A realistic look at 2014 FA and options

[BIGGIEsmalls 23]

Anyways, I'm bored of being negative. Reality bites. I'm going to just throw out a team:
Rose $17.6M
Mayo $8M
Butler $1.1M
Love $14.7M
Noah $11.1M
+
Gibson $7.6M

That's 60.1M for your top 6 guys fielding a team I think could be a serious contender. In order to make it happen you would have the following guys and assets you have to trade:
Hamilton $5M non guaranteed
Kirk $3.5M expiring
Deng $14M expiring
Boozer 2 years $31M (think three way deal where he goes to Brooklyn and Hump's expiring goes somewhere)
Teauge
Rights to Mirotic
Rights to Cha pick
Bulls 2013 pick
Bulls 2014 pick
Bulls 2016 pick

How do you get it done?

My thoughts:
Boozer to Brooklyn, Hump and 2 Bulls picks to Dallas, Mayo to Chicago
Deng, Cha pick, Teague, Mirotic, Bulls pick to Min for Love
Cut Hamilton
Keep Hinrich

[Shill]

Whatever the 2014 plan may be, I think a lot of it hinges on Jimmy Butler's development.

I THINK he is a competent long-term replacement for Deng, but I don't know for certain. I'm confident in Butler's defense, rebounding, and all-around court sense.

The only question is can he maintain his efficiency on higher volume? We won't know until he plays extended minutes. I'm cautiously optimistic because he was able to improve the form on his jumper significantly.

His floor percentages are also solid:

At rim -- 71.7%
3-9 feet -- 12.5%
10-15 feet -- 42.9%
16-23 feet -- 40.0%

But again, the volume isn't there yet, and the 3-9 feet percentage highlights the fact he doesn't have a crafty runner/mid-post game.

Long story short: MOAR JIMMY BUCKETS

[Shill]

Anyways, I'm bored of being negative. Reality bites. I'm going to just throw out a team:
Rose $17.6M
Mayo $8M
Butler $1.1M
Love $14.7M
Noah $11.1M
+
Gibson $7.6M

That's 60.1M for your top 6 guys fielding a team I think could be a serious contender. In order to make it happen you would have the following guys and assets you have to trade:
Hamilton $5M non guaranteed
Kirk $3.5M expiring
Deng $14M expiring
Boozer 2 years $31M (think three way deal where he goes to Brooklyn and Hump's expiring goes somewhere)
Teauge
Rights to Mirotic
Rights to Cha pick
Bulls 2013 pick
Bulls 2014 pick
Bulls 2016 pick

How do you get it done?

My thoughts:
Boozer to Brooklyn, Hump and 2 Bulls picks to Dallas, Mayo to Chicago
Deng, Cha pick, Teague, Mirotic, Bulls pick to Min for Love
Cut Hamilton
Keep Hinrich

That's one helluva squad.

Great interior rebounding. Our frontcourt would be the best passing unit in the league. Then you have two perimeter ball-handlers, and two reliable three-point shooters to space the floor (Mayo and Love).

Not much low-post offense, but Boozer wasn't providing that on a consistent basis anyway.

Sounds good. Let's do it.

[BIGGIEsmalls 23]

Anyways, I'm bored of being negative. Reality bites. I'm going to just throw out a team:
Rose $17.6M
Mayo $8M
Butler $1.1M
Love $14.7M
Noah $11.1M
+
Gibson $7.6M

That's 60.1M for your top 6 guys fielding a team I think could be a serious contender. In order to make it happen you would have the following guys and assets you have to trade:
Hamilton $5M non guaranteed
Kirk $3.5M expiring
Deng $14M expiring
Boozer 2 years $31M (think three way deal where he goes to Brooklyn and Hump's expiring goes somewhere)
Teauge
Rights to Mirotic
Rights to Cha pick
Bulls 2013 pick
Bulls 2014 pick
Bulls 2016 pick

How do you get it done?

My thoughts:
Boozer to Brooklyn, Hump and 2 Bulls picks to Dallas, Mayo to Chicago
Deng, Cha pick, Teague, Mirotic, Bulls pick to Min for Love
Cut Hamilton
Keep Hinrich

That's one helluva squad.

Great interior rebounding. Our frontcourt would be the best passing unit in the league. Then you have two perimeter ball-handlers, and two reliable three-point shooters to space the floor (Mayo and Love).

