What's left for the Bulls? pretty much everything
The LaVine trade was significant, but there's nothing else then it's far from enough
Some scattershot thoughts on the LaVine trade and what else the Bulls can (but likely won’t) do by Thursday afternoon’s trade deadline.
The media dynamic surrounding this team is just weirdly limp. I recognize Darnell Mayberry may not have written the headline at The Athletic, but “the Bulls are keeping their word and gutting the roster” is nonsense no matter where it technically came from. This is one trade, it actually brought back two overpaid players instead of one. And the idea that Arturas Karnisovas has had a coherent vision because he did say he’d change the roster1 doesn’t hold when it’s over halfway through a regular season! I suppose when you go 4 years between in-season trades that doesn’t seem like such a waste of time, relatively.
I don’t get how even paid-for coverage puts up the Mission Accomplished banner when even the head coach doesn’t know what is happening!
”what direction are we going and how are we going to build it and what we are going to do? I don’t think anybody inside the organization has those answers right now”Some fallout on the LaVine trade shows how, yet again, AKME is especially bad at on-the-margins transactions. They couldn’t move anybody else off their roster as part of this deal so they had to outright release both Chris Duarte and Torrey Craig. The Kings are in need of a guard as they dealt De’Aaron Fox away, how are they not the ones taking in Tre Jones? Or maybe Jevon Carter?
Invoking the names of these veterans is a way to highlight an underrated part of AKME suckage: their veteran free agent signings. While a fellow 10th-seed hopeful in the Sixers can get positive value for Caleb Martin, the Bulls analogues are usually rendered functionally untradeable. And when they do have value, like Andre Drummond last season, the team holds on to them and gets nothing when they walk in free agency.
And, somehow, the Bulls were a team sending out a second-round pick in this deal. Due to the convoluted nature of these three teams making trades since the 2021 acquisition of DeMar DeRozan, the Bulls pick going to Sacramento was actually owned by the Spurs, and the Kings pick going back to them was owned by the Bulls, one of two Chicago received from signing and trading DeRozan to Sacramento last summer.
So there’s been a meme-ing of the total ‘haul’ the Bulls have after sending out LaVine, DeRozan, and Alex Caruso, but it’s even worse when you accurately count the second rounders, and cross out Duarte as barely existing.
That leaves the other empty jerseys coming in: Jones, Kevin Huerter, and Zach Collins. There’s reports that the Bulls are looking to flip all of them by Thursday (though Collins seems especially impossible to move), and none will be suiting up until then.
But under that logic…should anyone be active on the Bulls roster? Isn’t everyone on the trade block? At least Vucevic and Ball, who both - and I don’t even want to repeat it as it turns my stomach - had rumors leaning both ways: that they were being shopped (and not looking like they will get firsts) but also that the Bulls weren’t eager to move them for just anything.
Holding on to either would be a mistake. As is the total lack of activity surrounding Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu.
The important thing to remember when thinking of the Bulls plan is that we’re the ones thinking of them. In that building there is no plan. Certainly not something aggressive like an all-out teardown and multi-year tank, which we shouldn’t want this front office to embark on anyway.
There’s not even a plan to use their additional room under the luxury tax (both this year and next) to take on assets with bad money. They have shown no desire or ability to do this, though you could argue that it wasn’t LaVine that got them their first back but taking on the Collins and Huerter contracts. But they certainly aren’t working their way into deals as a facilitator, as you likely recall they didn’t take that route in the DeRozan sign-and-trade to the Kings. They instead signed Patrick Williams and Jalen Smith to a combined $26.5M.
It’s astounding that this team is screwing up a teardown, which is usually the easiest part of a rebuild. Mostly by waiting too long. There is so much dead money on this team’s cap for next year yet so few assets to show for it.
If they do have a plan, it’s either (or both!):
A cynical unambitious ‘be competitive and fill the building’ directive
A desire to build around young stars, but they incorrectly identified their next young stars as, oops, Williams and Josh Giddey
There’s also the ‘plan’ of this all being rendered moot and they get bailed out in the 2025 draft lottery. Getting their pick back at least means I don’t have to hear bellyaching over the handful of percentage points separating drafting 10th or losing the pick. But I do have to still hear about a similarly meager difference of their lottery chances whether they’re 7th or 11th in the tankathon. Not that every percentage point doesn’t matter, but it is also going to be due to luck: these are all similarly-bad teams, and Nikola Vucevic is not separating them one way or another. Heck, I’m not even convinced Zach LaVine would’ve2.
I’m not really that upset at the tank-brained among us, it’s a sensible rationalization looking at this sad state of affairs: there is no hope this front office is actually capable of smart decisions, instead we need to root for something they can’t screw up.
this is a KC Johnson trope, though I don’t concern myself too much with state media
the Bulls have won a couple games with LaVine gone, though it’ll really hurt when Coby White misses a game whereas before they could stand to not have one or the other
NEW POST! https://www.blogabull.com/p/the-bulls-do-have-a-bad-stupid-plan
FYI Matas highlights in last night's game thread https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/3fd8e13a-82df-4882-aeea-3999e8f5781e?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2bo