Perspective on the Butler trade, was there a better rebuild option?

[JimmyJammer]

Based on his defense and athleticism alone, Dunn already has a place in the NBA. The rest of the stuff, he'll have to clean up. PGs who can pressure the ball and be disruptive like Dunn will always be at a premium. Now, whether or not he can live up to being the number 5 pick in a very weak draft is another story. Since I like to start with defense, Dunn with his defensive instinct and intangibles is already a winner for me.

When it comes to lavine, there is a lot to like. He is very young, athletic, a very good shooter, plays fast and under control and he has a great work ethic with leadership potential. However, I do understand the apprehension of some fans pertaining to his ACL injury, especially after having had that experience with D-Rose. I must say that I like a lot of what I have been hearing coming out his camp regarding his rehab. It looks like he is targeting a training camp return, but November or December sounds more realistic. So, I definitely cannot wait to see him.

Markkhanen is definitely the big elephant in the room. He is a big, tall and white young player from Finland who has an uphill battle to fight to dispel the stigma that white and European players are soft and nonathletic. He had a very productive freshman year at Arizona, considering that was his first year living in the United States. Those of us who are not immigrants tend downplay the fact that it could be such a hardship when you have to move to another country and having to adjust to a new culture, a different language and new group of friends. Markkhanen, from his conversations and personality, seems to be ready for the challenge ahead.

So, to finally answer the question, yes this trade was the best way to go based on what reportedly was out there. In a year or two, with LaVine having fully recovered, Dunn making incremental progress and Markkhanen showing that he belongs, people might even start thinking that we actually robbed Thibs and the Wolves, and especially if they fail to meet expectations out in the West.

[TheStig]

Seeing Butler recruit guys and get Kyrie interested in going to MN, the best rebuild would have been around him. Instead of with or without him. The East is wide open.

Only way I would have traded him is if I got a really really good deal.

[coldfish]

I actually kind of like Markannen. His shot is beautiful. I just don't think that a team just starting a rebuild needs that piece. You need foundational players and have to take risks to get them.

LaVine has already torn an ACL at 21. Markkanen is not a high ceiling prospect.

This is just too dogmatic for me, this notion that a team must start a rebuild by drafting a high-risk-high-reward player. If the Bulls thought the best prospect available in this draft was more of a high-end role player without huge upside, why not draft the best player available rather than making the mistake of drafting for this supposed need to immediately swing for the fences in the ope of landing a franchise player at the very beginning of the rebuild. The Bulls are likely, hopefully going to have two high draft picks the next two seasons where they can draft high-ceiling, foundational players without much risk. And why can't Lavine be the high-risk-high-reward player? His upside seems unquestionable: He's an elite athlete, he posted excellent scoring numbers at a very young age, and he's younger than the vaunted Jordan Bell and other players in this most recent draft. The risk is his ACL injury and contract situation. There you go: a high-risk-high-reward player with the potential to be a foundational piece.

The odds of getting a foundational player with any pick, even a high one, is extraordinarily low. Because of that, the best way to increase your odds of getting one is to take as many shots as you can. Wasting a #7 pick on a role player is a good way to make sure you have a very long period of being bad.

Role players are very important to creating a top level team. Don't get me wrong. I suspect a team like Cleveland would love to have Markannen. That said, they don't stick around forever and tend to get badly overpaid when they hit free agency. Having them on a sub par team tends to actually be a detriment. They win you a few more games and end up taking a disproportionate amount of capspace.

I conceded above that Lavine is a high risk / reward player. I'm not high on him but I see the potential for him to become a top level player. Again though, you have to take as many shots as you possibly can under the assumption that most of your attempts will fail. Regardless, if Lavine develops into a top 20 player, than anyone complaining about this trade will have to eat crow. Including myself. And I'll do so happily.

[ChettheJet]

There were a lot of better internet trades but actual teams weren't looking online for advice. With the rising cap and teams valuing their 1st round picks a lot more I think the Bulls did pretty good. basically three 1st round picks.

What is missed by most is Dunn hardly got a chance under Thibs who hates to play rookies and Lavine may have been held down in the style Thibs plays. I won't rule out that in a different style of play with a coach who has to put both of them out there to see what they can do as well as Markkanen in a year theBulls could look like they made a GREAT deal. You've got to play games to see what you got.

