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I had high hopes for the new front office. Liked the talk about "multi-positional" players. I liked the Pat pick. I'm kinda ambivalent on Donovan but hey, I'm impressed you even got the guy. Well now it's been an offseason and trade deadline later and the team is certainly a little different. But it sure is looking like some more of that gunning for low playoff seed treadmilling that we all supposedly hated:

• Zach, assuming he gets his $200mil *shudders*, and Vucevic are your guys for at least two-and-a-half more years, when Vucevic's deal is up. That's it. You are now in HARD on two B-List "stars" who have never won more than 42 games in their professional lives. Two guys who can put the ball in the bucket like hell, but who play no defense and have not shown they really elevate teams in any way other than their box score numbers. Are they a couple of KGs, or a couple of Mitch Richmonds? Let's be real, it's not the first.
• Wendell's gone. Lauri's trade value is nonexistent. Coby is trending hard and fast towards similar status. 2021 and 2023 picks are off the table. You are now down to Pat and 2025+ picks to work with. There is absolutely no other young talent or other teams' future picks in your warchest.
• Thad Young, who has been the second most valuable player on the team, is 32 years old. Not that having Thad Young as your second most valuable player at 25 years old would be so much better.
• Vucevic himself is 30 and even when he was 20 he was slow as balls. He's obviously a million times better than Wendell on offense, but you may have actually just somehow made your already bad defense even worse.

You might say, "Hey you dumb Garf*cker, we're just gonna trade for the next AD/Harden or sign the next LeBron/KD and win 74 next year, so STFU bitch."

But…how? You're not gonna do that in free agency any time soon, because nobody in the 2021 or 2022 class is someone you'd want here, or would want to be here. 2023 doesn't look much better, unless for some reason Jokic or Embiid are so pissed off with their franchises they'll pass up a full boat supermax.

So you're basically just banking on pulling off a trade for a superstar. Exactly what are you gonna offer short of every other pick you have from 2025-2057? Vucevic's trade value is only downhill from here. An already slow, 30-year-old center who doesn't play D that is only gonna have even less contract left is not gonna be a huge trade chip. He hit his peak trade value today. Zach? Well if Zach's still around, it's because you threw him a max deal. Why would a team dumping its superstar, who would probably be starting a rebuild, want Zach on a gigantic max deal to kick it off? And if he's so worthy of a max deal…well something must've gone wrong if you suddenly want to trade him, didn't it?

So…whaddya really got besides a gazillion far future picks literally any other franchise can offer? Pat. That's it. Pat is basically everything at least the next couple years probably hinges on.

So is this it? Is this really the plan? Basically just pray Pat pans out and is either the missing superstar himself, or has enough trade value to be the trade centerpiece for one?

Yeah, your plan sounds certainly better. Which is, er... Well, I'm sure it's great, whatever it is.

“You're not gonna do that in free agency any time soon, because nobody in the 2021 or 2022 class is someone you'd want here, or would want to be here.”

There you explained in your own post why the trade is not only amazing, it’s an A+.

If you still think Zach at 25 isn’t worth building around, you’re in for a long journey. He’s worth the max. Especially in the context of an exploding cap, but even without it he’s easily worth it. You don’t know NBA fair value if you disagree.

We either had 3 main options this trade deadline.

Make a move to improve: Which we already did. We sold some of our future picks, Porter, Carter Jr for an all star center. Although, he's 30 and he's an All Star Center. Not an All-NBA center like Jokic and AD. Which in today's NBA are the only difference makers in terms of big man production.

Have a Fire Sale: Sell everyone with value and hit a total reset button. Our war chest is barren and we need to reset our young core. New lottery odds make it tough obviously, and less ideal. But the goal would be bad and collect assets for cap space.

Do Nothing: Stick with our current young core and hope our GarPax young core can show some semblance of improvement. And grow organically through the draft and hope to god Lavine doesn't leave for greener pastures.

Besides a bit of variation of things in between these options. There wasn't much to do with our current roster. Personally, I wasn't a fan of the decision because we're doubling down on Lavine. And thinking adding Vucevic is going change our ceiling besides being a second round exit, if we're lucky. I also get it, just sitting on our buts and kicking rocks wouldn't do anything either.

We're here now. I guess all we can do is watch and bitch this off-season.

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This thread should be a good one! LOL

I'm sure that before today the OP had been busy telling everyone that outside of trading Zach, there was no way the Bulls had enough assets to trade for a current All-Star. It's also comical how the league's coaches haven't let Vuc's incredible slowness stop him from being an All-Star.

I'm sure he's ignoring the fact that the Bulls can still create max cap space this summer without much effort, because that would be one way to improve the team.

Also blatantly ignoring the fact that next summer (2022), we can easily create right around $40 million in cap space to go with:

Zach
Vuc
Mr. Patrick Williams
Coby
Our 2022 1st round pick

And he'll love to tell you how Zach and Vuc have "never won", while ignoring the fact that even LeBron barely makes (or MISSES) the playoffs when he's not playing with another All-Star. Zach and Vuc will, for the first time since they became All-Stars, play with another All-Star.

