Should the Bulls Pay the Lux Tax Just Because They Can?

[Addicted123]

I'm looking at that 10 year chain of salary dumps in my post above, and man if that aint the Clippers model I don't know what is.

Bummer.

The Bulls have perfected the Clippers model.

[Three34]

Jordan forced out
Pippen give away
Rodman draft choice
Barry give away
Kukoc draft choice

I'm not going to speak for this earlier stuff because I flat don't know.

Artest extension dodge
Brand extension dodge
Miller exstension dodge
Rose used to dodge three extensions, Rose contract then broken up and shipped out in peices

Trading for a maximum contract for a player - who was not even nearly worth it - is being tight?

The Rose trade was done for basketball reasons. It, like all moves, had an impact financially down the road. The problem wasn't with the financial aspects of the deal. The problem was that Krause just made a really bad deal. And I can't see how you can have any problem with them saving a year on his contract by swapping it for Davis/Tim Thomas's.

Oakley signed to avoid using space for long term contract to AD

Don't know what this refers to.

Crawford extension dodge, dumped for cap space

A) Crawford wasn't frigging worth it.
B) Is it that far fetched to say that Othella Harrington helped us more in 2004.05 than Jamal would have done? I don't think so. And so I'm going to say it.

I don't have a problem with them not paying people that weren't worth it.

Curry extension dodge with extenuating circumstances

As you say.

Chandler extended and dumped for capspace

They gave Chandler a contract bigger than market value for his performance the previous year, and even while knowing of his alarming inconsistency down the years, because they figured he would prove to be worth it with incremental improvements down the years. And he would have been had he not decided to blow massive chunks for a year.

Williams injured and bought out (no value)

What part of having a guy fall off his bike and end his career is perfecting the Clippers model?

Fizer injured and released (no value)

Fizer is the reason that Fizer had no value. The man just didn't pan out.

[Addicted123]

Sham, you can make excuses for every single move. That's the beauty of sports and it's the reason why talk radio and message boards like these thrive. But I think you have to look at the bottom line. Over the past decade, the Bulls have done nothing but dump higher salary and replace it with lower salary. Make all the excuses you want for ownership..... Chandler as dumped b/c he wouldn't succeed under Skiles, blah, blah, blah..... bottom line, he was dumped for nothing.

[Three34]

It's not an excuse to say that every time they made what you perceive to be a tight arse move, it's because the team wasn't good enough to break their budget. That's a fact.

You don't have to like the fact that the Bulls work to the luxury tax threshold as their budget, but you damn sure have to accept it. It is the case for all but one team in this league. Even Mark Cuban does it. He pays for the players he deems worth it, but he'll dump players for ntohing if he feels its worth it. See giving Michael Finley $51 million to go away, dumping Marquis Daniels for Austin Croshere, yada yada yada.

Rich people want to stay rich. We might dislike them for this, but I can't blame them.

The NBA has wanted a level playing field in terms of salary for ages. Now they've got one, as every team except the Knicks (and, currently, the Celtics and Blazers) pretty much uses the tax threshold as their upper limit. Normally, even those over it try and get under it.

The day we have a situation as good as the Celtics or Blazers have is the day we can have a valid gripe about being under the tax. But upping payroll for the hell of upping payroll isn't going to help anybody. Flexibility is vital. Having the two BYC contracts that we do right now is a testament to this - it makes trades much harder.

And yes, Chandler was dumped. And it sucks ass. But he did kick rather his own ass on that one. They wouldn't have shipped his ass out for someone else had Chandler not disappeared as a player.

[TeamMan]

Unfortunately, this thread came too late.

You could very easily go back to the Rose trade with Indiana and ask this question. Artest was the key player in that trade and he was coming up for a a new contract. At that time, I thought that a straight Artest-for-Rose trade would have been fair, but to also throw in Miller was just plain stupid.

But that is the problem with the salary cap. Even though it was meant to prevent it, the cap tends to generate some amazingly stupid trades - especially involving players that are in their 1st-year contracts.

All of the trades that involved the 3Cs were effectively the same situation in that as soon as the players were up for new contracts we got rid of them. The big difference is that we re-signed them 1st and then traded them. The problem is that we still didn't get anything in return except cap-space which led to the signing of Ben Wallace.

That in itself was not a bad thing, however Pax made an error in judgement by bringing in both T2 and Thabo at the same time. The end effect is that it destroyed the balance of the team.

Of course, Pax could not have known that he'd be able to sign Wallace (Personally, I thougth that it was impossible). But if he had know, it would have made a lot more sense to draft either Aldridge or Roy rather than T2.

This year, Pax again was forced to draft a defensive player in Noah, because he was simply the BPA. And he tried to compensated in the 2nd-round by drafting Gray & JOC (and later signing DN) and then by bring in Joe Smith.

But now we're too afraid to give any of the rookies significant PT - even though it's the only possiblity of balancing out the situation with all of our defensive players.

Now the only possibility of avoiding the luxury tax is to let Du go and trade either Noc or Deng for expiring contracts. It's something that will furhter complicate our situation with having too many defensive players, and throw us into another cycle of rebuilding.

But let's face it, the CBA is doing it's job. It's almost impossible for a team to buy itself a championship, and that's what the goal was all along.