LaVine traded to the Kings as part of 3 team deal (Huerter, Tre Jones to Bulls)

[SfBull]

We get back control of the pick we sent to San Antonio....

This trade seems pretty awful but I really wanted to keep Lavine.

Yes but you wanted to stay crap but not crap enough with no future.

Barring more trades we'll be crap with no future

[SfBull]

Pretty impressive run they’ve had, this FO…

Absolutely hilarious if the Kings receive a FRP for Zach on draft night (or next year). Then again they’re incompetent themselves.

AK’s screw job with the 2020-24 roster isn’t even complete, yet.

This is what we get in AK's world:

Read on Twitter

Unbelievable moronic trade

[BigUps]

The biggest problem I have with this deal isn't the return. I expected the return for Zach to be bad. For whatever reason, the league didn't want to pay up for him.

The bigger problem is the timing. If we were going to get virtually nothing back for him in order to tank for a pick, we did it 2 years too late. The timing is my gripe. Even this year we've already won too many games to maximize our lottery odds. We keep doing this. We keep dipping our toes in the water versus diving in completely. Commitment issues plague this org.

[KissedByaRose1]

The first/second/third/15th most important thing is we got our pick back in this deal. I'm not going to cry over the fact we didn't get more because obviously that ship has sailed and our FO isn't capable of extracting max value.

We have our own pick in this loaded draft, and we can flip KH and Jones for at least another late FRP and a few seconds which we should do immediately. That with a Vooch trade and we finally have a direction. Doesn't change the fact that we can't draft and screwed up our Flagg odds this season already. But now the option of at least falling backwards into luck is possible which it wasn't even before. So i'm happy and heck i might even watch the team this week if they trade Vooch before our next game.

[Jcool0]

Trade grades:

Clutch Points

Simply put, this is a disappointing return for a 24-points per game scorer who’s bounced back from an injury-ravaged 2023-24 season. Perhaps this is more indicative of how LaVine’s trade value actually is when factoring in his huge contract. But the overall sense is that the Bulls have once again sold low on another one of their most valuable assets.

Bulls’ trade grade: D

SBNation

Spurs grade: A-
Kings grade: A

This is pretty poor value for LaVine. If Chicago played its cards right, they shouldn’t have been in jeopardy of losing their protected draft pick in the first place. The Bulls continue to be one of the most directionless organizations in the league. How long until Arturas Karnisovas is fired? He’s made too many mistakes to be trusted with Chicago’s next rebuild.

Bulls grade: C-

Sporting News

Kings grade: B+
Spurs grade: B

This isn't great value for LaVine, but it's what the market said was out there. There is an alternate universe where they waited until the summer to trade him, got a significantly better offer, and were still bad enough to not have to give their pick away to the Spurs in 2026 or 2027 when it was top-eight protected.

That path would also have resulted in getting their pick back from the Spurs, and they wouldn't have had to move LaVine for peanuts in order to do it. That's the way I would've gone, and it's what I suggested previously.

If the Bulls continue to sell off their players, which they very well may do, then this starts to look better. It also looks fantastic if it does end up with them winning the lottery. If we're basing this on process rather than results, then it's an uninspiring return.

Bulls grade: C

For The Win

Spurs: Grade: A
Kings: Grade: D+

But they essentially netted zero first-round picks for LaVine after also not returning any draft picks for Alex Caruso this past offseason either.

We can expect that Chicago could continue to make moves to continue its potential rebuild, likely including trading away notable players like Nikola Vucevic and perhaps Lonzo Ball.

Grade: D-

Kevin O'Connor:

The Bulls got such a terrible return for Zach LaVine. Horrific. Don’t care how overpaid he is, he’s have an excellent year once again. Elite shooter, dynamic shot-creator with All-Star caliber numbers. Besides the year he missed 57 games he’s been great in 4 of the last 5 years.

Collectively, nobody thought this was a good trade for Chicago.

Collectively what do they know? Do they all have some kind of inside info on trades the Bulls passed up? Did we decline a young player and a 1st round pick for Lavine i was unaware of? We all know why his trade value was low. Its hard to justified trading for guys making 40+M that are seen as 2/3 level players under this new 2nd apron.

