Zach Lavine: Offered 4/80 from Kings update p26 Bulls Matched

[chrispatrick]

What on Earth do you mean? They didn't have to pay him.

Sure. They can let Dunn walk when he comes up too. Acquiring young assets, and then letting them walk for nothing. What a great tank strategy.

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And of course they absolutely should let Dunn walk if he doesn't improve significantly. Players are really only assets if they are good Beyond their rookie contracts.

Miami let #2 overall pick Michael Beasley walk for nothing to the tune of 4 consecutive finals and 2 rings. The Lakers just let a top 10 pick walk in Randle so they could sign Lebron. The list goes on and on. Great teams don't commit to mediocre players for the long term. Unless they are already great and the mediocre player in question is an important role player who fills a need.

Got to know when to hold em and went to fold em. LaVine couldn’t have been worse here, was bad in Minnesota, and his moronic tweets, statements coming through the media only make it worse.

I barely saw any more reason to give him $80M than valentine, Nwaba, and kilpatrick.

[jc23]

does this season count as year one of the deal?

Yep.

Well that’s a positive then, by the end of this deal Lauri will just be into his new contract. If Zach is a disappointment you use him as an expiring to put a better player next to LM. Glass half full I suppose.

[erlim]

You know what makes this even worse? The Kings are going to be one this franchise's biggest cap space competitors next year. Every big salary on their roster expires next summer. Now they are pretty much guaranteed to have way more cap room than the Bulls.

I’m not being facetious, but in all seriousness, they are at a huge disadvantage if they are trying to attract talent to live in Sacramento.

Live in Sacramento? A mid sized diverse Californian city with great weather and close to many attractions (Pacific/Tahoe/Bay Area/Napa etc), without the traffic of the metropolises? Subjective, though I personally don’t mind it here. A lot of players do like bigger markets, and anticipate more off the court financial opportunities in them. But Sacramento has a great new arena.

You mean the reputation of the team and owner? True. Hope Divacs replacement will inspire a bit more confidence

Anecdotal experience, but as a dude in his early 30s, I find revisiting Chicago is way more fun than the times I’ve rolled through Sac town. Shaq Lakers still robbed the **** out of you guys though.

[erlim]

The Lakers aren't a fa destination. No more than any other team. James signing there was highly bizarre & irregular. The last relevant guy they signed was like Nash or something way back, during his dying days. The boozer signing when it went down was superior to that one. The only thing that wards people from the Bulls is their brass

Lakers just got the best player in the game despite not having a ready made contender. Kawhi is demanding to go there. They will highly likely land another big fish next year be it Kawhi, Jimmy, or Cousins if he proves himself, etc.


I would have preferred to have seen us go into next summer with 2 MAX slots and take a swing at the Jimmy/Kawhi combo. Even though it's a long shot

The Lakers throughout their history have acquired many established superstars via trades and free agency. Us on the other hand, the next superstar we get thru either Avenue will be the 1st since Dennis Rodman in 1995. And this current regime would have never in a million years traded for him due to his character

James going there is one of the most bizarre, nonsensical things to happen in recent memory. Leonard wanting to go there was supremely odd as well, but I suppose makes more sense now that James is there. Still, a very strange situation, the entire thing. Cousins is finished. The only other elite player to return from an Achilles rupture is Dominique Wilkins. The Warriors signed him to such a small number because they know he's likely done, but they can afford to bet on the .0000000001% that he regains even a fraction of what he had.

The Lakers have signed the free agents they have due to two draft picks they made: Johnson & Bryant. People wanted to play with those guys because they wanted the chance to win. The Bulls, on the other hand, never ever needed to spend the unnecessary money on free agents, because Krause drafted so well. They had no desire to sign anyone they didn't need. Since then, the Bulls have never really been in a situation to sign a marquee free agent. The initial post-Jordan botched rebuild, Curry & Chandler busting, Jay Williams in the motorcycle wreck, the "Baby Bulls" not panning out...then fast forward to the Derrick Rose draft. During James & Bosh's free agency that year, the Bulls were completely unproven. They had cap space, but Miami had a proven all-time great SG in Wade. There were big time doubts about whether or not Rose would make the jump to great player. He did break out the following year, but obviously he completely fell apart shortly thereafter. Even so, the Bulls were still able to sign Boozer, who, at the time, was considered by far & away the third best free agent that off-season, with many teams, including the Lakers, vying for him.

