scoobs07 wrote: I want to chime in here but confused by this comment. Chicago doesn't want to tank? Can you please clarify?
I'm not a Bulls fan, but my understanding of the situation there is that Reinsdorf doesn't want to tank and lose ticket sales or sell the team, but the team has no real path to being genuinely good or truly terrible, so other than hitting on their picks in the lower half of the lottery, they are sort of locked into that dreaded fighting for the play-in in the East no man's land.
Trading Caruso for Giddey rather than getting back a pick or 2 like many expected was a real sign of not wanting to tank but instead try to keep a competitive 30+ win team.
It's not completely hopeless or anything there, they have some young talent and maybe they can finish with the 8th or 9th pick this year, retain it and get a quality big or a wing.
So the logical move with their pick being only top 10 protected this year was to trade Caruso for a pick instead of a middling player like Giddey, move Vucevic (or Lavine) to ensure the tank, keep their pick for sure and get a frontcourt star or quality wing to go with White and Lavine hope that guys like Dosunmu, Buzelis, Jalen Smith, Patrick Williams and the pick they'd have gotten for Caruso would develop into good complimentary pieces, maybe add a not so old free agent to go with them.