Not much low-post offense, but Boozer wasn't providing that on a consistent basis anyway.

Sounds good. Let's do it.

Coldfish posted that several pages back & I'm shocked that it hasn't been re-posted on every single page of this thread.

It not only looks good, but it's an actual possibility.

[Ralphb07]

The Bulls have a decision to make on Deng and not too many are talking about that. Deng is going into his free agent year and we need to decide this summer if he is in our plans or not. He is a UFA and can bolt so I don't think we can take that chance. I think we need to try and extend him at what we want and when he says no, we need to ship him out. I think Deng is going to ask for Boozer money, why shouldn't he. I don't think he's worth it but he has every right to see if he can get that and to be honest he just may from a outside team.

I think the Bulls are going to make a big mistake by not taking action once we can't come to terms with him. I'm tired of losing good players for nothing.

The Boozer thing is simply. You try and deal him this summer. If you can't land something good, we keep him.

[red222]

The Bulls have a decision to make on Deng and not too many are talking about that. Deng is going into his free agent year and we need to decide this summer if he is in our plans or not. He is a UFA and can bolt so I don't think we can take that chance. I think we need to try and extend him at what we want and when he says no, we need to ship him out. I think Deng is going to ask for Boozer money, why shouldn't he. I don't think he's worth it but he has every right to see if he can get that and to be honest he just may from a outside team.

I think the Bulls are going to make a big mistake by not taking action once we can't come to terms with him. I'm tired of losing good players for nothing.

The Boozer thing is simply. You try and deal him this summer. If you can't land something good, we keep him.

+2014

[Shill]

The Bulls have a decision to make on Deng and not too many are talking about that. Deng is going into his free agent year and we need to decide this summer if he is in our plans or not. He is a UFA and can bolt so I don't think we can take that chance. I think we need to try and extend him at what we want and when he says no, we need to ship him out. I think Deng is going to ask for Boozer money, why shouldn't he. I don't think he's worth it but he has every right to see if he can get that and to be honest he just may from a outside team.

I think the Bulls are going to make a big mistake by not taking action once we can't come to terms with him. I'm tired of losing good players for nothing.

The Boozer thing is simply. You try and deal him this summer. If you can't land something good, we keep him.

Deng wouldn't be in my future plans. He's a #3 option. I don't think we can significantly improve the rest of the starting 5 with Deng eating up big money.

[BIGGIEsmalls 23]

The Bulls have a decision to make on Deng and not too many are talking about that.

It was discussed for many pages in the Bargs thread.

I believe that if the FO can't shed themselves of Boozer's contract via trade, Deng is next on the trade block.

[Ralphb07]

The Bulls have a decision to make on Deng and not too many are talking about that.

It was discussed for many pages in the Bargs thread.

I believe that if the FO can't shed themselves of Boozer's contract via trade, Deng is next on the trade block.

That thread was so bad, I stop reading after page 2

[red222]

The Bulls have a decision to make on Deng and not too many are talking about that. Deng is going into his free agent year and we need to decide this summer if he is in our plans or not. He is a UFA and can bolt so I don't think we can take that chance. I think we need to try and extend him at what we want and when he says no, we need to ship him out. I think Deng is going to ask for Boozer money, why shouldn't he. I don't think he's worth it but he has every right to see if he can get that and to be honest he just may from a outside team.

I think the Bulls are going to make a big mistake by not taking action once we can't come to terms with him. I'm tired of losing good players for nothing.

The Boozer thing is simply. You try and deal him this summer. If you can't land something good, we keep him.

Deng wouldn't be in my future plans. He's a #3 option. I don't think we can significantly improve the rest of the starting 5 with Deng eating up big money.

I agree and another thing I wish we had utilized those expiring deals and brought in a potential long term piece if we were gonna be in the tax anyway

[whodey]

The Bulls have a decision to make on Deng and not too many are talking about that.

It was discussed for many pages in the Bargs thread.

I believe that if the FO can't shed themselves of Boozer's contract via trade, Deng is next on the trade block.

That thread was so bad, I stop reading after page 2

Ralph, is there any chance the bulls use the amnesty on Boozer this offseason? I did the math, they would have about $13 million to complete the roster and still remain under the cap. Now about $1.4 would be used on our draft pick unless we stash a pick in Europe.

