WWTD?, I think Thibs would have pulled the plug on Ayo sooner and ramped up Coby. Probably would have played DJJ more and Vuc less.
My take on why Thibs always got more than the sum of the parts is that Thibs ALWAYS found a PG. I think he would have given Ayo about as long as he gave Marquis Teague, and then rolled with Coby, Dragic, and Caruso. Because he wants to win.
Billy doesn't think that way. Sure, he wants to win, but he's not going to bite the hand that feeds in order to do it.
Caruso is one of the 15 best defensive players in the league. That's pretty worthy of a starter role as long as you're not a detriment on offense, and he's not.
most offensive metrics i've seen show him as a negative. he isn't a net negative because of how good his defense rates though.
and again, would it look that good if he actually played starters minutes?
I think so. I mean, he has been his whole career. You can’t build around him, but I can look at the remaining 8 teams in the playoffs, and I think he’d have an argument to start for half of them. And then the 8 eliminated.
In the same way that defensive-minded bench units need a scorer who can just “get some buckets”, playoff-ready teams with multiple offensive weapons usually need at least one wing defender to make it work. (Cleveland would have loved to have him.)
I'm not arguing that he doesn't have value. But there's a reason he only avged 24 min a game. He wasn't as valuable as derozan to this team. Full stop.
he can be pretty detrimental to offense with his shaky shooting and overall reticence to shoot. he's not Thybulle out there but there were some games where it seems like it was 4 on 5 on offense bc nobody was actually guarding him bc they knew he wasn't a threat. That can clog up lanes and take away possible favorable matchups for your scorers.
agreed on the fear of retaining Vuc
he's a MLE-level player, and as you said he is so detrimental to roster construction because you have to play Vuc-ball on both ends (mid-post offense, attacking perimeter defense). It worked defensively this year but at the detriment of the offense, and as much discussion as DeRozan gets for not pairing with Zach, it's really with Vuc where you are limited.
And Vuc isn't even that good at what he's supposed to be unique for at center, 3-point shooting
AK has to swallow his pride here, but I don't know if it's pride anymore and just him not understanding Vuc as a player. He cited double-doubles!
Had Zach not started the 1st half of the season injured , he woulda made the ASG. He has a super slow start. I'm not sold on Zach as a #1 at all and he has a ton of flaws, but he is definitely an All-star caliber player. But I would easily trade him for a decent enough haul.
They really fucked themselves by not trading Vuc earlier this year.
I'd def trade Caruso, with the way he plays, he is going to start missing a lot of games over the next few years...we already saw it starting this year. You could easily get a mid 1st for him.
I'd trade DeMar for a 1st as well.
I like Naz Reid but i don't know about him being a plus starting center. And he isn't great shakes as a defender....better than Vuc but he seems more like a 20-25 minute really good backup center
Man, I can’t agree on Zach. Look at the all-stars this year and consider that Jimmy, Harden, Trae, Garland, and Brunson didn’t make it either.
In the East guys like AD and Fox didn’t make it. Can’t remember, maybe Ant too.
Point is, there are a whole lot of other other turns for filling those last couple allstar spots that are probably more deserving than Zach in any given year.
He has to jump like five to twn guys just to be the most notable guy to be snubbed.
he could make it over Harden and maybe Garland next year....but sure i hear what you're saying. i'm not saying he's a perennial Allstar guy, but he could make a few here and there
I would agree. Esp considering who knows how many if any more DDR will get. Kyrie is in the west now. KD as well. So some of the competition did thin out, I don't recall the east getting back anyone major of note.
While there's a ton of down in the dumps talk, honestly, there are some great suggestions here. If you could acquire a tier 2 and tier 1 player without giving up LaVine, DDR, or Williams, you probably have yourself a pretty good team. Let's say from tier 2 you get Jarrett Allen and from tier 3 you get Malcom Brogdon (though I think he might be more tier 2). You could start with:
PG - Brogdon
SG - LaVine
SF - DDR
PF - Williams
C - Allen
Perimeter defense is a bit lacking, but there's much better shooting than we currently start, and we add an elite interior defender. If you can manage to keep Caruso too, you can at least be competitive in the East. The real issue is salary. You are putting in 100mil into a starting lineup that probably doesn't win a championship, but they would be fun and probably pretty good.
I'm okay with this. As you say, it's not a championship contending team, but it would at least be fun. That's about all I can wish for from this team.
i could be ok with this lineup.
i don't like Pat as a starting 4 tho
Not that the specifics are terribly important here, but I do think it's relatively clear Brogdon physically cannot play starters minutes anymore.
I had a dream last night that the Bulls got the 2nd pick in the lottery. So there’s that.
I'm all for trading LaVine and DDR for Jaylen Brown.
I'd take Jaylen Brown over either of those guys, but what else do we get in that trade to match salaries?
Sign me in if the other salary we get back in the trade is Derrick White!
trying to think of a team to take Lonzo's contract in return for more expensive players that are bad but not disabled
The Heat are interesting. Duncan Robinson's deal is nearly identical. Find a way to take Lowry ($29M, one year) to reduce MIA's 2023-4 cap number?
Oladipo is another $9.5M in dead money, though unlike Lonzo it's only for one year. Bulls also would acquire transfer rights to Shams reporting "optimism towards recovery"
Bulls problem is Lonzo contract. Worst in the league? Need to dump on a long term tank. Would Spurs take him for McDerrmot and Graham? Doubt it. Could we package with Caruso? That’s 30M some team would need to match by dumping even longer term contracts of non-playing garbage on us. Davis Bertans and Duncan Robinson come to mind…
Ben Simmons's contract is worse, but it's a short list
Ben’s is bad but is it the worst by $$$/minutes played? Need to see this stat each year
Lonzo and sign and trade Vuc for Ben Simmons and a 1st rounder???
Solves the Bulls starting PG and PF at the same time :-)