Since then, it's been blunder after blunder, shady story after shady story of mistreatment of both talent & staff alike, etc etc etc. That, and only that, is the reason that the Bulls have a nasty reputation amongst players. I'm of the belief that they're trying to alter this perception, but after all the damage they've done to the Bulls good name, it's going to take a good deal of time.

Also, Garpax being big on "character" is also some weird dumb, self-loathing myth over on the Bulls board. They drafted Joachim Noah, who's #1 concern around his future in the League was a volatile attitude. They signed Rondo & Wade. They tried to build around Jimmy Butler. They drafted Tyrus Thomas. They signed Boozer, who had a very shady rep in Utah. So on & so forth.

Reguardless, as a a Chicago kid living in LA, you see the entitlement of Lakers fans. Before we traded Buckets, they were fully expecting to get him for garbage spare parts. They’ve fully believed Lebron was a done deal for years, and they were right.

[samwana]

From the general board:

David Griffin was on his SiriusXM show today talking about this - he said this deal was about Sacramento doing a favor for LaVine’s agent who was having a hard time getting what he wanted from Chicago.

Also said the deal had a really team favorable clause in it to protect against LaVines knee having a problem, so it was very “matchable” to the point that they knew Chicago would do it. Basically Sac really never had any intention of signing LaVine.

Just interesting stuff.

That's just the way you want to get played. Not.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. 20m smh.

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[keloms]

From the general board:

David Griffin was on his SiriusXM show today talking about this - he said this deal was about Sacramento doing a favor for LaVine’s agent who was having a hard time getting what he wanted from Chicago.

Also said the deal had a really team favorable clause in it to protect against LaVines knee having a problem, so it was very “matchable” to the point that they knew Chicago would do it. Basically Sac really never had any intention of signing LaVine.

Just interesting stuff.

That's just the way you want to get played. Not.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. 20m smh.

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Happens all the time around the league. No big deal.

[Kurt Heimlich]

Welp not that most of us needed any more evidence to prove how bad this contract is, but.....

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orlando-magic/os-sp-magic-aaron-gordon-contract-details-0708-story.html

Unless zachs reported 78M includes incentives, which I doubt since it's an offer sheet match.

[blicka]

19.5 mil for 4 years when the cap will go up to 108 next year and is projected to go up to 116 in '21

This contract aint sh*t! stop crying.

[Ben]

Just trying to get my head around all of this, and our front office's priorities.
I'm thinking back to the year when we drafted and traded Gary Harris, a player I couldn't believe had fallen to us, and Jusuf Nurkic, for Doug McDermott on draft day. That might have signaled the start of my real outrage with this front office.

Gary Harris re-signed last year for a 4 year, $84M extension with Denver.
Jusuf Nurkuc re-signed this year for a 4 year, $53M extension with Portland.

Zach LaVine just re-signed with the Bulls for a 4 year, $80M extension.
Cristiano Felicio, an undrafted player, re-signed last year with the Bulls for a 4-year, $32M extension.

Harris + Nurkic = $137M (4 years for each)
LaVine + Felicio = $112M (4 years for each)

If you take them as a pair, Harris & Nurkic only got $6.25M more than LaVine and Felicio. But Harris & Nurkic are vastly more accomplished, and each of them could be quality starters (esp. fi a team had a superstar-caliber player).

Now here are the 2017-18 PER and True Shooting % for each player, plus their career VORP (value over replacement player) and Win Shares:

Gary Harris (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)....... 16.5/ 59.7%/ 4.2 / 13.6
Jusuf Nurkic (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)........19.2/ 52.8%/ 2.3/ 8.6

Zach LaVine (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)........14.6/ 49.9%/ -0.2/ 5.2
Cristiano Felicio (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)..12.5/ 61.4%/ 0.7/ 6.3

Can you imagine the Bulls' future right now if we hadn't traded Harris & Nurkic for McDermott on draft day? We might even have seen fit to have kept Jimmy Butler. And/or kept Rajon Rondo. I dunno. I DO know that we seem to have gotten abysmal value for the recent contract extensions that we've signed. (Also: Aaron Gordon just got barely more on his 4-year extension than LaVine did.)

