jnrjr79 wrote:League Circles wrote:jnrjr79 wrote:
Not really. If everyone on the list is a problem, you don't really need a power ranking to know what you need to do with this roster.
You can't do things with rosters, you can only do things with contracts. In a sense, this is a question of which player or coach contract we most need to move.
Ehh, the rosters vs. contracts terminology is just semantics.
My point here is that you don't need to know which problem is worst - it's sufficient to identify the problems and say "these are the people that need to go." Identifying whether something is a problem is more important than trying to rank them.League Circles wrote:jnrjr79 wrote:
I don't know for how long, but this version of DeMar could probably be the #2 on a championship team if your #1 were, say, Jokic, Doncic, Saha, etc.
But yep, the issue here isn't so much the players listed, it's the lack of a real #1.
Fair enough, and I agree. But this is about the specific personnel problems that we have, not problems of who we don't have. We need to do things with these crappy contracts, whether you believe we need to tank, clear opportunities for mew guys, or clear cap space, it's really all the same - guys need to GO.
Agreed. When I say that the biggest problem is the lack of a #1 player, I think that's important because, like your'e saying, it suggests what needs to be done. If we had a #1, then that would suggest you need to reshuffle some pieces to build a better team. But the Bulls have a bunch of vets that are good enough to drag them to the play-in (likely making it a lot harder to build through the draft) and are light on draft assets in the first place. There isn't a path to make this current core a contender, so really all the vets should go. Continue developing Coby and Ayo, get draft assets, and let's try to build/reboot this thing properly.
Now, if you're going to keep doing what AK has been doing, then sure, you can care more about self-evaluating the vets and figure out how to try to make a presumably Zach-free roster more competitive. There are better and worse ways to execute that plan, and we talk about a lot of those on this board, but the overarching thing is that it's just fundamentally the wrong course of action.
So, getting to your original post, the entire list is a problem and the Bulls should be moving on from all of it, regardless of which is the "worst." Some of those guys are only "problems" as it pertains to the Bulls - DeMar is an actual impact player, he just doesn't make sense for this team long-term. Others would be problems anywhere, like Vooch, given his decline and contract. So some are going to be more moveable than others, and you just might have to wait out the guys that have a negative asset value, but the Bulls should be exploring options to get rid of all of it.
The thing is, it's almost certainly not possible to get rid of all the vets, and even if we could, it's very far from automatic that we'd be terrible with the resulting roster, because matching contract rules dictates that we'd be taking back a LOT of nba caliber players. Everybody talks about "picks and expirings" like that's just something you can pick off a tree at will. The reality IMO is that even if you can actually move most of these guys, instead of good picks and bad expirings coming back in return, we'd most likely get bad picks and mediocre players coming right back to us, preventing any successful tank. And I won't even get into how bad of an idea tanking is in 2024 anyways due to draft odds. Besides everything else I just mentioned, there is a sequence to consider here. Even if you do believe that we can and should "get rid of everyone to start a rebuild properly", it's not possible to all happen at once, and the first domino needs to be considered. I say Vuc. Why? If for no other reasons, Demar is a free agent so doesn't need to be dumped if we don't want him, Zach is highly paid and hurt and very unlikely to be tradable this summer, same with Ball of course. That leaves Carter and Billy. I think Carter is unmovable by himself in the kind of deal we'd want, at least until after the FA dust settles this summer.
Only 2 of the top 4 seeds in each conference are led by a guy they drafted with a high draft pick (MN and Boston). Everybody else is led by guys drafted at like #11 or later (SGA, Jokic, Kawhi, Brunson, Giannis, Mitchell). The idea that you have to, can and should tank for an elite pick to get a franchise player is absurdly dated IMO.
So yeah, we need a franchise player. So let's start creating multiple avenues for CHANCES to get such a player. Yes of course draft picks are one way, the higher the better. But creating opportunities (playing time available and cap space) absolutely cannot be overlooked. We're too desperate.