[Leslie Forman]

Lopez? Had the Bulls done the right thing and traded Butler a year earlier - the clear bungling in the rebuild plan - they never would have signed Wade or Rondo.

Theoretically the team would have been something like:

Dunn
Grant
McDermott
Taj
Lopez

And then after the deadline even less than that. You are looking at a clear bottom three team in the NBA. This is an important point, because the difference between the ability to draft Markannen or Smith instead of being in play for Fox, Tatum, Ball, Jackson or Fultz underscores that the biggest asset returned in the Butler trade is the increased value of future draft picks.

Yeah even getting an absolutely godawful return like Dunn (doubt they would have picked Murray) and absolutely nothing else would have been better than what ended up happening.

Would most people on this board trade the entire team for, say, Lonzo Ball? Probably.

[sco]

It is hard to debate some of these rumored scenarios.

Sure teams could have offered more for JB, but I'm not sure that we've established that a better offer was ever on the table.

The Butler problem, IMO, was kinda simple:

1) JB turned into a surprisingly good player - top 10-20, but not top 5 (i.e. the best guy on a championship team)
2) The Bulls assessed their current assets and determined that they didn't have the assets to trade for a similar caliber player
3) There wasn't a realistic FA who would come to Chicago that would fall into that category

So I think they came to the conclusion that there was not a decent chance to build a champion around Jimmy. I think the impending SUPERMAX contract for Jimmy was the straw that forced them to act. Ironically, that contract structure as I understand it, creates a sort of arbitrage where the player is worth more to a team where he won't be getting the SUPERMAX.

[Jimako10]

The FO already screwed up the rebuild by wasting a year and wasting cap space on Rondo and Wade's retirement tours. I didn't care as much about whether to rebuild or not, but I cared that they put themselves in the best position to go either route, which they failed miserably. They should've tanked with Butler last year(ala Pierce/Celtics), traded Taj/Mirotic(and eventually Lopez in season) last off season when they still had some value, and gone into this past off season with better assets, cap space and real flexibility to go either route in an optimal way. How nice would it have been to go into this past off season with the #7 pick already in hand, Butler, a ton of cap space, and assets from Taj/Mirotic/Lopez (or whoever else can bring back some value).

[transplant]

As others have said, the answer to the OP question is no...given when the Bulls made the rebuild decision, they made the best deal they could.

I find it fascinating that some of the same posters who so highly value high draft picks are the same folks who can state with certainty that Dunn can't play dead. Maybe he can't, but aren't you the least bit curious to see his second season performance? If not and your mind is truly made up, does that have any effect on how you value high picks?


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[pb-ceo]

yes. they could have started the rebuild with the front office instead of the roster.

[mack2354]

It is impossible to answer this question. The trade with Minny may have been the best trade the Front Office feels they had presented to them but we may have viewed other trade offers differently. We know this Front Office thinks Dunn is special and they also thought Cam Payne was worth Dougie, Taj, and a 2nd round pick. Other teams could have offered a better package in OUR eyes but the Front Office chose Dunn instead. There may well have been a better rebuild option available with a trade from another team.

[WindyCityBorn]

No there was not a better option.

[nitetrain8603]

I probably didn't ask this clearly enough and I apologize.

Has ANY media member actually proposed a significantly better trade that was realistically available for butler?

That's not realistic to ask. Why not? If I tell you that a better deal was on the table, you'd ask me to prove it. Most media members are only privy to deals which are almost made and are made, not ones that were offered.

What I mean is this: if Nick Friedell says Paul George was on the table, but the Bulls didn't take it, lots of people on here will say "Prove it". There's no way to prove it other than GarPax doing an AMA on reddit or them spouting it out at a press conference (which they won't do because they know they'd get critique to death).

So I'm afraid that there isn't an answer to your question. Only thing I would say is that I wouldn't have done it, especially with tons of other teams simply punting on the ability to compete for the next couple of years. If everyone is doing what you're doing, then chances are, you're not winning a chip. I would've at least waited for better prospects to come up. Dunn and Lauri don't incite excitement into me.

The best athletic shooting big man that's not Dirk I can think of is Serge Ibaka. I don't think Lauri is anywhere on his level either.