But don't you think we could use that $13 million on quality depth and just move Taj into the starting lineup? We could use trade exception to get Korver back on a 1 year deal or some solid SG. We could split the MLE between Pachulia and Brand. Sign quality vet minimum players. Maybe bring Marco back on a one year deal.

Rose / Hinrich / Teague
Beli / Korver / 1st rounder
Deng/ Butler
Gibson / Brand / Vet Min
Noah / Zaza

[League Circles]

The problem with Deng isn't necessarily Deng (I do think his lack of individual offense is an issue), but rather I think players in his skill level, borderline All-Star, kind of tend to be the worse value contracts in the NBA. And Bulls have several of them, in Deng, Boozer, even Taj inches near that if not playing well.

The best value contracts are of course true superstars on max, who are really worth much more than max. LeBron, Durant, etc.

Then of course rookie contracts, for up and coming future rotation players in the NBA, all these are good value contracts.

Then there are also good value contracts at around MLE, for guys having good years there, like Mayo, Crawford, etc. Those players may not be as good as Deng, but they are sure as heck closer to him than their less than half as much salary suggests, and way better for building a total talent team on budget.

You can't get bogged down paying too many players in that 10-15 million range in the new CBA era, if even before that either. You maybe have one guy in that range who is your true #2 option behind your franchise player or max superstar, then fill in the rest with cheaper specialists, MLE average players, some productive rookies, and a couple close to the end older journeyman (think Brad Miller, Kurt Thomas, Battier) to give you some steady experience in short minutes, and locker room leadership.

I completely understand and agree with the point that these types of players are often overpaid, but completely disagree about the implication that you then don't want too many of them. The Bulls problem isn't that we have Deng, Taj, and Noah, it's that we only have 3 of them and they're all defense-first. We need about 5-6 of these guys of equal offense-defense balance.

I don't think you do the math when you propose a team like this:

1. max guy - say 18 mil
2. 13 mil #2 guy (a very average #2 guy in the mold of a Deng, Monte Ellis, Granger type of player)
3. MLE - 5 mil
4. MLE - 5 mil
5. MLE - 5 mil
6. productive rookie - 2 mil
7. productive rookie - 2 mil
8. vet
9. vet
10. vet

First of all, that team SUCKS. You have three below average starters. Second, the team has a low payroll of under 60 mil or so. It blows my mind that you think this type of "balance" and allocation is some kind of winning model. It also completely ignores that teams aren't built from scratch, but through complex sequences where transaction x can't be decided on with the benefit of knowing that transaction y will later be a real possibility.

Let's say a team (like the Bulls) does load up on too many highly paid but not max guys. What's wrong with say, one true max guy at 20 mil, three $12 mil guys, 2 $8 mil guys, a $5 mil guy, and 6 guys making 1-2 mil (vet mins and rookie deal guys) for a total of $85 mil? That's the kind of team that can win a title.

Regarding the kind of player like Crawford, sure he's more bang for the buck than Deng, but it's irrelevent, because against other great teams, Crawford is a minus player. The reason there is such a huge difference in pay between a Deng and Jamal isn't because the league has confused the Deng's with the Lebrons, it's because the Dengs, despite not being Lebrons, are still, on any given night, gonna beat their opposition (in the sense that they are better than their counterpart), while the Jamals, are, for all their "value", gonna, on any given night, lose to their counterpart. Jamal's having a nice year, but dude doesn't defend well, is a non existent rebounder, has never been very efficient from the field, etc. These are the kinds of guys who are really nice to have as your 5th-8th men, but atrocious to have as your 2nd or 3rd or really even 4th best players in most cases.

There are really 5 levels of player, though they fall in all sorts of different categories depending on age, consistency, etc:

1. true stars - there are probably less than 10 of these guys in the game IMO
2. really good/great players - these guys will be better than most of their counterparts throughout the regular season
3. players - they are able to play with/against most anyone, but they will rarely strongly outplay or be strongly outplayed by anyone
4. guys who are routinely outplayed by many players
5. messes - just like stars, there very few of these guys, and most never play

We have:

1 #1 - Rose
2-3 #2s (Deng, Noah, and maybe Taj IMO)
at least 2 #3s (Boozer and Jimmy, maybe RIP, Kirk, Nate, Marco are in this group too)
#4s include probably Teague, maybe Kirk and Marco, MAYBE Nazr and Cook
#5s include Vlad, Maybe Nazr

To compete, the prerequisite is to have at least one #1. The more the better, but you need one and we have it. The next most important thing is to have several #2s, as many as possible but you really need a minimum of 3 if you only have 1 #1, and then your category 3 guys should fit whatever skill set holes your category 1 and 2 guys have.

