coldfish wrote:At the time, there was a pretty big debate here. It wasn't like trading him was a unanimous decision as being a good idea. Once the trade went through, the support eroded further due to the return. Its not like questioning the trade is some out of left field concept.
Now with the benefit of hindsight, it was a really terrible idea. As I noted above, I was actually for trading him before the trade but I can admit when I was wrong.
As far as what Chicago got, Lauri and Dunn were questionable on day 1. Lavine wasn't highly regarded either, particularly coming off the knee issue. Lavine turned it around but . . . now has knee issues.
Hindsight is always great but its also a trap. Anyone at any time can be second guessed using perfection as a bar. Overall though the Butler trade was just one in a long series of mistakes by GarPax during the 2012-2020 period which put the team in a really bad place.
I'm not saying Jimmy isn't the best player in the deal, but I don't think that examines properly the alternate path.
There were significant mitigating factors that had you kept him may have also blown up in your face:
1: Butler has demonstrated the he is difficult to coach and get along with and this was already a problem here. This lead to his exit on two additional teams (with more talent) and may have been part of his exit here and may have been part of his exit in the future.
2: Butler has demonstrated that he desperately wants to win and his issues would exacerbate in a scenario that wasn't the case or he didn't feel the people around him were as serious as him, and that was also the situation here, which also contributes to the idea that his stay may have been untenable.
3: Butler left Philly as a FA (though to the agreement of both sides in a S&T), and there is every reason to think he may not have opted to stay here as a FA give the two above things.
4: Butler returned WAY WAY less each other time he changed teams, so if any of the above circumstances did happen, Chicago would be even worse off.
5: Butler if he stayed here would have been on a more expensive deal and been even more difficult to build around, and the Bulls didn't have great asses to make it happen. It's unlikely (though not impossible) that Chicago would have had the pieces to put around Butler to turn this into a success.
Jimmy is clearly the best player in the Jimmy Butler deal, hands down, not even close, and maybe it absolutely was a mistake trading him, but we don't know what would have happened if we kept him. It is incredibly plausible, perhaps even highly likely that he would have demanded a trade and we would have gotten Robert Covington or some useless crap back instead of a two time all-star six years younger than him that can serve as an important piece.
So I can say with hindsight, Jimmy Butler was the best player no doubt, but I think if I look at the situation, I am not sure that keeping Butler would have been better because of the other circumstances around the trade. Sure, maybe if you could have kept Butler and drawn a perfect line of follow up moves, but you could say the same if you traded Butler and had a perfect line of follow moves. You trade Butler and draft Bam Adebayo instead of Lauri Markkanen, you tank that year and draft Luka Doncic instead of Wendell Carter Jr, now your core is Zach, Bam, and Luka, and you're set to win a whole ton of titles.
That's a similar set of approach to people in this thread that literally say things like you could have built around Jimmy with a bunch of late draft picks like Miami. Maybe. Maybe if we had perhaps the best coach and best GM in basketball like the Heat do, but we don't and didn't.
At the time, I was more pro trade Jimmy than keep Jimmy, but I didn't feel incredibly strongly about it (especially after seeing the return), but I said there is probably no good chance to win, and when Butler goes elsewhere, people will look at his success and say "why couldn't that happen here" and the reason was because it was Jimmy and a pile of absolutely nothing here, and that whatever we did it was likely going to look like a loss.