Road to nowhere

[MrSparkle]

Again, in terms of where we are "on the road", I start with the undisputed fact that we still don't have a #1 option. Off the top of my head, other teams that don't arguably have one are (I'll give some teams like CHA and ATL credit with young stars):

WAS
MIA
DET
IND
BKN
SAC
UTA

Of those, only IND and SAC are trying to go forward without one.

Miami’s gonna get a haul for Jimmy if they move him. Haliburton, Fox, Sabonis and Lauri are struggling this year, but still established young/prime all stars who would demand premiums on the traded market. Cade has ascended into a proper #1… still maybe a year or two away from the big show.

I’d say we’re uniquely stuck with the Wizards and Nets for the most irrelevant top options. Blazers haven’t quite figured anything out either, but they’ve got a lot of assets.

[League Circles]

There's no way Caruso picks Chicago over a contender for the same money, $20M. He has no love for Chicago, he came here from LA because we offered the most money. He even offered to stay with LA for LESS money than we offered, LA still said no. He basically got the door shut on him and he landed here.

Same situation in his next FA, why would he stay with a bad team when he can sign with a contending team for $20M. People might say "oh well contenders don't have cap space," cap space has never stopped trades. We would have S&T'd him to a destination for 2030 2nd rounder and cash. That's basically what we got for facilitating the Derozan trade, 2nd rounders & cash. People said the same thing about Derozan in FA, playoff teams don't have cap space. Irrelevant, always has been.

The only way Caruso stays in Chicago is for the same reason he ended up in Chicago in the first place, we massively outbid everyone else. To reiterate, he was willing to sign for less for a contender than take the Chicago offer. So to stay with Chicago we'd have to give him $25M if a contender is willing to S&T him for him $20M? When you're giving a 30 year old bench player even a great one $25M+, it's not a smart move anymore.

The decision to get something for AC before he moves on was a good one, even from my perspective as a FO hater.

No, this isn’t true. Caruso signed what was his maximum extension, which is what Chicago also could have offered. The Bulls could not have offered a $25M/year extension.

We could have given him 5 years though right?

[drosestruts]

This entire premise just reminds me a lot of Nivk Friedell getting on the radio during he Heatles year and just repeating that the Bulls don't have enough to win.

You listed 9-10 teams that are on your perceived "road to nowhere"

You could have easily listed 10-15 more.

Cleveland is having a great regular season, but if we're all being honest, if everyone remains healthy - the Celtics will be the team most likely going to the Finals.

Does that put every other Eastern Conference team on the "road to nowhere"

I think there's just a lot of glass half empty perspectives amongst Bulls fans, and as always, a lot of thinking that the grass is greener on the other side.

You seem to place a large emphasis on players in the top-10 that were drafted by a team, but not value on having top-10 draftees of the roster - of which we have several.

Would Giddey and Smith somehow hold more value in your eyes if we had drafted them rather than acquired them via trade or free agency?

Is Washington's future somehow brighter due to having drafted multiple top-10 picks?

I think the biggest false premise of this is that if we were bad and on pace to have a high pick that we'd somehow be on a better path, rather than just on a different "road to nowhere"

If you want to be super pessimistic and critical - everyone but Boston and OKC are on various roads to nowhere.

Just depends where you want to place those goalposts, which do seem to be constantly moving on this board.


It seems today that those goals posts are - the ability to win a first round series.

I'd give us 0% chance of beating Boston or Cleveland

I don't view the other teams in the Eastern Conference as unbeatable

[Stratmaster]

I reject the idea that middling young assets can't be packaged in trades with other players. Teams looking for win now players are not philosophically against also bringing in a young prospect who can fill end of bench or 2nd team minutes. And every once in a while this players pan out to be valuable. You don't think Coby and Caruso, if packaged together last season, bring back more than just Caruso?

I don't think any team trading for Caruso last year was going to give you a player better than Caruso, no. The teams that wanted Caruso wanted to win right away, that's why they got Caruso. They want to give up future assets for current assets, not greater current assets for lesser current assets, because that doesn't enhance their chance to win.

You should start with the assumption that trades generally are executed when each side gets similar value. The type of value is typically different, and each side wants a different type of value.

Various types of value might be:
Short or long term financial relief
Short term value
Future (but not current) value
Moving value from one bucket to a different bucket (ie, bigs for guards or defense for offense) (though this trade is the least common type of trade)

If you want current value back, then its hard to improve it by sending current value out, because both teams would fundamentally both need to think the other is misevaluating their guy unless you are in the moving value from one bucket to another, like moving Caruso for a PF to a team that has a ton of bigs, but that trade is also not super common.

I wouldn't have expected a better player than Caruso. I would have expected a player better than Coby and who is a better fit for the roster. You just want to hold on to all these young JAG's?

[dougthonus]

This entire premise just reminds me a lot of Nivk Friedell getting on the radio during he Heatles year and just repeating that the Bulls don't have enough to win.

You listed 9-10 teams that are on your perceived "road to nowhere"

You could have easily listed 10-15 more.

