So what I would do?
Today is my final installment in my four part series on what I would do if I were running the Bulls this offseason. Please note that I wrote this before the Anthony Davis trade, but the general feeling still applies.
Let’s get started:
I’d start with that Morant trade with Memphis I referenced in my second post. He’s the only guy in this draft I trust to be a long term starter at the point guard position in this draft. The only problem is it’s hard to see exactly how this would line up. I’d imagine they’d ask for Lauri. That’s pretty fair value for both sides, but that’d be just opening up one hole to plug another. Plus, Memphis is at year 1 in a 4 year rebuild, while the Bulls are at year 3 in their 4 year rebuild. Lauri makes more sense on our timeline than theirs.
I would try and turn their attention towards Wendell Carter. He had a rookie year in line with what was expected of him until he got hurt. If he were available in this draft, he would certainly go higher that 7 , but no way would he be enough for the #2 pick by himself. I wouldn’t package him with the 7 pick, but I’d try an offer of Carter, Lavine or Dunn (or both), the 22 pick in a potential trade from Boston, and their 2 2nd rounders from the Justin Holiday deal back. In the end though, I just see too many moving parts to make this work.
Move # 1- After that failed, I’d trade the 7 pick for Ball. I think Anthony Davis is still getting traded and I find the Lakers to be the most logical trade destination. If Kyrie joins Durant in New York, or leaves for somewhere else it’d be crazy for Boston to include Jayson Tatum in a deal for AD. The Lakers are thirsty for star talent to surround Lebron while he’s still a top 5 player in the world and might not even have to top their offer from the trade deadline now that they lucked into the #4 pick. I think that pick with Ball, Ingram and Kuzma is an overpay for a guy who might join you anyways in 12 months.
Regardless, it’s hard to see Ball playing in New Orleans. I think he would come to Chicago though. The Bulls should squeeze their way into this and make it a 3 way deal. The catch is that Phoenix has the pick just before the Bulls and make a lot of sense as a Ball destination as well. However, not everyone is as high on Ball as I am, so I’m not sure they’d trade the 6 for them especially if Garland falls that far I’ll include sending Kris Dunn to New Orleans in this deal to get it done. With Ball in the fold, Dunn becomes redundant and even more expendable while he still should have some value on a one year flier for the rebuilding Pelicans.
If Ball were in this draft he’d be somewhere between 4 and 7 on my board. When you factor in he plugs the Bulls biggest long term need and that his contract expires in 2 years it makes him a near perfect fit with this roster.
Move #2- I wouldn’t stop my wheeling and dealing on draft day though. After landing Ball I would try and find a way to sneak back into the late lottery so that I could grab either of the guys who I had at 5 and 6 (Clarke and Bol) on my draft board. I wound up combining my salary dump and target a poorly run organization to trade Zach Lavine to ideas.
The projected deal: Lavine to Charlotte for Biyombo and the 12 pick overall.
This would get Charlotte out of Biyombo’s contract and allow them to replace Jeremy Lamb without hardly adding any salary. Charlotte might be the ideal bad organization for targeting a Lavine overpay. They are run by Mitch Kupchack who gave Timofey Mozgov and Luol Deng $138 million dollars three summers ago. He was also the guy who made Kobe Bryant the highest player in the league coming off his Achilles injury. If there was anyone in the league excited to trade for Zach outside of Sacramento this would be my pick.
And with the 12 pick the Bulls select: Brandon Clarke
Move # 3 Now by getting rid of Lavine, the Bulls still have room to take on another bad contract even after taking on Biyombo. So, I’m going to well one more time and this time send Denzel Valentine to Portland for Evan Turner and the 25 pick. I went back and forth on this several times when deciding between what would make more sense from the Trail Blazers perspective: Valentine or a semi protected second rounder.