Aren't the Front Office guys IN their highly paid, highly coveted positions because they're supposedly among the best in the world at judging NBA talent and NBA contractual value??? Does anyone want to take a stab at defending them here? 'Cause I could use some feel-good thoughts.

[DJhitek]

Just trying to get my head around all of this, and our front office's priorities.
I'm thinking back to the year when we drafted and traded Gary Harris, a player I couldn't believe had fallen to us, and Jusuf Nurkic, for Doug McDermott on draft day. That might have signaled the start of my real outrage with this front office.

Gary Harris re-signed last year for a 4 year, $84M extension with Denver.
Jusuf Nurkuc re-signed this year for a 4 year, $53M extension with Portland.

Zach LaVine just re-signed with the Bulls for a 4 year, $80M extension.
Cristiano Felicio, an undrafted player, re-signed last year with the Bulls for a 4-year, $32M extension.

Harris + Nurkic = $137M (4 years for each)
LaVine + Felicio = $112M (4 years for each)

If you take them as a pair, Harris & Nurkic only got $6.25M more than LaVine and Felicio. But Harris & Nurkic are vastly more accomplished, and each of them could be quality starters (esp. fi a team had a superstar-caliber player).

Now here are the 2017-18 PER and True Shooting % for each player, plus their career VORP (value over replacement player) and Win Shares:

Gary Harris (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)....... 16.5/ 59.7%/ 4.2 / 13.6
Jusuf Nurkic (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)........19.2/ 52.8%/ 2.3/ 8.6

Zach LaVine (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)........14.6/ 49.9%/ -0.2/ 5.2
Cristiano Felicio (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)..12.5/ 61.4%/ 0.7/ 6.3

Can you imagine the Bulls' future right now if we hadn't traded Harris & Nurkic for McDermott on draft day? We might even have seen fit to have kept Jimmy Butler. And/or kept Rajon Rondo. I dunno. I DO know that we seem to have gotten abysmal value for the recent contract extensions that we've signed. (Also: Aaron Gordon just got barely more on his 4-year extension than LaVine did.)

Aren't the Front Office guys IN their highly paid, highly coveted positions because they're supposedly among the best in the world at judging NBA talent and NBA contractual value??? Does anyone want to take a stab at defending them here? 'Cause I could use some feel-good thoughts.

There is no defense, I’d be curious as to what the front office thought they were getting themselves into when they insisted (reportedly) on Lavine in the Butler deal. Hated the trade then...still hate it. And I’m a Lauri fan.

[chrispatrick]

:lol: 19.5 mil for 4 years when the cap will go up to 108 next year and is projected to go up to 116 in '21

This contract aint sh*t! stop crying.

Most people aren’t crying. Rather, they are rationally explaining why this is a terrible contract based on the notion that giving large potions of your cap space, whatever the denominator is, to bad players is a bad idea.

[Trm3]

If GarPax give Lavine a 4/72M . . . . .

I don't know. No point in making empty threats. I guess I'll complete that sentence. If GarPax give Lavine a 4/72M deal, I will bitch about them anonymously on the internet.

$18M average per season would have him tied at 50th in the league.

I'd personally smile and say "good deal".

That just means he’d be paid like the 2nd best player on the typical roster. Is he that guy? Hasn’t played like it (or anywhere close).

I know. 24 games under his belt after ACL tear..he should have been well rested and playing in midseason form.

[Kurt Heimlich]

Just trying to get my head around all of this, and our front office's priorities.
I'm thinking back to the year when we drafted and traded Gary Harris, a player I couldn't believe had fallen to us, and Jusuf Nurkic, for Doug McDermott on draft day. That might have signaled the start of my real outrage with this front office.

Gary Harris re-signed last year for a 4 year, $84M extension with Denver.
Jusuf Nurkuc re-signed this year for a 4 year, $53M extension with Portland.

Zach LaVine just re-signed with the Bulls for a 4 year, $80M extension.
Cristiano Felicio, an undrafted player, re-signed last year with the Bulls for a 4-year, $32M extension.