Cleveland is having a great regular season, but if we're all being honest, if everyone remains healthy - the Celtics will be the team most likely going to the Finals.

Does that put every other Eastern Conference team on the "road to nowhere"

I'm not a championship or bust guy, so I don't view it that way at all. I'm a "try to win 50 games" guy.

There are not 10-15 teams that have experienced as few playoff wins as us. There are 5 total in the league. 24 teams have experienced more playoff wins. Of those teams that have our level of playoff wins, they are investing in high risk / high reward upside strategies that have some chance to get htem out of that boat, and we really don't.

I think there's just a lot of glass half empty perspectives amongst Bulls fans, and as always, a lot of thinking that the grass is greener on the other side.

Who do we have greener grass than? Over the AK era 24 teams have more playoff wins than us. Over the next 4 years, how many teams do you think we will win more playoff games than? I'd put the over/under on playoff wins in the next 4 years for the Bulls at 2?

You seem to place a large emphasis on players in the top-10 that were drafted by a team, but not value on having top-10 draftees of the roster - of which we have several.

Yes, because if you get them on their second contract when you know you haven't received a star player, it doesn't matter. Top 10 is ambiguous, it doesn't have to be top 10, that doesn't mean anything, it's just a short handed way to say how many high upside chances is your team taking to gamble on getting a really great player?

Would Giddey and Smith somehow hold more value in your eyes if we had drafted them rather than acquired them via trade or free agency?

If we acquired them as rookies, no. Acquiring them after they have established baselines and you are certain they aren't going to be elite players? Yes, that has less value and is not what moves the needle to make large steps forward.

Is Washington's future somehow brighter due to having drafted multiple top-10 picks?

No, not necessarily, but they are much better positioned to land a star player that can change their future than ours and are achieving the same amount of playoff success.

If you are happy watching regular season games regularly and winning 40 games but not making the playoffs is appreciably increasing your happiness with the team vs winning 20 games and hoping to land star players, then you may be perfectly happy with what the Bulls are doing though.

For some people, there may be a lot of value in the regular season, but that doesn't seem to be how most fans experience the game where the playoffs is disproportionately valuable compared to the regular season.

I think the biggest false premise of this is that if we were bad and on pace to have a high pick that we'd somehow be on a better path, rather than just on a different "road to nowhere"

We ARE bad, we are just also not getting the pick. If we were getting to the playoffs every year, I wouldn't call it the road to nowhere. You have extended the road to nowhere to include everyone who is unlikely to win a championship. If you are a championship or bust guy, that's fine. I know there are people who feel that way. I'm not such a guy myself though.

If you want to be super pessimistic and critical - everyone but Boston and OKC are on various roads to nowhere.

Just depends where you want to place those goalposts, which do seem to be constantly moving on this board.


It seems today that those goals posts are - the ability to win a first round series.

I'd give us 0% chance of beating Boston or Cleveland

I don't view the other teams in the Eastern Conference as unbeatable

There are a lot of places one might place the goal posts. I've literally never seen anyone argue to place them in a spot where they are happy missing the playoffs and not getting good draft assets. If you want to put them at making the playoffs, winning a series, winning 2 series, winning a title, we lose in all those cases.

[jnrjr79]

There's no way Caruso picks Chicago over a contender for the same money, $20M. He has no love for Chicago, he came here from LA because we offered the most money. He even offered to stay with LA for LESS money than we offered, LA still said no. He basically got the door shut on him and he landed here.

Same situation in his next FA, why would he stay with a bad team when he can sign with a contending team for $20M. People might say "oh well contenders don't have cap space," cap space has never stopped trades. We would have S&T'd him to a destination for 2030 2nd rounder and cash. That's basically what we got for facilitating the Derozan trade, 2nd rounders & cash. People said the same thing about Derozan in FA, playoff teams don't have cap space. Irrelevant, always has been.

The only way Caruso stays in Chicago is for the same reason he ended up in Chicago in the first place, we massively outbid everyone else. To reiterate, he was willing to sign for less for a contender than take the Chicago offer. So to stay with Chicago we'd have to give him $25M if a contender is willing to S&T him for him $20M? When you're giving a 30 year old bench player even a great one $25M+, it's not a smart move anymore.

The decision to get something for AC before he moves on was a good one, even from my perspective as a FO hater.

No, this isn’t true. Caruso signed what was his maximum extension, which is what Chicago also could have offered. The Bulls could not have offered a $25M/year extension.

We could have given him 5 years though right?

Nope.

[League Circles]

This entire premise just reminds me a lot of Nivk Friedell getting on the radio during he Heatles year and just repeating that the Bulls don't have enough to win.

You listed 9-10 teams that are on your perceived "road to nowhere"

You could have easily listed 10-15 more.

Cleveland is having a great regular season, but if we're all being honest, if everyone remains healthy - the Celtics will be the team most likely going to the Finals.