[JeremyB0001]

The odds of getting a foundational player with any pick, even a high one, is extraordinarily low. Because of that, the best way to increase your odds of getting one is to take as many shots as you can. Wasting a #7 pick on a role player is a good way to make sure you have a very long period of being bad.

I guess it depends on what you consider to be a "foundational player" but I would have like my odds pretty well with a top-two pick in this years draft. It's still early but a top-three or maybe even a top-five pick in next year's draft is looking pretty good.

The seventh pick is not the part of the draft when star players are typically drafted. Sure, a rebuilding team could always draft the highest upside player no matter where they're drafting. They would sometimes pass on actual All-Star players (e.g., Carlos Boozer, Draymond Greene) to draft busts because, the later you get in the draft, the bigger longshot those high-upside players are the bigger the chance there is that they won't even stick in the NBA.

I think that it sometimes makes sense to draft for upside. But teams have to make sure not to make the dreaded mistake of drafting for need rather than taking the best player available. It's a big problem if, three years into a rebuild, a team has no assets because it went strictly for upside and drafted busts, that's not a good thing if they passed on better prospects without the upside each time. That's a great way to make sure a rebuild lasts forever.

Role players are very important to creating a top level team. Don't get me wrong. I suspect a team like Cleveland would love to have Markannen. That said, they don't stick around forever and tend to get badly overpaid when they hit free agency. Having them on a sub par team tends to actually be a detriment. They win you a few more games and end up taking a disproportionate amount of capspace.

The generalizations here are pretty extreme. But there's nothing preventing a team from trading a player if it is possible to identify that he's a bad fit for the rebuild because he's not a foundational piece, he's going to be overpaid, and he's helping the team win too much. Players on rookie contracts who help teams win at a young age are highly valuable. And it's better to swap that sort of player for a future first than it is to take a bad draft prospect just to focus on upside and then be left with nothing because that player was a huge bust.

[coldfish]

The odds of getting a foundational player with any pick, even a high one, is extraordinarily low. Because of that, the best way to increase your odds of getting one is to take as many shots as you can. Wasting a #7 pick on a role player is a good way to make sure you have a very long period of being bad.

I guess it depends on what you consider to be a "foundational player" but I would have like my odds pretty well with a top-two pick in this years draft. It's still early but a top-three or maybe even a top-five pick in next year's draft is looking pretty good.

The seventh pick is not the part of the draft when star players are typically drafted. Sure, a rebuilding team could always draft the highest upside player no matter where they're drafting. They would sometimes pass on actual All-Star players (e.g., Carlos Boozer, Draymond Greene) to draft busts because, the later you get in the draft, the bigger longshot those high-upside players are the bigger the chance there is that they won't even stick in the NBA.

I think that it sometimes makes sense to draft for upside. But teams have to make sure not to make the dreaded mistake of drafting for need rather than taking the best player available. It's a big problem if, three years into a rebuild, a team has no assets because it went strictly for upside and drafted busts, that's not a good thing if they passed on better prospects without the upside each time. That's a great way to make sure a rebuild lasts forever.

Role players are very important to creating a top level team. Don't get me wrong. I suspect a team like Cleveland would love to have Markannen. That said, they don't stick around forever and tend to get badly overpaid when they hit free agency. Having them on a sub par team tends to actually be a detriment. They win you a few more games and end up taking a disproportionate amount of capspace.

The generalizations here are pretty extreme. But there's nothing preventing a team from trading a player if it is possible to identify that he's a bad fit for the rebuild because he's not a foundational piece, he's going to be overpaid, and he's helping the team win too much. Players on rookie contracts who help teams win at a young age are highly valuable. And it's better to swap that sort of player for a future first than it is to take a bad draft prospect just to focus on upside and then be left with nothing because that player was a huge bust.

These are not generalizations, they are statistical facts. People have gone over the odds of landing a quality player (ie. best player on a top team) high up in the draft frequently. The odds are really not good.

[Stratmaster]

I don't get what you are saying. Why would the rose trade not be on the table? And we certainly wouldn't have signed noah, rondo or wade. We definitely could've been lower than 7.

I agree on the trades. I just wanted to re-state that assumption...which means the Bulls still have Lopez. To have the 6th worst record, the Bulls would have had to have won under 30 games. I'm not sure that would have happened.