Ultimately, I went with Valentine for two reasons. One, he has he’s the kind of “second draft” talent their player development staff seems to know how develop as well as anyone else. Whether it was Jusuf Nurkic, Al Faruq-Aminu, or Mo Harkless players tend to make larger than normal jumps when joining Portland. I could see them doing similar work with Denzel. Two, even after trading Turner, re-signing Rodney Hood and Seth Curry will be tough as they don’t have full Bird rights on either. Instead of just hoping Anfernee Simmons is ready to step up and fill their shoes it would be nice to have a guy who when healthy has proven to be an at least average back up. Valentine is only making $3.4 million this year and decent backups get more than that even if Portland’s coaching staff gets nothing more out of him than what the Bulls got.
Getting deeper into the financial breakdown of this, the expected surplus value of the #25 pick in the draft check comes in around 8-9 million dollars according to research done by Nate Silver in this article https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-is-winning-the-nba-draft-lottery-really-worth/
However, it is super important to note this piece is five years old and before the cap boom so the surplus value is roughly 80% higher. That being said this draft is seen as especially weak so a solid chunk of that 80% is given back. All in all, $12-13 million sounds about right for expected surplus value on this deal. When you factor in Evan Turner’s contract comes in it 18.5 million it might seem like a net loss for the Bulls especially when you factor in there’ some value with Valentine as well.
This still makes sense for the Bulls though. Turner isn’t a complete 0. He’s an Ok backup. His contract probably overpays him by about the same amount of the expected value of the pick., and the Bulls have to use that cap space somehow. Nobody is going to sign-up to play on this team for less than market value, so if you’re going to have to use it overpay someone might as well get a draft pick with it. I don’t mind overpaying a guy for a year now when we are not expected to be competitive, when there is a good chance it gives us a potentially cheap rotation piece for a team that projects to be much better a few years down the road.
Really though, the ultimate reason why I chose Turner for this trade though is I want to see the GarPax tradition of wildly overpaying for a hometown kid hit year 8 (4 years of Rose, 2 for Wade, 1 for Jabari).
And with the 25 pick the Bulls select: Talen Horton Tucker
A kid with Chicago and Iowa State routes? Is there any chance he goes his entire career without being on the bulls?
Move #4- With the 38th pick overall the Bulls select Chuma Okeke
It would be awesome to get this much defensive upside with a second round pick. Let’s hope this comes to fruition.
Move # 5- Sign the best shooting guard that I can find with biannual exception. This would be more along the lines of just waiting out the market and see who slipped through the crack and would prioritize playing time over winning. I think a good case scenario would be Wayne Ellingoton, a bad one would be Vince Carter. I’m signing Ellington.
Move #6- Re-sign Ryan Arciodanico for 2 years 10 million dollars total.
He’s shown enough grit, intelligence and shooting ability to comfortably project as a backup at either guard position for the rest of the prime of his career. Again just a 2 year contract though.
Really Rough Projected lineup and minutes per game:
Starters:
PG: Lonzo Ball-28 mins
SG: Wayne Ellington-24 mins
SF: Otto Porter-35 mins
PF: Lauri Markannan-33 mins
C: Wendell Carter-23 mins
Bench:
Evan Turner-20 mins
Ryan Arciodanico-24 mins
Talen Horton Tucker-15 mins
Chandler Hutchinson-15 mins
Brandon Clarke-23 mins
Deep Bench:
Shaquille Harrison
Chuma Okeke
Cristiano Feliciao
Bismack Biyombo
?????Christian Wood/Dragan Bender?????
In all I think it’s clear that I made the team younger, better defensively, and in a position cap wise to be power players two summers from now. True, that this team will in all likelihood struggle to get buckets, even more so than coming into the offseason, but I’d consider it a wash with the defense. Finally, by getting two bites of the apple in the draft, and especially adding Ball there are even more young guys with the potential to breakout. Embrace the strength in numbers.
As for the upcoming season, I’d bet on this team (barely) crawling over the 30 win barrier for the first time post rebuild. The win total will be secondary though. The focus will instead be more on seeing how the young guys develop; both through the expanding of their own skills, as well as how their games mesh with each other.
Two more years until greatness my friends!!!
What do you think?
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