The bottom line point I'm trying to make is that what matters most is WHEN you pay guys, in what sequence, not how much you pay them. Saying something like "you can't afford to bogged down paying too many guys 10-15 mil" begs the question, why not? There need to be three categories of team building:

1. teams who have a true #1 already getting paid - that's us for the next 5-10 years
2. teams who have a true #1 still on a rookie deal, which is extremely rare, but was us in 2010
3. teams who don't have a true #1 at all

Only the last two categories can be bogged down by having too many good, but "overpaid" players, because only they can really possibly add a great player as a free agent. Thus, we couldn't afford to have Nocioni and Hinrich in 2010 summer because we had Rose and Deng.

But that doesn't extend forward. The fewer Deng's, Taj's, etc we have now, the less we have to trade for a true second #1 guy (which is actually what people want - they call it a #2 but what they really want is a second #1 guy like Miami and the Shaq-Kobe Lakers had), and the fewer players we have who are consistently better than their opposition.

I mean, don't get me wrong, players like Love, Aldridge, Gay, etc are most definitely very good players, but they're sure as hell not category 1 players. Category 1 players are two way guys, MVP caliber talents. We can't think that Rose and another great scorer like Love will be enough if flanked by a few specialists. Why? We'd probably only have 2 guys with very good offense, and quite possibly 3 with poor offense. Miami has a minimum of 4 guys that are good on offense on the court at any given time, and a maximum of 1-2 guys who aren't good on defense. To beat them you either need an even more devastating combo of category 1 guys, which could really ONLY happen if Cousins transforms himself into his max potential, AND Rose improves, AND Wade declines, OR, you need a minimum of 4 guys with good offense AND 4 guys with good defense on the court.

I've gone off on tangents, but the bottom line is that I think we need to "stock up", not "Scale back". It's too late to scale back, unless you want to really risk 2-3 years of hell like mid-career Pierce, Wade, or Kobe, in the hopes that we will pull off the miracles that Boston, Miami, and the Lakers did with KG, Ray, LBJ, Bosh, and Pau, Bynum. We're not a title favorite of course, but we're too close to do what those teams did and risk 2-3 years. Those teams had next to nothing around Paul, Wade, and Kobe when they hit their skids. We have a lot more to lose IMO. They couldn't be title contenders, we can, by staying as-is, especially if Mirotic and/or Bobcats pick pan out. We might not be strong contenders, but contenders.

Sure we should try to trade like all hell this summer, but if it doesn't work, and we face summer 2014, you've simply got to pay Luol if you can't get Kobe (or Gay if he opts out which he won't) IMO. A team built around Rose, Noah, Taj, Mirotic and spare parts is a much worse contender than the same team with Deng added.

[League Circles]

The Bulls have a decision to make on Deng and not too many are talking about that. Deng is going into his free agent year and we need to decide this summer if he is in our plans or not. He is a UFA and can bolt so I don't think we can take that chance. I think we need to try and extend him at what we want and when he says no, we need to ship him out. I think Deng is going to ask for Boozer money, why shouldn't he. I don't think he's worth it but he has every right to see if he can get that and to be honest he just may from a outside team.

I think the Bulls are going to make a big mistake by not taking action once we can't come to terms with him. I'm tired of losing good players for nothing.

The Boozer thing is simply. You try and deal him this summer. If you can't land something good, we keep him.

Well, Deng might take less than he knows he can get if he realizes we may do an OKC-Harden and ship him to hell when he doesn't agree to a deal. Second, we can notify him in extension talks that if he waits, we'll offer a no-trade clause at a reduced salary. Third, if you can't get good value for him, and you most likely can't IMO as he'd be a one year rental to another team, you go for it, try to win a title next year. Then after the year, if he's your best option still, whether we won a ring or not, you pay him what it takes to keep him.