Lopez? Had the Bulls done the right thing and traded Butler a year earlier - the clear bungling in the rebuild plan - they never would have signed Wade or Rondo.

Theoretically the team would have been something like:

Dunn
Grant
McDermott
Taj
Lopez

And then after the deadline even less than that. You are looking at a clear bottom three team in the NBA. This is an important point, because the difference between the ability to draft Markannen or Smith instead of being in play for Fox, Tatum, Ball, Jackson or Fultz underscores that the biggest asset returned in the Butler trade is the increased value of future draft picks.

I think Niko would have had a larger role. I don't think that is clearly a bottom 3 team. Even if you are bottom 3, you aren't guaranteed any better than a #4 pick so you may be looking at Jackson or Fox. None of those 5 have played a minute of NBA basketball yet. We don't know how many of those will even match Lavine's level of scoring output.

The problem with all of the trade Butler plans is that Bulls fans thought Butler was worth a lot more than the NBA GM's think he is.

[keithmad42]

I probably didn't ask this clearly enough and I apologize.

Has ANY media member actually proposed a significantly better trade that was realistically available for butler?

That's not realistic to ask. Why not? If I tell you that a better deal was on the table, you'd ask me to prove it. Most media members are only privy to deals which are almost made and are made, not ones that were offered.

What I mean is this: if Nick Friedell says Paul George was on the table, but the Bulls didn't take it, lots of people on here will say "Prove it". There's no way to prove it other than GarPax doing an AMA on reddit or them spouting it out at a press conference (which they won't do because they know they'd get critique to death).
H
So I'm afraid that there isn't an answer to your question. Only thing I would say is that I wouldn't have done it, especially with tons of other teams simply punting on the ability to compete for the next couple of years. If everyone is doing what you're doing, then chances are, you're not winning a chip. I would've at least waited for better prospects to come up. Dunn and Lauri don't incite excitement into me.

The best athletic shooting big man that's not Dirk I can think of is Serge Ibaka. I don't think Lauri is anywhere on his level either.

Nah, I'm not looking for proof, I think that certain reporters had a good handle on what was being offered both in 2016 and 2017. I think the Bulls actually did receive the best deal offered in either year. Doesn't mean I give the FO a pass in general. Selling #38 was egregious. Taj + Doug for Payne was also atrocious.

As far as Paul George is concerned, he is rental that doesn't get you a top 5 pick in the subsequent year. As much as I like George as a player, that move (even receiving an additional late 1st round pick) delays a rebuild.

[JeremyB0001]

Role players are very important to creating a top level team. Don't get me wrong. I suspect a team like Cleveland would love to have Markannen. That said, they don't stick around forever and tend to get badly overpaid when they hit free agency. Having them on a sub par team tends to actually be a detriment. They win you a few more games and end up taking a disproportionate amount of capspace.

The generalizations here are pretty extreme. But there's nothing preventing a team from trading a player if it is possible to identify that he's a bad fit for the rebuild because he's not a foundational piece, he's going to be overpaid, and he's helping the team win too much. Players on rookie contracts who help teams win at a young age are highly valuable. And it's better to swap that sort of player for a future first than it is to take a bad draft prospect just to focus on upside and then be left with nothing because that player was a huge bust.

These are not generalizations, they are statistical facts. People have gone over the odds of landing a quality player (ie. best player on a top team) high up in the draft frequently. The odds are really not good.[/quote]

Huh? The paragraph I responded to didn't address the odds of landing a quality player at the top of the draft. I was responding to these generalizations:

- "[Role players] don't stick around forever."
- "[Role players] tend to get badly overpaid when they hit free agency."
- "[Role players] win you a few more games."

I offered the caveat that I don't know what you mean by a "foundational piece." It now sounds like your talking about a top-five or top-10 player in the league. Of course a team's odds of landing that type of player isn't high, even with the top pick in the draft. That doesn't necessarily lend any support to your position that rebuilding teams should always swing for the fences. For instance, if a team in the mid-lottery has the choice between acquiring a player who will become the 80th-best player in the NBA and increasing their odds of landing a top-10 player over a five-year period from 24% to 24.3%, I would opt for the former every time.

