hey Stephen, great piece as always.....you're the best writer on the bulls out there (and i mean that completely objectively!), and i don't understand why you're not still writing for the athletic or one of the nationals. i'm not going to name names, but 90% of the beat writers don't have your talent at writing, your creativity, nor your analytic skills.
anyhoo, i was on the tank wagon prior to the trade, and still would have preferred, aiming for a potential generational talent in suggs, (as we desperately need a star point guard who can defend and grow with the current core), and offered up any player not named zach or pat and a future first if the lottery balls didn't bounce our way. i get the whole "let's be competitive (well, ummm...hardly!), let's appease zach...let's make the play in..." etc etc, but i think that's too much of a short term view, and trading some of our draft equity and a young talent for a soon to be 31 year old big, who can't defend, rather than carry on building upwards seems rather myopic. i don't even understand the "two all stars" thing. if the all stars weren't chosen by position, then vooch would be way below jimmy, bam, middleton, trae young, and even sabonis. he's a "good" player, but isn't...well obviously hasn't.....moved the needle much. i get the rebuttal "but they haven't had a training camp together"...ok fine! but it's not as if vooch moved the needle very much in orlando with superior talent.
so my question is this: would it be worth trying to trade into the first round, by grabbing one of the defensive minded pg's like davion mitchell, josh giddey (ok, he's maybe a playmaking wing), tre mann, jaden springer, or even guys like jared butler, sharife cooper?
Thanks Doog! I am with you that Vooch is a fringe All Star and the path to a championship is pretty murky. I'm glad they finally picked a direction though. I was also on the tank and trade all the vets at the deadline plan, but that would have been extremely painful. Maybe this current path is better. Nothing we can do about it now so we might as well enjoy the ride.
One of the things I pride myself on is not bullshitting my readers. I value your time, and I am not afraid to admit when I'm clueless about something. I'm not a draft guy so I can't answer the second part of your question with any sort of value. I do recommend Brian Schroeder (formerly Cosmis) for draft takes, and he is extremely high on Sharife Cooper.
hey stephen, thanks for your prompt response. yeap, play-in mediocrity for a while i feel (even if we are able to get lonzo...he's not going to change the needle much!). i agree that trading all the vets would have been painful, but the one thing that makes us rabid fans of our team, is "hope"....and i just don't see it unless miraculously pat or coby suddenly become all star caliber players. i see that path for pat possibly in a few year, coby i'm not so sure.
thanks for your honesty about the draft. sharife is an electric playmaker, but also 6.0 feet in heels, and can't shoot, and pairing him with zach on D would be a swiss cheese hemorrhage of points!!! i'll check out brian schroeder though. thanks for the tip!
The beauty of this over the cap path too is that it opens up massive cap space in 2022. Maybe if they show improvement this year, sneak into the second round, they convince a guy like Bradley Beal to come sign.
Low probability of course but that team could be a dark horse contender.
yeap, absolutely right about the 22 cap space...what would they have? 40m or something?
so about the "beal" to the bulls thing....how do you envisage the starting 5? a pg (maybe coby...hopefully not), zach, beal, pat, vooch? we try and score 150 points every night and hope for the best on D? besides zach and beal play pretty much the same position, and i feel it's much of a muchness whether to have beal or zach...maybe beal edges it, but he's nearly 2 years older. surely it'd be better to spend that cash on a alpha wing or pg?
what about lauri sign and trade for kelly oubre? at least he's a wing who can disrupt and defend, and we can put pat at the 4 where he belongs. also, i wonder if the warriors might be open to trading their 14th pick for a vet?
I'd envision LaVine,Beal, 3-and-D small forward, Pat, and Vooch. The defense would be rough, but they were 12th this year with basically that group. Beal is a bad defender but significantly better than Coby.
I'm not an Oubre fan. He's a low feel player. He does some things very well but I like guys who are more well-rounded. And the Warriors need help, so maybe? It's a shame to waste Steph's talent with that group he has right now. By the way, Oubre messes up a lot of their plays by not understanding spacing concepts and how Steph's relocations for 3s work.
Eek!!! that would mean a lot of zach handling the ball.....and a horror show of late game turnovers!!! but i guess that makes more sense than coby (don't get me wrong, i love coby, but as a spark plug 6th man....at least for a couple more years. it doesn't help that he has a minus wingspan!)
i get the "low feel player", though i'm not sure zach has a pretty astute feel for the game either, he makes me want to bang my head on the wall sometimes, but he can make stupid shots which sort of makes up for it occasionally.
will someone please give me a defensive point guard!!! please pretty please.
Great piece! I know it’s tough to tell this early, but curious if there’s a pg or wing player in particular that you speculate may be available and that our expiring vet contracts might be able to pull?
Lonzo is the obvious answer. The Bulls can be really creative if they want to. Get Bledsoe back too, who the Pels are desperate to unload, and pick up an asset from the Pels in the process.
I'd also look at Memphis as a trade partner. They have a ton of rotation guys, too many to play. De'Anthony Melton was a terrific young two way player that didn't get enough minutes for them. I'd trade for him in a heartbeat.
If you're asking about higher end players, maybe Fred VanVleet becomes available if the Raps decide to let Lowry walk and take a step back.
I'd also see if I could swing a trade with Denver for Monte Morris. He'd be a great fit in Chicago and they already have a high end backup PG with Campazzo.
Nice graph, too bad you don't know that a team cannot possibly use the BAE and the Room MLE in the same offseason.
In order to have a Room MLE, you have to have cap space - and in order to have cap space, you have to renounce your BAE.