In the NBA, you don't pay players what they're worth. You pay them what it takes to get them. at any given time, the only NBA players that aren't overpaid is the best guy in the league on a max deal (Lebron), the best rookie scale players in the game (Irving, etc), and the best vet minimum guys (Nate?). Every single other player is "overpaid" relative to these fixed benchmarks. That doesn't mean you don't pay them. The best teams in the league are literally filled with overpaid players:

Bosh
Wade
Durant
Westbrook
Rose
Boozer
Deng
etc.

Well, except the Spurs I guess, but they're so damn old it doesn't count. The fact that guys like Manu, Duncan, KG, etc realize they must take less than the max these days (hell, they're making 50% of the max) is good news for the league, and for the Bulls regarding Deng.

[League Circles]

Anyways, I'm bored of being negative. Reality bites. I'm going to just throw out a team:
Rose $17.6M
Mayo $8M
Butler $1.1M
Love $14.7M
Noah $11.1M
+
Gibson $7.6M

That's 60.1M for your top 6 guys fielding a team I think could be a serious contender. In order to make it happen you would have the following guys and assets you have to trade:
Hamilton $5M non guaranteed
Kirk $3.5M expiring
Deng $14M expiring
Boozer 2 years $31M (think three way deal where he goes to Brooklyn and Hump's expiring goes somewhere)
Teauge
Rights to Mirotic
Rights to Cha pick
Bulls 2013 pick
Bulls 2014 pick
Bulls 2016 pick

How do you get it done?

My thoughts:
Boozer to Brooklyn, Hump and 2 Bulls picks to Dallas, Mayo to Chicago
Deng, Cha pick, Teague, Mirotic, Bulls pick to Min for Love
Cut Hamilton
Keep Hinrich

This isn't realistic at all. Why in the hell would Dallas S&T Mayo to us for garbage? IMO, there is a VERY high likelihood that Dwight signs with Dallas, Mayo resigns on a big deal, and they roll like that. I'd genuinely be surprised if next year Dallas wasn't built around Dwight, Dirk, and Mayo. And if Mayo for some reason doesn't a 5 year deal in a no-income tax paying state for arguably the best franchise in the league in a warm weather big market to be a top 1-3 option on the team, Dallas will just waive him goodbye instead of facilitate making us a dominant team just for a couple of scrub end-of-round picks. I also can't see why MN would do that deal. Deng leaves them in a year, Mirotic may not ever come over to them, Teague and the Bulls pick will most likely never be good players, and the Bobcats pick may be a few years away. It's basically Love for a year of Deng and an unknown pick sometime in the next few years from Charlotte.

[League Circles]

The Bulls have a decision to make on Deng and not too many are talking about that.

It was discussed for many pages in the Bargs thread.

I believe that if the FO can't shed themselves of Boozer's contract via trade, Deng is next on the trade block.

Damn Biggie, I thought you didn't think the FO was cheap and would pay for a winner? Why the hell would they dump Deng unless it makes the team better? If trading him does make the team better, they'll do it whether or not Boozer is fishing or yelling gimme-dat on the court.

[League Circles]

Deng wouldn't be in my future plans. He's a #3 option. I don't think we can significantly improve the rest of the starting 5 with Deng eating up big money.

How does letting Deng walk do anything but make your #3 option much worse? It won't open up cap room we won't have anyway, and it will give us one less asset for trade.

[TheBigSqueeze]

The problem with Deng isn't necessarily Deng (I do think his lack of individual offense is an issue), but rather I think players in his skill level, borderline All-Star, kind of tend to be the worse value contracts in the NBA. And Bulls have several of them, in Deng, Boozer, even Taj inches near that if not playing well.

The best value contracts are of course true superstars on max, who are really worth much more than max. LeBron, Durant, etc.

Then of course rookie contracts, for up and coming future rotation players in the NBA, all these are good value contracts.

Then there are also good value contracts at around MLE, for guys having good years there, like Mayo, Crawford, etc. Those players may not be as good as Deng, but they are sure as heck closer to him than their less than half as much salary suggests, and way better for building a total talent team on budget.

You can't get bogged down paying too many players in that 10-15 million range in the new CBA era, if even before that either. You maybe have one guy in that range who is your true #2 option behind your franchise player or max superstar, then fill in the rest with cheaper specialists, MLE average players, some productive rookies, and a couple close to the end older journeyman (think Brad Miller, Kurt Thomas, Battier) to give you some steady experience in short minutes, and locker room leadership.

