Lavine is....

[wonderboy2]

Also people on here over exaggerate way to much about Lavines IQ. His IQ is not high. Y any means but he’s not JR smith Or Swaggy P bad.

[wonderboy2]

Also if there’s anybody’s basketball ball IQ that needs to be questioned on the bulls it’s Satos. Basketball IQ is about making the right plays. Sato rarely ever makes the right play. He doesn’t shoot when open, passes up open drives to the basket. Misses bigs running in transition routinely. Passes to players who are being closely guarded because he scared to shoot. The only thing that saves Sato is that he’s does a decent job of getting out the way most of the time. He’s very invisible out there for the most part. But this board absolutely loves him.

[wonderboy2]

If Zach Lavine is a 6th man in the NBA than Sato is not an NBA player and should be playing somewhere in the Euro-Leauge.

[dice]

this is the first year of what would have been a 5 year max deal that we paid jimmy. the evidence is not close to in on whether, in retrospect, it was a bad idea not to pay him

and this "long history of bailing on players"? pax was right EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. didn't want to pay BG? well done. didn't want to pay deng (again). another smart move. tyrus? snell? dougie? portis? all got nice 2nd contracts that garpax didn't want to pay. and for damn good reason

Agreed with Dice.

I disagree on a lot of GarPax's decisions, but "bailing on players" is not one of them. If anything, Pax fell in love with his players. Pax actually held on to players for too long. The majority of Bulls' RealGM is guilty of this.

- He should have traded away Deng after Deng's 3rd year.
- He traded Jimmy Butler away at the right time.
- He should have traded away Ben Gordon as much as I love Ben Gordon's microwave hot scoring streaks and clutch abilities. I understand keeping Gordon until the very end because we might have had a championship contending team with an emerging Derrick Rose. The Ben Gordon messy contract stand off took a long time to sort out.
- Dumping McDermott and Nikola Mirotic were correct. They were not supposed to be drafted here in the first place. I didn't want either of those guys here.
- For the record, I didn't want Laurie Markkanen here. I didn't heavily scout the 2017 prospects, but I knew I didn't want Laurie. I wasn't even looking at the kid at the time. The majority of the posters here wanted HARRY GILES; a kid with a torn ACL. I remember that. How embarrassing.

If I was the GM, I'm not offering a $30+ million to LaVine. Hell no. His game is not worth it. That's Franchise Superstar money. He's not even an All Star. He doesn't have any Playoff experience. He doesn't play defense. He has tunnel vision.

I'd trade LaVine.

When you speak of "not bailing" my impression is that you are thinking mainly about trades. But there were other players that were simply allowed to walk, or traded away for basically nothing, both with the goal of staying out of the Lux Tax.

For every name that you mention I can mention another name that was clearly a mistake not to pay.

go right ahead

[FranchisePlayer]

He's a 5 for me. Hugely talented offensively, but his bbiq holds him back. I can see him going through his career without making the playoffs until he reaches his 30's and settles for a lesser role.

Ain't that the truth!

[dice]

If Zach Lavine is a 6th man in the NBA than Sato is not an NBA player and should be playing somewhere in the Euro-Leauge.

that's 3 unprompted posts in 8 minutes comparing lavine to sato. pretty low bar, don'tcha think?

and no, sato's defense is not as bad as lavine's, let alone worse

satoransky is a thoroughly average nba point guard. doesn't do anything especially well, but can hit the open shot, plays decent D and gets the ball where it should be w/o turning it over. quality backup/spot starter point guard stuff. it's all that's expected of him and he's being paid accordingly

[wonderboy2]

It’s also telling that opposing players compliment Lavine, Wendell, Coby more than any of the other bulls players. I listen to what the players have to say more so than writers and analysts. I remember Love saying that Zach could be a superstar and that he improves every year. Za Morant was saying that Coby should be being mentioned with himself and Zion as the top rookies in the league toward the end of the season. And a few of the the top bigs had good things to say about Wendell. Drummond and Jokic was just to name a few complimented Carter. Ironically those are the players this board criticize the most on this board or want traded. Very strange.

[drosereturn]

Its really hard to believe Lavine would suddenly develop primary ball handling skills after failing numerous times.
I just cannot see paying a good scorer 30mil bucks when he doesnt do anything stars can (defense, ball handling which are as important) Like i want him to be Sato esque besides scoring but hes so below avg in overall department its very overwhelming for a 6yr pro.

All these players Bulls have are so flawed even a guy like Sato and Thad seems so much better on an average night. Even Jimmy Butler a top 10 star couldnt shoot nor score much so it was really easy to game plan against him at the time. Since the Rose era, there hasnt been a unicorn talent thats so good they outweigh their weaknesses. Even Mirotic who came close struggled to score 20 coming from Euroleague mvp.