There were less than 30 NBA players who made the All-Star team this season, and the Bulls now have 2 of them. I hope nobody expected the pessimists to change their tune. Quite the opposite, now they're just going to go on and on about how we can't possibly improve any more, for the same reasons they've been using for the past who-knows-how-many-years.

In AK, I trust.

There are no more 5 year plans in the NBA. We just got much better-and with 3 medium sized expiring deals to play with next summer, we can still make moves. Chicago is a big market-time to act like it. Vuc will help Lavine and Lauri SO MUCH

What's the plan? It's to make Chicago a destination.

We're a major market. We have two All-Stars. We have a player-friendly coach. Someone is going to see joining the Chicago Bulls as a good opportunity.

I'll also add that next year we'll have $30m in expiring contracts. I like Pat Williams, but he's not some untouchable generational talent. We also have Coby White and a 2022 1st round pick. Between all those pieces, we have the assets to trade for another star.

The plan is to let AK do his job. So far so good. I’m sure your plan was basically to trade Zach and bottom out so I’m glad no one with your mindset is in charge. I’m sure Orlando or OKC have room on their bandwagons for those of you obsessed with draft picks and assets.

Time to become winner and not a joke. Could easily see this team as top 4 seed next year.

HomoSapien wrote:What's the plan? It's to make Chicago a destination.

We're a major market. We have two All-Stars. We have a player-friendly coach. Someone is going to see joining the Chicago Bulls as a good opportunity.

Exactly. So many cannot get away from the tank and hope you get lucky mentality. That isn’t how most good teams are built now.

I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but how do you have 9 thousand posts on RealGM and you just figured out that only 1 team wins a championship each year?

Here is the plan:

- 2021 win the lottery so we don't have to convey the pick
- Make a big splash in free agency
- Develop Pat Williams
- Make a power move
- Make the Bulls a powerhouse market

The plan is simple:

Make the playoff and win the first round
Be prepared to go all out to sign Kawhi Leonard

The appeal is simple. Do you want to play with two all stars and you’re the missing piece to a potential three star combo to a championship?

HomoSapien wrote:What's the plan? It's to make Chicago a destination.

We're a major market. We have two All-Stars. We have a player-friendly coach. Someone is going to see joining the Chicago Bulls as a good opportunity.

Not to mention awesome restaurants.

Next off-season will be the search for that third banana. I think all these guys are potential targets:

Pascal Siakam
Malcolm Brogdon
Jerami Grant

If Masai leaves, you could imagine a new GM completely blowing things up, especially since Siakam's been clashing with team officials. Brogdon was recently rumored to be available. Grant has not really been rumored to be available, but he's not signed to a long-term deal and his timeline doesn't match up with the rest of their roster. We have the expiring contracts to match the salary, and obviously would have to add some combination of Patrick Williams, Coby White, and our 2022 1st Round Pick.

If that path leads to a dead-end there's are several free-agent options:

Kawhi Leonard
DeMar Derozan
Kyle Lowry
Mike Conley

Lot's of former Raptors on this list. Derozan and Lowry are obviously more attainable. Leonard is just someone worth monitoring. If the Clippers flame out again, we have no idea what he'll do. The only thing we know is that he's not afraid to leave a seemingly good situation.

Paul George is another guy worth monitoring. If Leonard bolts, George will likely be quickly traded for whatever assets they can recoup.

....wtf

ArtMorte wrote:Yeah, your plan sounds certainly better. Which is, er... Well, I'm sure it's great, whatever it is.

Well, the same poster did think 2-3 months ago Porter is our best player and how did that turn out...

Anyways, such a weird timing for this kind of thread. Evaluation year thrown out the window, FO's desire to win this season is strong and that's what the majority of the fans want to see, too. Wins. If anyone can't figure out that by themselves or he/she doesn't want to see this team win more, I'm speechless.

This organization has done enough "planning" already, it's friggin' time to take more actions.

juz curious, after the trade deadline, how much money we can spend this summer?


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1. Win
2. Attract better players
3. Win more
4. Go to 2

One of the things that was mentioned yesterday was attitude. IMO, one of the reason why the tank treadmill happens on so many teams is that when you start to intentionally lose you create a franchise wide environment where losing begets losing. The end result is that your draft picks don't pick up the little good habits necessary to win games. You draft them, think they suck and eventually let them go only to do the same thing with the new guys later.

The only thing that can break that cycle is a once in a generation draft pick that is so good they can win games by themselves OR a rare hardnose coach like Thibodeau who won't accept bad habits.

The Bulls are clearly trying to clean out the GarPax dross and establish a winning culture and then sign or trade for even better players.

During the offseason, I said that GarPax had given the fanbase PTSD and that most of us completely forget that its possible to trade for good players. Well, here we are. AK has been pretty transparent the whole time. He said this was the plan on day 1. Many (including myself) were just starting to lose patience for it. Yesterday during the press conference, he pretty clearly laid out the plan going forward.