[Guru]

At this point I'm less frustrated with the return and more frustrated with Lavine not landing somewhere I would have loved to watch him

[panthermark]

Trade grades:

Clutch Points

Simply put, this is a disappointing return for a 24-points per game scorer who’s bounced back from an injury-ravaged 2023-24 season. Perhaps this is more indicative of how LaVine’s trade value actually is when factoring in his huge contract. But the overall sense is that the Bulls have once again sold low on another one of their most valuable assets.

Bulls’ trade grade: D

SBNation

Spurs grade: A-
Kings grade: A

This is pretty poor value for LaVine. If Chicago played its cards right, they shouldn’t have been in jeopardy of losing their protected draft pick in the first place. The Bulls continue to be one of the most directionless organizations in the league. How long until Arturas Karnisovas is fired? He’s made too many mistakes to be trusted with Chicago’s next rebuild.

Bulls grade: C-

Sporting News

Kings grade: B+
Spurs grade: B

This isn't great value for LaVine, but it's what the market said was out there. There is an alternate universe where they waited until the summer to trade him, got a significantly better offer, and were still bad enough to not have to give their pick away to the Spurs in 2026 or 2027 when it was top-eight protected.

That path would also have resulted in getting their pick back from the Spurs, and they wouldn't have had to move LaVine for peanuts in order to do it. That's the way I would've gone, and it's what I suggested previously.

If the Bulls continue to sell off their players, which they very well may do, then this starts to look better. It also looks fantastic if it does end up with them winning the lottery. If we're basing this on process rather than results, then it's an uninspiring return.

Bulls grade: C

For The Win

Spurs: Grade: A
Kings: Grade: D+

But they essentially netted zero first-round picks for LaVine after also not returning any draft picks for Alex Caruso this past offseason either.

We can expect that Chicago could continue to make moves to continue its potential rebuild, likely including trading away notable players like Nikola Vucevic and perhaps Lonzo Ball.

Grade: D-

Kevin O'Connor:

The Bulls got such a terrible return for Zach LaVine. Horrific. Don’t care how overpaid he is, he’s have an excellent year once again. Elite shooter, dynamic shot-creator with All-Star caliber numbers. Besides the year he missed 57 games he’s been great in 4 of the last 5 years.

Collectively, nobody thought this was a good trade for Chicago.

Agreed, except for the folks that don't like Zach. They thought it was a good trade.

[dougthonus]

Trade grades:

Clutch Points

Simply put, this is a disappointing return for a 24-points per game scorer who’s bounced back from an injury-ravaged 2023-24 season. Perhaps this is more indicative of how LaVine’s trade value actually is when factoring in his huge contract. But the overall sense is that the Bulls have once again sold low on another one of their most valuable assets.

Bulls’ trade grade: D

SBNation

Spurs grade: A-
Kings grade: A

This is pretty poor value for LaVine. If Chicago played its cards right, they shouldn’t have been in jeopardy of losing their protected draft pick in the first place. The Bulls continue to be one of the most directionless organizations in the league. How long until Arturas Karnisovas is fired? He’s made too many mistakes to be trusted with Chicago’s next rebuild.

Bulls grade: C-

Sporting News

Kings grade: B+
Spurs grade: B

This isn't great value for LaVine, but it's what the market said was out there. There is an alternate universe where they waited until the summer to trade him, got a significantly better offer, and were still bad enough to not have to give their pick away to the Spurs in 2026 or 2027 when it was top-eight protected.

That path would also have resulted in getting their pick back from the Spurs, and they wouldn't have had to move LaVine for peanuts in order to do it. That's the way I would've gone, and it's what I suggested previously.

If the Bulls continue to sell off their players, which they very well may do, then this starts to look better. It also looks fantastic if it does end up with them winning the lottery. If we're basing this on process rather than results, then it's an uninspiring return.

Bulls grade: C

For The Win

Spurs: Grade: A
Kings: Grade: D+

But they essentially netted zero first-round picks for LaVine after also not returning any draft picks for Alex Caruso this past offseason either.

We can expect that Chicago could continue to make moves to continue its potential rebuild, likely including trading away notable players like Nikola Vucevic and perhaps Lonzo Ball.

Grade: D-

Kevin O'Connor:

The Bulls got such a terrible return for Zach LaVine. Horrific. Don’t care how overpaid he is, he’s have an excellent year once again. Elite shooter, dynamic shot-creator with All-Star caliber numbers. Besides the year he missed 57 games he’s been great in 4 of the last 5 years.

Collectively, nobody thought this was a good trade for Chicago.

