2023-2024 Bulls News Thread

[clonetrooper264]

PWill out 2 weeks

Bulls' Williams out 2 weeks with foot injury

Bulls forward Patrick Williams is out at least two weeks with a foot injury.

www.espn.com

 

[RiDLer80]

Does anybody think AKME make a move before the deadline or do we roll into next season with the exact same mediocre core?

 

[Crystallas]

Vultures are circling over the Bulls trying to snatch all the good contracts and serviceable players.

The real question is; Can the Bulls do anything before the deadline to improve this years team? And then you gotta ask yourself, why would they bother, it's not going to take the team another level.

The front office is likely trying to figure out if it's possible to have a healthy group next season. Ball and Lavine. If they don't believe it's possible, then it's some flavor of rebuild and we may see trades to support it.

 

[clonetrooper264]

The short of it, teams are interested in some of our guys, but those guys are value performers such as Caruso (1st team defense production for not even the MLE), Coby (basically 20 PPG scorer at MLE price), or Drummond (best value rebounder you can find).

We know AK is at the very least demanding a king's ransom for Caruso and I imagine Coby is not even on the table and whatever you get for Drummond is essentially inconsequential since he's a min salary (ie a late 2nd or multiple thereof), so effectively, there's nothing going to come of it.

You have to move some combo of Lavine/Derozan/Ball/Vuc to really change the direction of this team, but you're not going to find any real suitors for any of them unless you treat it like a salary dump (ie you must lose the trade).

 

[knoxville7]

The short of it, teams are interested in some of our guys, but those guys are value performers such as Caruso (1st team defense production for not even the MLE), Coby (basically 20 PPG scorer at MLE price), or Drummond (best value rebounder you can find).

We know AK is at the very least demanding a king's ransom for Caruso and I imagine Coby is not even on the table and whatever you get for Drummond is essentially inconsequential since he's a min salary (ie a late 2nd or multiple thereof), so effectively, there's nothing going to come of it.

You have to move some combo of Lavine/Derozan/Ball/Vuc to really change the direction of this team, but you're not going to find any real suitors for any of them unless you treat it like a salary dump (ie you must lose the trade).

salary dumping would be a win in a trade at this point for the bulls, sadly

 

[Gustavus Adolphus]

Nobody should be safe, though Coby is probably the last to be offered.

 

[knoxville7]

Nobody should be safe, though Coby is probably the last to be offered.

him and Caruso probably fetch the most in a return too

 

[Gustavus Adolphus]

him and Caruso probably fetch the most in a return too

Don't sleep on Drummond.

 

[knoxville7]

Don't sleep on Drummond.

he does look comfy!

 

[clonetrooper264]

him and Caruso probably fetch the most in a return too

They'll naturally be worth the most to other teams due to their outsized contribution to contract cost. But would a team be willing to part with multiple picks (of any type) in return for either is the question

 

[clonetrooper264]

Another trade deadline passes where the Bulls do nothing (not that I was really expecting any other outcome). Feel free to complain about it here.

As fuel, here are all the trades AK has made since taking over, taken from my post in the non-Bulls thread

Here are all the trades from the AKME era (April 2020-present)
-March 2021 Trade Chandler Hutchison and Daniel Gafford to Washington, Luke Kornet to Boston for Daniel Theis, Javonte Green, and Troy Brown Jr. As part of the 3 team deal Mo Wagner was traded from Washington to Boston also
-March 2021 Trade WCJ, OPJ, 2 1sts to Orlando for Vucevic, Al-Farouq Aminu
-August 2021 As part of S&T for Lonzo Ball, traded Garrett Temple, Tomas Satoransky and 2024 2nd round pick to NOP
-August 2021 As part of S&T for Demar Derozan, traded Al-Farouq Aminu, Thaddeus Young, 2025 1st, 2022 2nd, 2025 2nd to SAS
-August 2021 Traded Lauri Markkanen to CLE, CLE traded Larry Nance Jr to POR, POR traded DJJ, 2022 1st, 2023 2nd to CHI
-August 2021 Traded Daniel Theis to HOU for cash
-June 2023 Traded 2026 2nd and 2027 2nd to WAS for Julian Phillips

 

[Enasic]

Another trade deadline passes where the Bulls do nothing (not that I was really expecting any other outcome). Feel free to complain about it here.

As fuel, here are all the trades AK has made since taking over, taken from my post in the non-Bulls thread

Here are all the trades from the AKME era (April 2020-present)
-March 2021 Trade Chandler Hutchison and Daniel Gafford to Washington, Luke Kornet to Boston for Daniel Theis, Javonte Green, and Troy Brown Jr. As part of the 3 team deal Mo Wagner was traded from Washington to Boston also
-March 2021 Trade WCJ, OPJ, 2 1sts to Orlando for Vucevic, Al-Farouq Aminu
-August 2021 As part of S&T for Lonzo Ball, traded Garrett Temple, Tomas Satoransky and 2024 2nd round pick to NOP
-August 2021 As part of S&T for Demar Derozan, traded Al-Farouq Aminu, Thaddeus Young, 2025 1st, 2022 2nd, 2025 2nd to SAS
-August 2021 Traded Lauri Markkanen to CLE, CLE traded Larry Nance Jr to POR, POR traded DJJ, 2022 1st, 2023 2nd to CHI
-August 2021 Traded Daniel Theis to HOU for cash
-June 2023 Traded 2026 2nd and 2027 2nd to WAS for Julian Phillips

That’s an awful track record. Came out guns blazing, made some bad trades, and now seems like AKME is going all the way in the other direction and is afraid to make moves.