I completely understand and agree with the point that these types of players are often overpaid, but completely disagree about the implication that you then don't want too many of them. The Bulls problem isn't that we have Deng, Taj, and Noah, it's that we only have 3 of them and they're all defense-first. We need about 5-6 of these guys of equal offense-defense balance.

I don't think you do the math when you propose a team like this:

1. max guy - say 18 mil
2. 13 mil #2 guy (a very average #2 guy in the mold of a Deng, Monte Ellis, Granger type of player)
3. MLE - 5 mil
4. MLE - 5 mil
5. MLE - 5 mil
6. productive rookie - 2 mil
7. productive rookie - 2 mil
8. vet
9. vet
10. vet

First of all, that team SUCKS. You have three below average starters. Second, the team has a low payroll of under 60 mil or so. It blows my mind that you think this type of "balance" and allocation is some kind of winning model. It also completely ignores that teams aren't built from scratch, but through complex sequences where transaction x can't be decided on with the benefit of knowing that transaction y will later be a real possibility.

Let's say a team (like the Bulls) does load up on too many highly paid but not max guys. What's wrong with say, one true max guy at 20 mil, three $12 mil guys, 2 $8 mil guys, a $5 mil guy, and 6 guys making 1-2 mil (vet mins and rookie deal guys) for a total of $85 mil? That's the kind of team that can win a title.

Regarding the kind of player like Crawford, sure he's more bang for the buck than Deng, but it's irrelevent, because against other great teams, Crawford is a minus player. The reason there is such a huge difference in pay between a Deng and Jamal isn't because the league has confused the Deng's with the Lebrons, it's because the Dengs, despite not being Lebrons, are still, on any given night, gonna beat their opposition (in the sense that they are better than their counterpart), while the Jamals, are, for all their "value", gonna, on any given night, lose to their counterpart. Jamal's having a nice year, but dude doesn't defend well, is a non existent rebounder, has never been very efficient from the field, etc. These are the kinds of guys who are really nice to have as your 5th-8th men, but atrocious to have as your 2nd or 3rd or really even 4th best players in most cases.

There are really 5 levels of player, though they fall in all sorts of different categories depending on age, consistency, etc:

1. true stars - there are probably less than 10 of these guys in the game IMO
2. really good/great players - these guys will be better than most of their counterparts throughout the regular season
3. players - they are able to play with/against most anyone, but they will rarely strongly outplay or be strongly outplayed by anyone
4. guys who are routinely outplayed by many players
5. messes - just like stars, there very few of these guys, and most never play

We have:

1 #1 - Rose
2-3 #2s (Deng, Noah, and maybe Taj IMO)
at least 2 #3s (Boozer and Jimmy, maybe RIP, Kirk, Nate, Marco are in this group too)
#4s include probably Teague, maybe Kirk and Marco, MAYBE Nazr and Cook
#5s include Vlad, Maybe Nazr

To compete, the prerequisite is to have at least one #1. The more the better, but you need one and we have it. The next most important thing is to have several #2s, as many as possible but you really need a minimum of 3 if you only have 1 #1, and then your category 3 guys should fit whatever skill set holes your category 1 and 2 guys have.

The bottom line point I'm trying to make is that what matters most is WHEN you pay guys, in what sequence, not how much you pay them. Saying something like "you can't afford to bogged down paying too many guys 10-15 mil" begs the question, why not? There need to be three categories of team building:

1. teams who have a true #1 already getting paid - that's us for the next 5-10 years
2. teams who have a true #1 still on a rookie deal, which is extremely rare, but was us in 2010
3. teams who don't have a true #1 at all

Only the last two categories can be bogged down by having too many good, but "overpaid" players, because only they can really possibly add a great player as a free agent. Thus, we couldn't afford to have Nocioni and Hinrich in 2010 summer because we had Rose and Deng.

But that doesn't extend forward. The fewer Deng's, Taj's, etc we have now, the less we have to trade for a true second #1 guy (which is actually what people want - they call it a #2 but what they really want is a second #1 guy like Miami and the Shaq-Kobe Lakers had), and the fewer players we have who are consistently better than their opposition.