The first two publications I read, which both seem much more major than these, had it as:

ESPN's Kevin Pelton:
Spurs A-
Kings B-
Bulls B+

The Athletic:
Spurs A-
Kings B-
Bulls B

Of the guys who have made these rankings, Steph Noh, Kevin O'Connor and Kevin Pelton are the ones I'm deeply familiar with and respect. I'm not overly familiar with the the Athletic guy who wrote this one (though generally think the athletic hires good people) and have no idea whom the other guys are on those other publications but I can't say I've generally been impressed with the Clutch Points, or SBNation for oped reporting but this isn't to say they aren't good.

Of the people I'm deeply familiar with and respect from this list, one bad, one neutral, and one good. I'm kind of interesting to listen to Dunc'd on about it later when they post as I really respect Nate, Danny, and Hollinger when they eventually talk about it.

[coldfish]

Don’t forget that the cap is about to jump again due to the new tv deals.

At Zach’s age, he is always better off opting out of a short deal to get a longer deal. Imo, as long as he is healthy, he opts out. Even if he loses money for a year, he gets a longer guaranteed deal.

He can accomplish this by simply opting in and signing a 4 year extension at the current market rate if his team is willing to extend him. If his team doesn't want him long term, then the odds of him finding the money in FA also seem less. We've seen that generally speaking, FA isn't the way players go anymore.

Granted, maybe the landscape will be different in 2 years as people adapt to the 2nd apron and if more teams don't go into tax areas then maybe more teams will be FA players.

That said, with the MLE now being able to be used to take players in trades, it seems like the league as a whole is moving more towards extensions/trades than FA movement. Hard to project with a rapidly changing cap of course, just my guesses.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryantoporek/2024/06/13/how-the-nbas-explosive-salary-cap-growth-could-change-contract-structures/

You are evaluating the landscape during a flat period for the cap. Starting soon its going to explode. In 5 years, a supermax is going to be something like $85m per year.

Zach is going to opt out to cash in.

[Betta Bulleavit]

Trade grades:

Clutch Points

Simply put, this is a disappointing return for a 24-points per game scorer who’s bounced back from an injury-ravaged 2023-24 season. Perhaps this is more indicative of how LaVine’s trade value actually is when factoring in his huge contract. But the overall sense is that the Bulls have once again sold low on another one of their most valuable assets.

Bulls’ trade grade: D

SBNation

Spurs grade: A-
Kings grade: A

This is pretty poor value for LaVine. If Chicago played its cards right, they shouldn’t have been in jeopardy of losing their protected draft pick in the first place. The Bulls continue to be one of the most directionless organizations in the league. How long until Arturas Karnisovas is fired? He’s made too many mistakes to be trusted with Chicago’s next rebuild.

Bulls grade: C-

Sporting News

Kings grade: B+
Spurs grade: B

This isn't great value for LaVine, but it's what the market said was out there. There is an alternate universe where they waited until the summer to trade him, got a significantly better offer, and were still bad enough to not have to give their pick away to the Spurs in 2026 or 2027 when it was top-eight protected.

That path would also have resulted in getting their pick back from the Spurs, and they wouldn't have had to move LaVine for peanuts in order to do it. That's the way I would've gone, and it's what I suggested previously.

If the Bulls continue to sell off their players, which they very well may do, then this starts to look better. It also looks fantastic if it does end up with them winning the lottery. If we're basing this on process rather than results, then it's an uninspiring return.

Bulls grade: C

For The Win

Spurs: Grade: A
Kings: Grade: D+

But they essentially netted zero first-round picks for LaVine after also not returning any draft picks for Alex Caruso this past offseason either.

We can expect that Chicago could continue to make moves to continue its potential rebuild, likely including trading away notable players like Nikola Vucevic and perhaps Lonzo Ball.

Grade: D-

Kevin O'Connor:

The Bulls got such a terrible return for Zach LaVine. Horrific. Don’t care how overpaid he is, he’s have an excellent year once again. Elite shooter, dynamic shot-creator with All-Star caliber numbers. Besides the year he missed 57 games he’s been great in 4 of the last 5 years.

Collectively, nobody thought this was a good trade for Chicago.

Agreed, except for the folks that don't like Zach. They thought it was a good trade.