Harris + Nurkic = $137M (4 years for each)
LaVine + Felicio = $112M (4 years for each)

If you take them as a pair, Harris & Nurkic only got $6.25M more than LaVine and Felicio. But Harris & Nurkic are vastly more accomplished, and each of them could be quality starters (esp. fi a team had a superstar-caliber player).

Now here are the 2017-18 PER and True Shooting % for each player, plus their career VORP (value over replacement player) and Win Shares:

Gary Harris (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)....... 16.5/ 59.7%/ 4.2 / 13.6
Jusuf Nurkic (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)........19.2/ 52.8%/ 2.3/ 8.6

Zach LaVine (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)........14.6/ 49.9%/ -0.2/ 5.2
Cristiano Felicio (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)..12.5/ 61.4%/ 0.7/ 6.3

Can you imagine the Bulls' future right now if we hadn't traded Harris & Nurkic for McDermott on draft day? We might even have seen fit to have kept Jimmy Butler. And/or kept Rajon Rondo. I dunno. I DO know that we seem to have gotten abysmal value for the recent contract extensions that we've signed. (Also: Aaron Gordon just got barely more on his 4-year extension than LaVine did.)

Aren't the Front Office guys IN their highly paid, highly coveted positions because they're supposedly among the best in the world at judging NBA talent and NBA contractual value??? Does anyone want to take a stab at defending them here? 'Cause I could use some feel-good thoughts.

I made this same point a few pages back - its incredible isnt it? Gar and Pax are lifers, not based on merit obviously. But they're so out classed by their peers frustrating.

They rush to pay felicio - wrong move, immediately.

So they do the opposite this year and make lavine get an offer, even tho the whole league knows they'll match! So what happens? The kings give zach the highest rfa offer sheet (higher than Gordon's) because they know it'll get matched.

They're always 1-2 steps behind the rest of the league.

[chrispatrick]

Just trying to get my head around all of this, and our front office's priorities.
I'm thinking back to the year when we drafted and traded Gary Harris, a player I couldn't believe had fallen to us, and Jusuf Nurkic, for Doug McDermott on draft day. That might have signaled the start of my real outrage with this front office.

Gary Harris re-signed last year for a 4 year, $84M extension with Denver.
Jusuf Nurkuc re-signed this year for a 4 year, $53M extension with Portland.

Zach LaVine just re-signed with the Bulls for a 4 year, $80M extension.
Cristiano Felicio, an undrafted player, re-signed last year with the Bulls for a 4-year, $32M extension.

Harris + Nurkic = $137M (4 years for each)
LaVine + Felicio = $112M (4 years for each)

If you take them as a pair, Harris & Nurkic only got $6.25M more than LaVine and Felicio. But Harris & Nurkic are vastly more accomplished, and each of them could be quality starters (esp. fi a team had a superstar-caliber player).

Now here are the 2017-18 PER and True Shooting % for each player, plus their career VORP (value over replacement player) and Win Shares:

Gary Harris (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)....... 16.5/ 59.7%/ 4.2 / 13.6
Jusuf Nurkic (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)........19.2/ 52.8%/ 2.3/ 8.6

Zach LaVine (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)........14.6/ 49.9%/ -0.2/ 5.2
Cristiano Felicio (PER/ TS%/ VORP/ WS)..12.5/ 61.4%/ 0.7/ 6.3

Can you imagine the Bulls' future right now if we hadn't traded Harris & Nurkic for McDermott on draft day? We might even have seen fit to have kept Jimmy Butler. And/or kept Rajon Rondo. I dunno. I DO know that we seem to have gotten abysmal value for the recent contract extensions that we've signed. (Also: Aaron Gordon just got barely more on his 4-year extension than LaVine did.)

Aren't the Front Office guys IN their highly paid, highly coveted positions because they're supposedly among the best in the world at judging NBA talent and NBA contractual value??? Does anyone want to take a stab at defending them here? 'Cause I could use some feel-good thoughts.

There is no defense, I’d be curious as to what the front office thought they were getting themselves into when they insisted (reportedly) on Lavine in the Butler deal. Hated the trade then...still hate it. And I’m a Lauri fan.

Didn’t they also say we could have kept 16th pick without LaVine? This played out exactly as poorly as many of us expected.