I mean, don't get me wrong, players like Love, Aldridge, Gay, etc are most definitely very good players, but they're sure as hell not category 1 players. Category 1 players are two way guys, MVP caliber talents. We can't think that Rose and another great scorer like Love will be enough if flanked by a few specialists. Why? We'd probably only have 2 guys with very good offense, and quite possibly 3 with poor offense. Miami has a minimum of 4 guys that are good on offense on the court at any given time, and a maximum of 1-2 guys who aren't good on defense. To beat them you either need an even more devastating combo of category 1 guys, which could really ONLY happen if Cousins transforms himself into his max potential, AND Rose improves, AND Wade declines, OR, you need a minimum of 4 guys with good offense AND 4 guys with good defense on the court.

I've gone off on tangents, but the bottom line is that I think we need to "stock up", not "Scale back". It's too late to scale back, unless you want to really risk 2-3 years of hell like mid-career Pierce, Wade, or Kobe, in the hopes that we will pull off the miracles that Boston, Miami, and the Lakers did with KG, Ray, LBJ, Bosh, and Pau, Bynum. We're not a title favorite of course, but we're too close to do what those teams did and risk 2-3 years. Those teams had next to nothing around Paul, Wade, and Kobe when they hit their skids. We have a lot more to lose IMO. They couldn't be title contenders, we can, by staying as-is, especially if Mirotic and/or Bobcats pick pan out. We might not be strong contenders, but contenders.

Sure we should try to trade like all hell this summer, but if it doesn't work, and we face summer 2014, you've simply got to pay Luol if you can't get Kobe (or Gay if he opts out which he won't) IMO. A team built around Rose, Noah, Taj, Mirotic and spare parts is a much worse contender than the same team with Deng added.

Deng & Noah are not # 2 options they're more like #3-4's.

[League Circles]

Deng & Noah are not # 2 options they're more like #3-4's.

I never claimed they were #2 options. I said they are in the second tier of NBA players - players who will consistently be better players than they guy they are matched up against, but who can't lead a great team. When people cry about wanting a "2nd option" what they're really wanting is a second #1 category guy. I mean Wade has now been the 2nd option to two different #1 options on NBA title teams, but he's still a category 1 player. Kevin Love, on the other hand, is a clear cut #1 option on his bad team, but is a category 2 player IMO.

There are very few #1 guys in the league IMO, currently only:

Lebron
Wade
Durant
Rose
Kobe
Melo
Harden
Irving
Parker
MAYBE guys like Griffin, Westbrook, etc could be in the right circumstances, and maybe younger guys like Cousins or Paul George could develop into #1 guys, but the list is extremely short.

[BullsFTW]

With the recent Reggie interview, we can tell what the mindset of Rose is. They are looking at Miami and not to grow slowly with Rose.

There is a very low chance that the Bulls get their SG of the future through the draft. It has to be through a trade. Again, a player from the draft cannot be the 2nd best player on the Bulls for the next 3/4 years. The Bulls are not at that level at this time. They have to make a trade. They can get a rotation player or even a starter type from the draft if somebody like Deng is traded but that player cannot be the second best player on the Bulls. If that happens,they aren't winning anything for another 3 to 5 years. Rookies except for some HOF types like Duncan don't help their teams win in the NBA especially as the 1st or 2nd best player of that team.

If they can move in the high lottery, I trust the Bulls to select the best SG of the future.

[Rerisen]

We need about 5-6 of these guys of equal offense-defense balance.

First off, you took my team build example too exact. I didn't mean you couldn't have a couple Taj level guys (about 8m). Just not so many 10-15.

You said, heck yeah, build a team full of those guys, 5 or 6 of em! Well 6 times 12.5, middle point average, is 75 million dollars, and you still need 6 more players. That can't all be mininums or your bench is garbage. Yeah Jerry isn't going there.

The idea is rather not that this should be a hard fast rule, but I think a rather safe assumption that players you acquire in Free Agency are rarely ever going to be the type to be worth it in true value in this range. Heck guys like Granger, Eric Gordon, or Rudy Gay, who should make in this range, actually want more, want the Max.

If you have homegrown players like Noah, who like the team, you can get true value players in this range. But I don't see any of those coming up on our team.

The Bulls answer is not I think Free Agency. Too many suitors for good players drive their price up. We need to either trade for existing true value contracts, or trade to get younger cheaper productive players.