I absolutely love Zach. But this was a good/right move. I’m astounded at just how many people are trashing this trade. I ask again, what exactly were folks thinking we were going to get out of a Zach trade at this point? The absolute most that we were going to get was cap relief/flexibility and “maybe” a first round pick. We essentially got both. This is what a tear down looks like unfortunately. The only crime here is not moving on the tear down earlier. But we were never going to get more than this for Zach.

[ChettheJet]

OK I was shocked. I also need to say, I called it needing to be a three team trade with one of the max guys moving. At this point I think the Bulls might be the lucky guys that move their max contract. Beal and Butler are both looking like big problems and may screw both their teams by staying.

Saw the sports on channel 32 and 9 and what a bunch of second guessers, Monday morning GMs and pretty much uninformed. The clowns like Lou Canelis on 32 saying they waited too long and didn't get enough. The Zach mistake was signing the often injured, not a #1 scorer, not a team leader to that max contract. Once the rest of the roster showed it wasn't good enough, without Lonzo, the options were limited. Zach has been injured the past 3 years so either deadline or summer deals weren't likely.

Collins is serviceable behind Smith if they move Vuc. Jones when he started in SAS 10/6.2 and 12.9/6.6. Now granted that was a tanking losing team but you have to think he understands the PG position so he's worth it. Huerter was good in ATL, good in SAC they don't need him to double his points to match Zach, just be good and blend in with Coby, Ball, Giddey, Ayo, Patrick, Smith, Matas. Any two or three of them step up tonight and score 25, the next game 2 other guys step up. Matchups and the hot guys play more any given night.

The absolute key to getting in on the SAS trade is getting that pick back. The fools on TV seemed to ignore that that pick was going this year or the next two. 1-10, 1-8 twice. That's not a sword the Bulls needed hanging over their head every year especially since they had no picks coming in. You have to hope we've left the era where they traded 3 picks in 6 years and may never see that PORT pick.

[KissedByaRose1]

Tre Jones is a UFA this offseason. Anyone watch a lot of him? I know he can shoot and he's small but that's about it.

[Indomitable]

Trade grades:

Clutch Points

Simply put, this is a disappointing return for a 24-points per game scorer who’s bounced back from an injury-ravaged 2023-24 season. Perhaps this is more indicative of how LaVine’s trade value actually is when factoring in his huge contract. But the overall sense is that the Bulls have once again sold low on another one of their most valuable assets.

Bulls’ trade grade: D

SBNation

Spurs grade: A-
Kings grade: A

This is pretty poor value for LaVine. If Chicago played its cards right, they shouldn’t have been in jeopardy of losing their protected draft pick in the first place. The Bulls continue to be one of the most directionless organizations in the league. How long until Arturas Karnisovas is fired? He’s made too many mistakes to be trusted with Chicago’s next rebuild.

Bulls grade: C-

Sporting News

Kings grade: B+
Spurs grade: B

This isn't great value for LaVine, but it's what the market said was out there. There is an alternate universe where they waited until the summer to trade him, got a significantly better offer, and were still bad enough to not have to give their pick away to the Spurs in 2026 or 2027 when it was top-eight protected.

That path would also have resulted in getting their pick back from the Spurs, and they wouldn't have had to move LaVine for peanuts in order to do it. That's the way I would've gone, and it's what I suggested previously.

If the Bulls continue to sell off their players, which they very well may do, then this starts to look better. It also looks fantastic if it does end up with them winning the lottery. If we're basing this on process rather than results, then it's an uninspiring return.

Bulls grade: C

For The Win

Spurs: Grade: A
Kings: Grade: D+

But they essentially netted zero first-round picks for LaVine after also not returning any draft picks for Alex Caruso this past offseason either.

We can expect that Chicago could continue to make moves to continue its potential rebuild, likely including trading away notable players like Nikola Vucevic and perhaps Lonzo Ball.

Grade: D-

Kevin O'Connor:

The Bulls got such a terrible return for Zach LaVine. Horrific. Don’t care how overpaid he is, he’s have an excellent year once again. Elite shooter, dynamic shot-creator with All-Star caliber numbers. Besides the year he missed 57 games he’s been great in 4 of the last 5 years.

Collectively, nobody thought this was a good trade for Chicago.

Because the Bulls franchise is a joke.

[jc23]

for a second i thought we were the team who got Fox. yeah right.