You might want to check out Larry Coon's CBA FAQ, it explains stuff like this in detail.
http://cbafaq.com
hey Stephen, great piece as always.....you're the best writer on the bulls out there (and i mean that completely objectively!), and i don't understand why you're not still writing for the athletic or one of the nationals. i'm not going to name names, but 90% of the beat writers don't have your talent at writing, your creativity, nor your analytic skills.
anyhoo, i was on the tank wagon prior to the trade, and still would have preferred, aiming for a potential generational talent in suggs, (as we desperately need a star point guard who can defend and grow with the current core), and offered up any player not named zach or pat and a future first if the lottery balls didn't bounce our way. i get the whole "let's be competitive (well, ummm...hardly!), let's appease zach...let's make the play in..." etc etc, but i think that's too much of a short term view, and trading some of our draft equity and a young talent for a soon to be 31 year old big, who can't defend, rather than carry on building upwards seems rather myopic. i don't even understand the "two all stars" thing. if the all stars weren't chosen by position, then vooch would be way below jimmy, bam, middleton, trae young, and even sabonis. he's a "good" player, but isn't...well obviously hasn't.....moved the needle much. i get the rebuttal "but they haven't had a training camp together"...ok fine! but it's not as if vooch moved the needle very much in orlando with superior talent.
so my question is this: would it be worth trying to trade into the first round, by grabbing one of the defensive minded pg's like davion mitchell, josh giddey (ok, he's maybe a playmaking wing), tre mann, jaden springer, or even guys like jared butler, sharife cooper?
Thanks Doog! I am with you that Vooch is a fringe All Star and the path to a championship is pretty murky. I'm glad they finally picked a direction though. I was also on the tank and trade all the vets at the deadline plan, but that would have been extremely painful. Maybe this current path is better. Nothing we can do about it now so we might as well enjoy the ride.
One of the things I pride myself on is not bullshitting my readers. I value your time, and I am not afraid to admit when I'm clueless about something. I'm not a draft guy so I can't answer the second part of your question with any sort of value. I do recommend Brian Schroeder (formerly Cosmis) for draft takes, and he is extremely high on Sharife Cooper.
hey stephen, thanks for your prompt response. yeap, play-in mediocrity for a while i feel (even if we are able to get lonzo...he's not going to change the needle much!). i agree that trading all the vets would have been painful, but the one thing that makes us rabid fans of our team, is "hope"....and i just don't see it unless miraculously pat or coby suddenly become all star caliber players. i see that path for pat possibly in a few year, coby i'm not so sure.
thanks for your honesty about the draft. sharife is an electric playmaker, but also 6.0 feet in heels, and can't shoot, and pairing him with zach on D would be a swiss cheese hemorrhage of points!!! i'll check out brian schroeder though. thanks for the tip!
The beauty of this over the cap path too is that it opens up massive cap space in 2022. Maybe if they show improvement this year, sneak into the second round, they convince a guy like Bradley Beal to come sign.
Low probability of course but that team could be a dark horse contender.
yeap, absolutely right about the 22 cap space...what would they have? 40m or something?
so about the "beal" to the bulls thing....how do you envisage the starting 5? a pg (maybe coby...hopefully not), zach, beal, pat, vooch? we try and score 150 points every night and hope for the best on D? besides zach and beal play pretty much the same position, and i feel it's much of a muchness whether to have beal or zach...maybe beal edges it, but he's nearly 2 years older. surely it'd be better to spend that cash on a alpha wing or pg?
what about lauri sign and trade for kelly oubre? at least he's a wing who can disrupt and defend, and we can put pat at the 4 where he belongs. also, i wonder if the warriors might be open to trading their 14th pick for a vet?
I'd envision LaVine,Beal, 3-and-D small forward, Pat, and Vooch. The defense would be rough, but they were 12th this year with basically that group. Beal is a bad defender but significantly better than Coby.
I'm not an Oubre fan. He's a low feel player. He does some things very well but I like guys who are more well-rounded. And the Warriors need help, so maybe? It's a shame to waste Steph's talent with that group he has right now. By the way, Oubre messes up a lot of their plays by not understanding spacing concepts and how Steph's relocations for 3s work.
Eek!!! that would mean a lot of zach handling the ball.....and a horror show of late game turnovers!!! but i guess that makes more sense than coby (don't get me wrong, i love coby, but as a spark plug 6th man....at least for a couple more years. it doesn't help that he has a minus wingspan!)
i get the "low feel player", though i'm not sure zach has a pretty astute feel for the game either, he makes me want to bang my head on the wall sometimes, but he can make stupid shots which sort of makes up for it occasionally.
will someone please give me a defensive point guard!!! please pretty please.
Great piece! I know it’s tough to tell this early, but curious if there’s a pg or wing player in particular that you speculate may be available and that our expiring vet contracts might be able to pull?
Lonzo is the obvious answer. The Bulls can be really creative if they want to. Get Bledsoe back too, who the Pels are desperate to unload, and pick up an asset from the Pels in the process.
I'd also look at Memphis as a trade partner. They have a ton of rotation guys, too many to play. De'Anthony Melton was a terrific young two way player that didn't get enough minutes for them. I'd trade for him in a heartbeat.
If you're asking about higher end players, maybe Fred VanVleet becomes available if the Raps decide to let Lowry walk and take a step back.
I'd also see if I could swing a trade with Denver for Monte Morris. He'd be a great fit in Chicago and they already have a high end backup PG with Campazzo.
Good points all around and some intriguing options. Thanks for the detailed response. Huge fan of your work man