Now that the dust has mostly settled on the 2024 offseason, ESPN had the chance to chat with 18 NBA coaches, scouts and executives to get their opinions on the most impactful summer moves and what they mean for the 2024-25 season.
The Bulls were ranked as having the 2nd worst off-season in the league:
Chicago, after trading both Caruso and DeMar DeRozan and not getting a first-round pick in either deal (and watching the San Antonio Spurs get the best asset, a 2031 pick swap from the Kings, in the DeRozan deal)
The Thunder trading Giddey for Caruso was ranked as the 2nd best deal of the off-season:
Right behind it was the Caruso deal for Oklahoma City, which saw one of the league's best perimeter defenders go to the Thunder without the franchise having to part with a single draft pick.
"Getting him without giving up a pick is crazy," an East scout said.
by BuffaloBrain884
9 Comments
I agree it didn’t make sense to keep assets at the deadline.
I do find it weird people would feel better about the Giddey trade even if we got a couple second rounders or a very late first round. All of which hardly ever pan out to be useful.
All that said, I’m just ready to watch some actual basketball and see how this new young core looks on the floor. Also a healthy Zach will play well and likely moved on for some good pieces. That one is a big if for sure though.
This was a top 5 Chicago Bulls offseason since Jordan retired imo. We got 2010 up there, 2021 for sure, the year we signed Pau, the year we traded Jimmy and then this year too.
I believe espn also thought the bulls signing Demar was bad. ESPN writers are usually wrong, I think.. baby!
I’d need to see the full rankings but I think part of it is certainly “the chickens coming home to roost.” What is really bad is how we managed our assets up to this point, leading to the offseason we had, where we sold low on most assets or let guys walk free.
You got to love sports media. They shit on the Bulls for not making changes, then shit on the Bulls for making changes. I get their point, that the Bulls should have gotten picks in these trades, but that clearly wasn’t on the table so what was the next step?
No one has ever given an answer for that. If OKC said “You can’t get any picks for Giddey.” Should the Bulls have not traded AC? Or gone for a worse set of players that don’t help the team in order to get picks they don’t really want?
Also, the idea that the best asset in the DeMar trade was not DeMar himself but a pick swap literally over 7 years away is insanity. What is the benefit of that swap? We could trade it later? Who would want it? Like even if the Kings suck in 3 years the timeline is such that they’d have time to do a full rebuild between the time Fox is likely hitting the tail end of his career and when that swap will happen.
It just feels like there was no winning any sort of move. At this point, I’m convinced they could have gotten a Gobert-style haul for Caruso and DeMar and everyone would still be saying the team got fleeced.
This was, ostensibly, a ‘bad’ off season. But at least we moved on some pieces, know we are in for at least one year of hard rebuild and can start to take a new direction next off season.
Something we should have done a year or even two years ago when we could see that the roster wasn’t ever going to work as it was.
We’re objectively worse off going into this season, but hey, we can at least move on to the next chapter after this year.
At least we actually have a direction now. This is a lot better than fighting tooth and nail for 40 wins and a play in loss. I’m excited to see what Giddey can do here
And yet still a vast improvement over the last offseason.
Look we all love Caruso, and the Thunder have picks 11-25 in the next 3 drafts, but most of these analysts conveniently forget that Caruso will be turning 31 this season and spends either the 2nd or 3rd quarter of every game in the locker room. He’s got less effective playing time left than people realize.