[Betta Bulleavit]

So my philosophy to the tear down portion of this rebuild has been Sack Zach - Value Vuc. What I mean by that is that we’d have to cut losses with a Zach trade (the sack) and obtain value in a Vuc trade (the value).

With that in mind, I’d be all over the phone lines with the Lakers to see if they’d bite on Vuc for Rui and Knecht.

What would you guys think about something like that?

[Bulldog23]

Tre Jones is a UFA this offseason. Anyone watch a lot of him? I know he can shoot and he's small but that's about it.

He struggled getting others involved and looked to me a shoot first guard. Spurs were not a big fan of his game.

[dougthonus]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryantoporek/2024/06/13/how-the-nbas-explosive-salary-cap-growth-could-change-contract-structures/

You are evaluating the landscape during a flat period for the cap. Starting soon its going to explode. In 5 years, a supermax is going to be something like $85m per year.

Zach is going to opt out to cash in.

This relies on two assumptions, and I don't think either will be true:

1: Zach LaVine is worth more in 1.5 years than he is today.

We know the cap will rise 10% the next two years, because that is the cap raise max.

So 154.6M next year and 170.6M the year of Zach's option.

A 30% max will be 51M that year. Zach will be making ~29% of the cap. It does not seem to me today that people would sign Zach to a new deal at 29% of the cap.

Based on where Zach LaVine's trade value is today, it sure does not look like anyone views him as a 30% player today or else he'd have gotten more in trade value. He has a full season and a half to change that narrative, but it does not strike me that Zach at 1.5 years older is going to be worth a higher percentage of the cap than he is right now.

2: That he can't/won't accomplish the same thing by an opt in / extension. There's a fair chance he gets that done this off-season if things go well with the Kings. This is the lowest risk for Zach to lock in the most money, but even otherwise, I think he'd have looked to do an opt-in and extend next summer unless he felt he could get more money by opting out (back to point #1 about how likely that is).

He's not eligible for supermax, so the most extra he could make by opting out and doing FA vs opting in and extending is $3M, and unless he views his value as likely to fall considerably in 26/27 season, then he has even more upside by waiting for another 10% cap increase.

I think the most likely scenario for Zach is an opt-in and extend though, as I think he's going to be a below 30% guy on his next deal.

Fundamentally, another way to look at it is this:

If Zach were to opt out, that means his value is worth more than his contract, and we probably would have wanted to keep him anyway, and so really a question here is do you think Zach's on a good deal vs bad deal, and if the answer is good deal, then of course you should be disappointed with this return, if think you think it's a bad deal, the option is scary and you should be happy with this trade.

The league seems to have hedged more towards bad deal, but I can see why someone might feel either way based on Zach the player.

[Guru]

Tre Jones is a UFA this offseason. Anyone watch a lot of him? I know he can shoot and he's small but that's about it.

He started for a couple years but seems limited.

Watch on YouTube

Probably a very capable backup PG

Coming off a 2 year 9per deal

[MrSparkle]

I’m willing to say the trade was “fine”, if you disregard history (which … past is past, what was done was done).

Still, I give the trade a D-. They gave up a 2nd, took a bad contract/player, and if he played it smart like Portland, could’ve just kept the pick protection by losing out.

I know that’s not a big deal, but AK’s trade record looks like double agent work. Every single deal he gave up the best asset and then some.

He loses every single margin and is banking on the grand jackpot. This was my one fear beside the enthusiasm, when he was hired. The Mitchell and Gobert dumps were WTFs. Well, we’ve had more of that than the Jokic. Not one decision has panned out.

We’ll see if this team loses out and gets a star prospect. Either way, we’re just starting a 3-5y rebuild which could’ve started 2y ago with any foresight, which most amateur realGM fans had.

It’s amazing to me his job is secure.

I know everyone’s excited about tanking, but shouldn’t we be more concerned that he was this adamant about getting his 11-15th pick rights back? I see this team competing, maintaining their play-in slot and drafting 9-14 range. Can’t make this stuff up.

Otoh this draft looks good, and I’d rather have a 12th pick and expirings next summer than Zach and no pick. From that angle, the trade itself sucks, but the move is better for the team.

[dabig3]

I've been checked out on this team for years now, and at this point I'm just happy this particular saga is over. I'll take any course correction there is; this decade is already lost.

Thanks for the memories Zach. Sorry this organization wasted your prime on garbage. But they also never should've given you that albatross of a contract just to get far less in value in return.