[coldfish]

Huh? The paragraph I responded to didn't address the odds of landing a quality player at the top of the draft. I was responding to these generalizations:

- "[Role players] don't stick around forever."
- "[Role players] tend to get badly overpaid when they hit free agency."
- "[Role players] win you a few more games."

I offered the caveat that I don't know what you mean by a "foundational piece." It now sounds like your talking about a top-five or top-10 player in the league. Of course a team's odds of landing that type of player isn't high, even with the top pick in the draft. That doesn't necessarily lend any support to your position that rebuilding teams should always swing for the fences. For instance, if a team in the mid-lottery has the choice between acquiring a player who will become the 80th-best player in the NBA and increasing their odds of landing a top-10 player over a five-year period from 24% to 24.3%, I would opt for the former every time.

Assumption: The goal of the rebuild is to create a team winning 50 or more games

Fact: 80% or more of all 50 win teams have top 15 players as a "foundational" piece.
Fact: Players who are not top 15 players but are top 100 average more than $15m per year in free agency
Fact: Better players win more games than worse players, even if they don't get you to 50
Fact: Some, but not many, top 15 players are acquired with capspace

Therefore, in order to meet the assumed goal of 50 wins, the best way to achieve this is to get as many high lottery picks as possible and go for high upside players. Getting role players, then paying them market value, makes it harder to acquire a top 15 player by draft OR free agency.

[jnrjr79]

I actually kind of like Markannen. His shot is beautiful. I just don't think that a team just starting a rebuild needs that piece. You need foundational players and have to take risks to get them.

LaVine has already torn an ACL at 21. Markkanen is not a high ceiling prospect.

This is just too dogmatic for me, this notion that a team must start a rebuild by drafting a high-risk-high-reward player. If the Bulls thought the best prospect available in this draft was more of a high-end role player without huge upside, why not draft the best player available rather than making the mistake of drafting for this supposed need to immediately swing for the fences in the ope of landing a franchise player at the very beginning of the rebuild. The Bulls are likely, hopefully going to have two high draft picks the next two seasons where they can draft high-ceiling, foundational players without much risk. And why can't Lavine be the high-risk-high-reward player? His upside seems unquestionable: He's an elite athlete, he posted excellent scoring numbers at a very young age, and he's younger than the vaunted Jordan Bell and other players in this most recent draft. The risk is his ACL injury and contract situation. There you go: a high-risk-high-reward player with the potential to be a foundational piece.

Coldfish just covered this, but the idea is that role players will make the team too good to be drafting in a position more likely to yield a star, so you'd rather go for your stars first with drafting high several years in a row, and then acquire your role players.

What I don't understand is how everyone seems to have determined that Lauri is a role player-type and not someone with upside.

[League Circles]

I actually kind of like Markannen. His shot is beautiful. I just don't think that a team just starting a rebuild needs that piece. You need foundational players and have to take risks to get them.

LaVine has already torn an ACL at 21. Markkanen is not a high ceiling prospect.

This is just too dogmatic for me, this notion that a team must start a rebuild by drafting a high-risk-high-reward player. If the Bulls thought the best prospect available in this draft was more of a high-end role player without huge upside, why not draft the best player available rather than making the mistake of drafting for this supposed need to immediately swing for the fences in the ope of landing a franchise player at the very beginning of the rebuild. The Bulls are likely, hopefully going to have two high draft picks the next two seasons where they can draft high-ceiling, foundational players without much risk. And why can't Lavine be the high-risk-high-reward player? His upside seems unquestionable: He's an elite athlete, he posted excellent scoring numbers at a very young age, and he's younger than the vaunted Jordan Bell and other players in this most recent draft. The risk is his ACL injury and contract situation. There you go: a high-risk-high-reward player with the potential to be a foundational piece.

Coldfish just covered this, but the idea is that role players will make the team too good to be drafting in a position more likely to yield a star, so you'd rather go for your stars first with drafting high several years in a row, and then acquire your role players.

What I don't understand is how everyone seems to have determined that Lauri is a role player-type and not someone with upside.

Agreed on both counts. Coldfish is right about the notion of big impact guys before role players, but IMO wrong on pegging Lauri as a role player, unless it's the role of scoring 25 ppg on nice efficiency.