great article as usual stephen. i feel you're the best writer on the bulls, and hope to see you soon back at the athletic or a national. i agree 100% with everything you said about lauri. he doesn't contribute to winning basketball even if he's shooting lights out. he couldn't guard a traffic cone, he removes pat williams from his best position (when the bulls had their most successful streak) and he's clearly the future at the 4, he doesn't work with wendell yet pat does, and we're going to have to pay him 20m or match an offer to keep him this summer. it makes no sense to keep him at all.
what this team desperately needs is a floor general who can defend, has a chip on his shoulder, can shoot, is athletic, can pass, and fits the timeline.....he'll be available in a few months and his name is jalen suggs. we should be selling everything we can to have a chance of getting him or putting ourselves within striking distance to trade up. we need a star and it's the only way we're going to get one, not a chance that an a list free agent player comes to the bulls, and without a big swing at the fences we're going to be in 8-10 seed first round exit purgatory for years. "oh but zach will be upset if we trade thad"....uhuh, well zach is not the gm last i checked, and he's not lebron who gets to decide his team because he hasn't one anything. if zach is smart he'll see that having a 32 year old undersized center being our second best option and playing because our "center of the future" is playing rather poorly this year, is not the way to build a championship team. he should also be placated somewhat by being offered a max contract. it'll be his ultimate validation, and he's not going to turn it down because we traded thad or lauri.
There's no skill that Lauri has really improved and his inability to make smaller defenders pay really hurts his value on offense, despite his shooting ability. Defensively, he combines a slight lack of awareness with adequate, but uninspiring, athletic ability, and a motor that gets to medium at best. I don't have a clue what he has worked on the past few off-seasons, as he seems to have been pretty much the same player for four years.
I felt like I was ready to read this article without getting emotional but once I realized he’s Channing Fry with a green light I felt my heart break. I really believed he could be the second option after his February 2019 month and 19-20 debut against Charlotte. It’s definitely time to move on. Hope he can thrive somewhere else being the 3rd-4th option
I agree with your conclusions and believe your overstate his defensive ability. In one recent example, it was painful to watch Michael Porter Jr. make backcut after backcut for easy baskets in the Denver game. Additionally, his offense is so volatile on night to night basis that I think he hurts the offensive flow of the team (teammates don’t know whether to feed him or ignore him). Almost certainly, he is not the kind of player to leave in for the final 7-8 minutes of a high stakes game. He would be fine as 6-7th man for $8-$10MM per season but not an $18MM guy when his team can’t put on the floor in crunch time.
great article as usual stephen. i feel you're the best writer on the bulls, and hope to see you soon back at the athletic or a national. i agree 100% with everything you said about lauri. he doesn't contribute to winning basketball even if he's shooting lights out. he couldn't guard a traffic cone, he removes pat williams from his best position (when the bulls had their most successful streak) and he's clearly the future at the 4, he doesn't work with wendell yet pat does, and we're going to have to pay him 20m or match an offer to keep him this summer. it makes no sense to keep him at all.
what this team desperately needs is a floor general who can defend, has a chip on his shoulder, can shoot, is athletic, can pass, and fits the timeline.....he'll be available in a few months and his name is jalen suggs. we should be selling everything we can to have a chance of getting him or putting ourselves within striking distance to trade up. we need a star and it's the only way we're going to get one, not a chance that an a list free agent player comes to the bulls, and without a big swing at the fences we're going to be in 8-10 seed first round exit purgatory for years. "oh but zach will be upset if we trade thad"....uhuh, well zach is not the gm last i checked, and he's not lebron who gets to decide his team because he hasn't one anything. if zach is smart he'll see that having a 32 year old undersized center being our second best option and playing because our "center of the future" is playing rather poorly this year, is not the way to build a championship team. he should also be placated somewhat by being offered a max contract. it'll be his ultimate validation, and he's not going to turn it down because we traded thad or lauri.
There's no skill that Lauri has really improved and his inability to make smaller defenders pay really hurts his value on offense, despite his shooting ability. Defensively, he combines a slight lack of awareness with adequate, but uninspiring, athletic ability, and a motor that gets to medium at best. I don't have a clue what he has worked on the past few off-seasons, as he seems to have been pretty much the same player for four years.
I felt like I was ready to read this article without getting emotional but once I realized he’s Channing Fry with a green light I felt my heart break. I really believed he could be the second option after his February 2019 month and 19-20 debut against Charlotte. It’s definitely time to move on. Hope he can thrive somewhere else being the 3rd-4th option
I agree with your conclusions and believe your overstate his defensive ability. In one recent example, it was painful to watch Michael Porter Jr. make backcut after backcut for easy baskets in the Denver game. Additionally, his offense is so volatile on night to night basis that I think he hurts the offensive flow of the team (teammates don’t know whether to feed him or ignore him). Almost certainly, he is not the kind of player to leave in for the final 7-8 minutes of a high stakes game. He would be fine as 6-7th man for $8-$10MM per season but not an $18MM guy when his team can’t put on the floor in crunch time.
Yup. He's not working out.