[chrispatrick]

$18M average per season would have him tied at 50th in the league.

I'd personally smile and say "good deal".

That just means he’d be paid like the 2nd best player on the typical roster. Is he that guy? Hasn’t played like it (or anywhere close).

I know. 24 games under his belt after ACL tear..he should have been well rested and playing in midseason form.

He was killing his teams before the ACL tear too. His impact last year was not a new thing.

Not to mention we’ve seen guys like Jamal Crawford come back from an ACL on the Bulls and didn’t look that terrible.

[blicka]

:lol: 19.5 mil for 4 years when the cap will go up to 108 next year and is projected to go up to 116 in '21

This contract aint sh*t! stop crying.

Most people aren’t crying. Rather, they are rationally explaining why this is a terrible contract based on the notion that giving large potions of your cap space, whatever the denominator is, to bad players is a bad idea.

17-18%(based on projected cap increases the next 2-4 years) of the cap is not a large portion it's not even a 1/4th

a bad player is jr smith,derrick rose a washed up one dimensional scorer who stays missing weeks and months with injuries and is terrible on defense.Or loul deng or joakim noah or hassan whiteside. They don't even get playing time! yet are making 18-26 mil a year

These are examples of bad players taking up a large % of the cap

[Trm3]

Didn’t the eye test show spurts of superstar ability mixed in with inconsistency and trying to do too much? I don’t get how anyone can say he failed the eye test. What I saw is an ability to create/get to the rim I didn’t know he had in his game. Add that to his previously demonstrated ability to hit 3’s at a high rate, and all he’s missing is consistency. That’s something you expect to take some time coming off an injury, but all the skills are already there.

Superstar ability for one game. A lot of consistent chucking a black hole in offense and completely detached from his team and very consistent bad to terrible defense. A fixed consistency would make him still a terrible player.

What apologists and Bulls are hoping for is another Zach to surface and many of the attributes are such that he has never ever shown in his game such as playing a team game and defense. Of course Zach has never mentioned any of that and being a gym rat and "a hard worker" which in itself is such a devalued term will not fix any of it.

Missing consistency does not even begin to tell the story. It is not about one facet of his game being bad. It is everything with the exception of being flashy.

Hopefully Bulls are right betting on him but it is my opinion that they took a medium reward super high risk proposition to bet on.

Attributes that have been shown by Zach already include an ability to knock down threes at a very good rate, create shots for himself, get to and finish at the rim, okay passing ability, and okay on ball defense. If all those things are out together on a consistent basis, you have a really good player. There’s not a skill you’re hoping for him to develop, so it’s not a leap to see it coming together.

Saying everything is terrible is such hyperbole, and I’m just really shocked how much I’m seeing it. How can Bulls fans not see that Zach has impressive basketball skills to build off of?

Ur talking to a board that overrated Blake Griffin, Kevin Love, and now Aaron Gordon. They're all really really great players that should be on our team.

[madvillian]

That post by Ben should be stickied. As I've said a million times it's BAD PROCESS. If they get lucky and Lavine is the 2nd coming of T-Mac the process still sucked. If I run a red light and the first 100 times I don't kill someone or get pulled over it doesn't make it a good idea to try it another 100 times. It was luck!

[FecesOfDeath]

Gary Harris is playing a tertiary role in Denver, where the main focus is Jokic. While Harris has been very solid and efficient for the Nuggets, there's no way he'd be able to match that efficiency as the main guy of a team.

[MrFortune3]

One thing worth remembering is the cap jump next year. Even if you see this as an overpay, he has talent and is young. Get his defense half in order, itll be fine.

Guarantee it will look better than some deals signed next off season.

Oladipo's contract looked horrible initially and now, no one bats an eye.

That was one of the first things I thought of when I saw the 20M contract. Then I looked at Dipo's pre-extension numbers and saw his impact stats were clearly better than Zach's when he signed (his extension after his 3rd season with ORL)". Oh well. I do think there's still a chance Zach has a "light bulb" moment at some point (hopefully).

Oladipo was the featured player though. Zach never has been outside of 24 games with us.
He was the 2nd or 3rd option for his tenure in Minnesota and he kept developing until the injury. He has not had a season where he has been healthy, been the man and had the offense run through him as the feature player.