[dice]

It’s also telling that opposing players compliment Lavine, Wendell, Coby more than any of the other bulls players. I listen to what the players have to say more so than writers and analysts. I remember Love saying that Zach could be a superstar and that he improves every year. Za Morant was saying that Coby should be being mentioned with himself and Zion as the top rookies in the league toward the end of the season. And a few of the the top bigs had good things to say about Wendell. Drummond and Jokic was just to name a few complimented Carter. Ironically those are the players this board criticize the most on this board or want traded. Very strange.

players are quite often wrong about the trajectories of other players. nobody was saying "this jimmy butler kid's got star potential" except the long-retired scottie pippen, who worked with him a bit if i recall correctly. and the GOAT michael jordan has been a been a pretty bad talent evaluator for charlotte

i'm sure you could find players saying good things about the potential of a whole lot of "talented" total busts

[johnnyvann840]

The bottom line is that Zach is now 6 seasons into his NBA career, entering his 7th season, and he is still a net negative player even on the horrible teams he's been part of. The most important stat of all to me is and has always been the scoreboard. Do you make your team better? With Lavine, the answer is simple and it's a resounding... NO.

[johnnyvann840]

If Zach Lavine is a 6th man in the NBA than Sato is not an NBA player and should be playing somewhere in the Euro-Leauge.

What does Sato have to do with this? Why do you have to mention Sato in nearly every post you make in any thread?

[Jcool0]

He's a 5 for me. Hugely talented offensively, but his bbiq holds him back. I can see him going through his career without making the playoffs until he reaches his 30's and settles for a lesser role.

Ain't that the truth!

Since you can predict the future, can i get the winning lottery numbers?

[2018C3]

At a similar 24 year old age, Lavine is a rich mans J.R. Smith. And that feels good to say for a change. Normally we "say so and so players is poor man version". But in this case Lavine is clearly better than J.R,, but still has a similar type of game, Just better.

In the future, people may say J.R was a poor mans version of Lavine.

Off topic, I always thought JR had all the physical tools to be a star, he just lacked the mental game. Zack also has all the same tools, and possibly also the needed drive to succeed.

If I were ever asked to compare Zacks athleticism to another NBA player, J.R. Smith is the first guy that will come to mind. Physically in the nba game they are the same guy in my eyes. What may separate them is the mental approach.

[Jcool0]

The bottom line is that Zach is now 6 seasons into his NBA career, entering his 7th season, and he is still a net negative player even on the horrible teams he's been part of. The most important stat of all to me is and has always been the scoreboard. Do you make your team better? With Lavine, the answer is simple and it's a resounding... NO.

Since Lavine has been a 20 ppg scorer who has his best teammate been? Otto Porter? Who has played in less then 30 games in 2 seasons. An up and down Lauri Markkanen? Wendell Carter? I mean i think Markkanen and Carter have upside with the right development & coaching. But right now who exactly wins with the 2018-20 Bulls team?

[wonderboy2]

If Zach Lavine is a 6th man in the NBA than Sato is not an NBA player and should be playing somewhere in the Euro-Leauge.

What does Sato have to do with this? Why do you have to mention Sato in nearly every post you make in any thread?

Because people criticize Lavine, and Carter on every thread. I’m free to criticize Sato who sucked ass last year.

[wonderboy2]

You never hear players from opposing teams compliment Sato game like they do Wendell, Lavine, and Coby.

[wonderboy2]

Also I’m not sure if you can blame a player for not making the playoffs if the whole starting 5 was injured during Most of the season. Only starter that wasn’t injured besides Zach was your 9 ppg 5 apg point guard who was scared to shoot. Blaming Lavine for not making the playoffs is silly when the players he was playing with sucked. Bradley Beal has way better teammates and his team didn’t make the playoffs.

[johnnyvann840]

The bottom line is that Zach is now 6 seasons into his NBA career, entering his 7th season, and he is still a net negative player even on the horrible teams he's been part of. The most important stat of all to me is and has always been the scoreboard. Do you make your team better? With Lavine, the answer is simple and it's a resounding... NO.

Since Lavine has been a 20 ppg scorer who has his best teammate been? Otto Porter? Who has played in less then 30 games in 2 seasons. An up and down Lauri Markkanen? Wendell Carter? I mean i think Markkanen and Carter have upside with the right development & coaching. But right now who exactly wins with the 2018-20 Bulls team?

The problem is that it doesn't matter who his teammates are. He's had 6 years and plenty of different teammates and he's consistently net negative regardless of who he plays with or against. His teams have always been worse with him than without him. It's like he's the polar opposite player of Jimmy Butler. Jimmy has always made his teams better regardless of who he plays with or against. Jimmy plays both ends hard and he's a high IQ player. My biggest problem with Lavine is his decision making and floor game. It's horrid and it's conducive to losing not winning basketball. Zach can somehow find a way to be net negative even when the guys replacing him are borderline NBA talents. That is not easily done... you have to have a serious negative impact on the floor to pull that off. Sooner the Bulls move on from him, the sooner we can start winning and get serious about this rebuild and this "fresh start".

[johnnyvann840]

You never hear players from opposing teams compliment Sato game like they do Wendell, Lavine, and Coby.

I couldn't care less what opposing teams players have to say. I only care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game.

[wonderboy2]

You never hear players from opposing teams compliment Sato game like they do Wendell, Lavine, and Coby.

I couldn't care less what opposing teams players have to say. I only care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game.

Which doesn’t tell the whole story because the team could loose but a player could’ve played his heart out to win the game. Doesn’t make since to blame a player for a team losing if he has nonthing to work with.