AKME's Worst Moves?

[pipfan]

I know, this is a tough one. Some rules:
-I have to choose 9 (and 1 "other"), so I'll do my best to decipher
-No options of moves not made like trading Vuc this deadline (we don't know the offers)
-No hindsight, at the time of the move

Please vote for 3

[League Circles]

I think the Vuc extension might be the worst

[League Circles]

I'm basing mine on how stupid or egregious a move was at the time it was made, not necessarily on the degree of negative impact.

[prolific passer]

Worst move is not doing anything when Lonzo went down.

[Chi town]

Vuc trade followed by DDR trade.

Both set us back for years and still are.

[MrSparkle]

I think the Vuc extension might be the worst

Eh it's borderline inconsequential. Probably helped us secure Matas, as I'm pretty sure a Vuc-less team with Demar and Caruso could've pushed for a 1st round appearance in the crappy east. I think if the idea was to continue trying to make Demar/Lavine work, that would make sense, but I think nobody in their right mind wanted to continue that pairing.

The Vuc trade was obviously the worst move in the entire AKME campaign. Looked mild, ended up backfiring short-term, and essentially wasted 5Y of this franchise's time (augmented by the extension). But letting him go in 2023 wouldn't have made a difference. The damage was done. We missed the stronger 23/Wemby draft - the 24 draft kinda sucked (early to say, but ATM there isn't that much separating #11 Matas' and #1 Risacher/Sarr's potentials). Dumping Zach, Caruso and Demar for higher returns was the best thing AK could've done to salvage the situation, but he didn't do that.

I'm not surprised he's actually underperformed his "value deal." By 2023, I was saying he's making the team worse, and we'd be better playing vet. min. Drummond (also quite bad TBF).

[rosenthall]

I think AKME's worst move was not doing a reset either at the deadline of 2022, or the following offseason. We were in year 3 of his tenure, a middling 500 team, Vuc was going into FA, 3rd year Pat had shown no signs of being more than a 3&D guy, and Lonzo was still unable to walk. The signs were clear that the team did not have a path forward.

If we had decided to reset we could have saved ourselves the Vuc extension, gotten better returns for DeMar & maybe Zach (he had a strong finish to that season), and could have accelerated ourselves into the next iteration of the team.

[sco]

The Vuc resign. The original trade was something that was understandable on the margin, but doubling down on something that wasn't working on a guy over 30 was terrible.

[samwana]

I voted for PWill 5 year deal and Donovan extension. Both were obvious bad decisions. PWill should have been send out for a contract and we could have made a better decision to match or not to match. You see Ago or Coby and then you see PWill getting way more? Bad management IMO.

Donovan extension to me is typical Bulls nepotism having his son coach the WCB is doubling down on a bad decision. I can't stand BD's inconsequent coaching and the way he manages young players doesn't make sense on too many levels.

Vuc extension maybe next, I just hope he is gone in the summer.

[waffle]

they were going to sign pwill but should have let the market set his value

The Vuc trade....was very meh about it at the time and since then....very very very ugh

[Jcool0]

Loved the Vuc trade but I also watched zero minutes of him in Orlando. After one game you could tell it wasn't going to work out. Maybe AK only watches Bulls games? Only way you could justify the move.

[dougthonus]

Without using hindsight, my list would probably be:

Vuc trade - I was on a pretty small island of people who seemed to think this in the moment, so I'm not sure everyone is really applying the no hindsight rule here.

Vuc extension - I hated this extension when it was signed, just made no sense to me.

Terry drafting - Felt like there were way better options on the board, and there were.

Pat extension - I didn't hate the money so much as it was hard to get a feel for his value, I just hated the process of being proactive vs letting RFA play out. The teams that waited all got similar players on way better deals, then Pat just tanked this year to make it even worse.

Other thoughts
Lauri trade - really bad in hindsight, but I was okay with it at the moment, what bothered me was not trading him at the deadline earlier before he hit RFA when I thought we'd have gotten more

Pat drafting - Maybe didn't turn out great, and I'd rather have Deni today on his new contract, which was the guy I would have taken, but I didn't think it was inexplicably bad in the moment or anything

LaVine extension/trade - My only real problem with LaVine was not trading him earlier after the extension and that we folded on the player option on the last year and gave him the trade kicker. Neither one probably really mattered, but was just overboard in both cases. Otherwise, I understood the extension and the trade.

Ball signing - It would have been great except for injury, granted injury was likely with Ball, but this severity of injury was not. I still think it was a reasonable risk even if it didn't pan out

Donovan extension - Donovan is a good coach, it's fine. I know people hate him because they always pin way too much on the coach, but it's incredibly unlikely we'd have a better coach than Donovan if we fired Donovan IMO. I'd be okay changing, but I just think people vastly overstate the upside and understate the downside here

[kodo]

Vuc trade, specifically the cost. Very light protections on the pick, and it ended up costing Chicago Franz Wagner who is a max player (albeit probably not an ideal max player).