 

[MassHavoc]

Really we got killed by the lavine injury. Cat and Caruso we're the only ones really with value except demar and that's a high price. So I'm not sad to see them stay. Will be interesting to see if they try to take a flyer on some of the waived players.

 

[clonetrooper264]

That’s an awful track record. Came out guns blazing, made some bad trades, and now seems like AKME is going all the way in the other direction and is afraid to make moves.

Eh, it's really just the Vuc trade that's bad, and a lot of that is built off of the Magic using that 1st pick on Wagner who's very good. WCJ hasn't shown anything that he can be on the court consistently without injuring himself and stats wise he's really not all that impressive. Vuc has been solid, but it's a disappointment because he's been way below that All Star level player we wanted when we traded, but at least he's been relatively an ironman and consistently produces every game.

The rest of the trades by themselves aren't really that bad. It's the product that we ended up with at the end that was bad, and one could argue that maybe if Lonzo's knee does go into the shadow realm that Bulls would at least be a mid tier team for the last couple years rather than fighting to stay at the end of the lottery.

 

[clonetrooper264]

Come hear the excuses from AK and all about how he think this team is "competitive"

 

[RiDLer80]

Eh, it's really just the Vuc trade that's bad, and a lot of that is built off of the Magic using that 1st pick on Wagner who's very good. WCJ hasn't shown anything that he can be on the court consistently without injuring himself and stats wise he's really not all that impressive. Vuc has been solid, but it's a disappointment because he's been way below that All Star level player we wanted when we traded, but at least he's been relatively an ironman and consistently produces every game.

The rest of the trades by themselves aren't really that bad. It's the product that we ended up with at the end that was bad, and one could argue that maybe if Lonzo's knee does go into the shadow realm that Bulls would at least be a mid tier team for the last couple years rather than fighting to stay at the end of the lottery.

Lonzo's knee is the biggest catalyst to this team's mediocrity right now. Once he went down the chemistry was gone.

Another big problem with the trades is the fact that we've struggled for years since trading Lauri and WCJ to find a proper big man to play with Vooch. It also doesn't help that Lauri finally became an all-star while Patrick Williams has been totally uninspiring at the 4.

 

[Enasic]

Come hear the excuses from AK and all about how he think this team is "competitive"

AK sucks and was all unwarranted hype when he was hired. The AKME regime is no better than Garpax. Impossible to argue otherwise. Which is fine…the city doesn’t really care about the bulls anymore.

 

[wonky73]

Come hear the excuses from AK and all about how he think this team is "competitive"

competitive consistent collaboration.. the 3 Cs of chicago sports failure

 

[knoxville7]

AK sucks and was all unwarranted hype when he was hired. The AKME regime is no better than Garpax. Impossible to argue otherwise. Which is fine…the city doesn’t really care about the bulls anymore.

id say the AKME regime has been worse by a long shot than the GarPax regime. At least the GarPax regime drafted well and put a competitive product on the court

 

[clonetrooper264]

id say the AKME regime has been worse by a long shot than the GarPax regime. At least the GarPax regime drafted well and put a competitive product on the court

If we take the GarPax regime to be from 2009 (when Gar became GM officially) to 2020 when Gar was fired, I'd give them credit for the following picks who were not busts or otherwise terrible:

2009 - Taj Gibson
2009 - James Johnson (solid role player who's actually still in the league believe it or not, but only became good in his role after leaving the Bulls)
2011 - Jimmy Butler
2015 - Bobby Portis (again, better once he left Chicago...only really became "good" in his role in Milwaukee)
2017 - Lauri Markkanen (again better after leaving Chicago)
2018 - Wendell Carter Jr (I don't actually think he's that good, but he doesn't suck so for the sake of argument I'll credit him)
2019 - Coby White (arguably Gar lucks out here as he has had basically no input on Coby's development and you could credit it more to AK's hiring of BD)
2019 - Daniel Gafford (decent role player, again better once out of Chicago)

If we're talking about players who GarPax drafted who actually played well in a Bulls uniform, you got Taj and Jimmy and that's it. Coby too if you want to be generous. Portis, Markkanen, and WCJ all had flashes here, but they all got better after leaving and one can say that is due to the system GarPax put in place actually holding them back.

Now I'm not saying AK is any better (so far his only true hit is Ayo, albeit small sample size). I'm just saying the GarPax era of drafting wasn't actually all that great.

Now in terms of fielding a competitive product, yes I will give GarPax the win on that as from post DRose injury until 2017 when Jimmy was traded, those teams were still more competitive with arguably a similar talent level to what AK has assembled today. Though AK also gets the blemish of we'll never know how this team would have looked with Lonzo healthy the last couple years and I believe Lonzo was absolutely essential to the plan of this roster construction. Nevertheless, a team with this much offensive talent shouldn't be a bottom 3rd tier team, so win goes to GarPax easily here.

All this to say, if we gave AK a 10-11 year window like we gave GarPax, I don't think the end result would actually be that much worse. Perhaps definitely worse, but not landslide worse. But maybe we'll never know.