I'm growing increasingly frustrated with the local coverage regarding the Bulls recent trade where they sent Demar DeRozan to the Kings so I've decided to provide you all with a little history lesson:
June 9th, 2015 Vlade Divac, the newly appointed Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Sacramento Kings trades Carl Landry, Nik Stauskas, and Jason Thompson along with a 2017 unprotected pick swap and a 2019 1st Round Pick.
In exchange the Kings receive two euro league prospects who never made it to the NBA. Effectively this trade was a cap dump. The Kings cleared approximately 15.25 million dollars in cap space which they used to sign free agents Rajon Rondo, Kosta Kufos, and Marco Belinelli.
It is later reported by Zach Lowe that the Kings could have kept both of their picks and signed at least 2/3 desired free agents if they had instead used the Stretch Provision on the aforementioned Landry, Stauskas, and Thompson, however, Divac did not know what the stretch provision was.
The 2019 1st Rounder turns into Romeo Langford.
The 2017 Swap turns #5 Pick DeAaron Fox into #3 Pick Jayson Tatum.
The Bulls in 2024 are approximately 4.7 million dollars below the luxury tax line. If they had chosen to do so they could have used the Stretch Provision on Lonzo Ball and they would have enough space to absorb Harrison Barnes' contract, acquire an unprotected 2031 1st Round Pick Swap with the Sacramento Kings, and stay below the luxury tax line.
Don't tell me that pick swaps don't matter: THEY DO.
Don't tell me about cap space in 2025: when you factor in Giddey's Cap Hold they will not have any.
Bulls fans need to realize that this is not the usual bad front office that we are used to having. They are historically inept and the only thing we can do is stop giving them our money.
by coolhanddan74
3 Comments
Shout it from the rooftops
Not taking the salary dump and pick is such a massive failure, completely inexcusable. Those are the kinds of small moves that winning teams can string together and make something of them.
The pick swap would’ve been nice but I’m not sure what we would do with Harrison Barnes, especially since it’s not expiring.
Giddey, Barnes, Lavine, Vucevic, White might be too good to tank.
Obv, we should really try to find ways Vucevic and Lavine but we might be restricted in that regard anyway.
Cap hit of Lonzo’s stretch is going to be annoying when we can just let him go after this year. Expiring means he can also be used in a trade potentially.
Yeah AKME has made dubious moves the past few offseasons but this summer has been decent given our circumstances. I don’t trust Reinsdorf to hire anyone better anyway.
You can phase out interest in the Bulls if you want to but I’m just gonna wait and see what AKME do with Lavine and Vucevic. Enjoy the season and see what Giddey has to bring.