Reaching for Pat in the draft was also very bad but a lot of teams also passed on Haliburton and Deni. Given we had Coby & Lavine, another GM might have also passed on Haliburton. You're supposed to just draft BPA regardless of position, but 99% of the time GMs don't do that. Ask Portland why they didn't draft Michael Jordan.

Dumping Lauri for basically nothing was also bad, but that was a very popular decision at the time. And come full circle, a lot of people are questioning Lauri on a max contract now.

I'm pretty meh on small overpays like PWill's contract. Okoro got $13M in FA, Pat would have gotten something similar. So we overpaid $5M per year? So the opportunity cost is a Vet Min guy? Really doesn't change much in the grand scheme of things. It's nothing like not getting Haliburton or not having Wagner or Lauri. And it's not just Pat, Felicio keeps coming up like we traded Luka or something. The guy got $7.5M per year. NBA end of bench guys get like $3M-$5M. $4M in salary cap isn't changing anything about the Bulls. Cap space is only useful if the org actually utilizes it to improve the team. Either by getting game changing FAs which we don't (Derozan, Lonzo, etc. were all trades) or absorbing bad contracts for picks. Which we don't either. Overpaid contracts on the Bulls just cost the ownership group money, it doesn't actually make the team worse because we don't utilize cap space to improve the team.

[DuckIII]

Not gutting the team one year after Ball went down when there was a buying frenzy and our vet core had value.

No affirmative move did anywhere near as much damage as that refusal to act. Which was then double and triple downed on.

[Axl Rose]

I almost went with the Vuc extension because it was so unnecessary and even if they wanted to keep him they could have got him on a sweetheart deal as there wasn't a market for him that offseason.

Ultimately though, I think giving Pat 5 years 90m with a player option was worse and will have a longer negative impact. This was the year he needed to break out to prove that wrong and he ended up having his worst season yet.

The Vuc trade was the worst with hindsight (for me). I rationalized it at the time that we needed the shake up but it undoubtedly set this franchise back years.

[pipfan]

Vuc trade, specifically the cost. Very light protections on the pick, and it ended up costing Chicago Franz Wagner who is a max player (albeit probably not an ideal max player).

Reaching for Pat in the draft was also very bad but a lot of teams also passed on Haliburton and Deni. Given we had Coby & Lavine, another GM might have also passed on Haliburton. You're supposed to just draft BPA regardless of position, but 99% of the time GMs don't do that. Ask Portland why they didn't draft Michael Jordan.

Dumping Lauri for basically nothing was also bad, but that was a very popular decision at the time. And come full circle, a lot of people are questioning Lauri on a max contract now.

I'm pretty meh on small overpays like PWill's contract. Okoro got $13M in FA, Pat would have gotten something similar. So we overpaid $5M per year? So the opportunity cost is a Vet Min guy? Really doesn't change much in the grand scheme of things. It's nothing like not getting Haliburton or not having Wagner or Lauri. And it's not just Pat, Felicio keeps coming up like we traded Luka or something. The guy got $7.5M per year. NBA end of bench guys get like $3M-$5M. $4M in salary cap isn't changing anything about the Bulls. Cap space is only useful if the org actually utilizes it to improve the team. Either by getting game changing FAs which we don't (Derozan, Lonzo, etc. were all trades) or absorbing bad contracts for picks. Which we don't either. Overpaid contracts on the Bulls just cost the ownership group money, it doesn't actually make the team worse because we don't utilize cap space to improve the team.

Good points on PWill's deal, but 2 issues with it
Summer 2026 we're projected to have a ton of cap space-$5 million more would be better
His current contract is top 5 most toxic-making him a very negative asset in any potential trade. At $13 million, he'd be a more likely "buy-low" candidate for another franchise

Was Det really going to offer PWill $20 million last summer? Offer him 4 years/$52 million-that's still generational wealth

[meekrab]

The worst moves are the ones where they didn't cash out on players playing above their heads on a team that only won half its games once.

[Jello Biafra]

I voted the Ball signing. Loved it at the time but $85 million for 3 months of basketball.

[GoBlue72391]

- Lauri trade
- Vuc trade (even though I was a fan of it at the time)
- Pat extension

Quite a lowlight reel.

If we're doing no hindsight, then the list is:

- Lauri trade
- Pat extension
- Vuc extension

Those are all moves that I knew at the moment were absolutely idiotic.

[cocktailswith_2short]

Pat - everything about him .