Does that put every other Eastern Conference team on the "road to nowhere"

I'm not a championship or bust guy, so I don't view it that way at all. I'm a "try to win 50 games" guy.

There are not 10-15 teams that have experienced as few playoff wins as us. There are 5 total in the league. 24 teams have experienced more playoff wins. Of those teams that have our level of playoff wins, they are investing in high risk / high reward upside strategies that have some chance to get htem out of that boat, and we really don't.

I think there's just a lot of glass half empty perspectives amongst Bulls fans, and as always, a lot of thinking that the grass is greener on the other side.

Who do we have greener grass than? Over the AK era 24 teams have more playoff wins than us. Over the next 4 years, how many teams do you think we will win more playoff games than? I'd put the over/under on playoff wins in the next 4 years for the Bulls at 2?

You seem to place a large emphasis on players in the top-10 that were drafted by a team, but not value on having top-10 draftees of the roster - of which we have several.

Yes, because if you get them on their second contract when you know you haven't received a star player, it doesn't matter. Top 10 is ambiguous, it doesn't have to be top 10, that doesn't mean anything, it's just a short handed way to say how many high upside chances is your team taking to gamble on getting a really great player?

Would Giddey and Smith somehow hold more value in your eyes if we had drafted them rather than acquired them via trade or free agency?

If we acquired them as rookies, no. Acquiring them after they have established baselines and you are certain they aren't going to be elite players? Yes, that has less value and is not what moves the needle to make large steps forward.

Is Washington's future somehow brighter due to having drafted multiple top-10 picks?

No, not necessarily, but they are much better positioned to land a star player that can change their future than ours and are achieving the same amount of playoff success.

If you are happy watching regular season games regularly and winning 40 games but not making the playoffs is appreciably increasing your happiness with the team vs winning 20 games and hoping to land star players, then you may be perfectly happy with what the Bulls are doing though.

For some people, there may be a lot of value in the regular season, but that doesn't seem to be how most fans experience the game where the playoffs is disproportionately valuable compared to the regular season.

I think the biggest false premise of this is that if we were bad and on pace to have a high pick that we'd somehow be on a better path, rather than just on a different "road to nowhere"

We ARE bad, we are just also not getting the pick. If we were getting to the playoffs every year, I wouldn't call it the road to nowhere. You have extended the road to nowhere to include everyone who is unlikely to win a championship. If you are a championship or bust guy, that's fine. I know there are people who feel that way. I'm not such a guy myself though.

If you want to be super pessimistic and critical - everyone but Boston and OKC are on various roads to nowhere.

Just depends where you want to place those goalposts, which do seem to be constantly moving on this board.


It seems today that those goals posts are - the ability to win a first round series.

I'd give us 0% chance of beating Boston or Cleveland

I don't view the other teams in the Eastern Conference as unbeatable

There are a lot of places one might place the goal posts. I've literally never seen anyone argue to place them in a spot where they are happy missing the playoffs and not getting good draft assets. If you want to put them at making the playoffs, winning a series, winning 2 series, winning a title, we lose in all those cases.

Good elaborations here on your perspective. I love that you're among the relative few that aren't title or bust, and would be pretty happy with consistent good teams that aren't elite.

If I read you correctly here, you kinda believe that players are either going to become great or not based on their own internal talent / drive etc. I'm just saying this because of how you describe knowing very early in a player's career whether his team has "received" an emerging star. Is that your perspective?

I very strongly disagree with that notion. Yes, talent and drive are obviously very important, but IMO, opportunity is an absolutely enormous, and underrated factor. A LOT of guys that have been perceived as stars or building block types simply got an opportunity to maximize their abilities, and so they LOOK like they're good, especially to casual observers (which, by God, 99% of fans and media are IMO for players outside of their own teams). There are so many examples of this I could go on forever, but one that came to my attention a couple days ago was that D'Angelo **** Russell was apparently an all star at age 22. He's now 28. He was a #2 overall pick. A #2 overall pick who was an all star at 22 should be a great player at 28 right? Wrong. He sucks. He has always sucked. I mean sure maybe he's an NBA rotation player, but the point is that guys can often seem WAY better than they actually are due to opportunity. And by no means is that only about minutes. It's about who they play with, who they play against, what their coach is dictating, etc. Taj Gibson is a guy on the other end of the spectrum. IMO once he figured out his mid range jumper and post up game he was a really, really, really good player. Like probably a top 60 NBA player. WAY better than Russell has ever been. But he was almost 30 years old by the time he became that guy (due to offensive skill set expansion), so no one outside of Chicago really gave a ****. If his opportunity timeline had been different, he may have been a max player for someone. That's how fickle I see the landscape of who is considered good. I think people often assign player "decline" when in reality they're just witnessing more of a change in opportunity. Likewise, people will often write off a player prematurely who hasn't got the right opportunity.

Now that doesn't mean that I think there are a bunch of hidden gem building blocks out there waiting to be discovered. Instead, I basically think at any given time there are a VERY small number of truly elite players in the league who are capable of driving many different rosters to good team success. Like 5, MAYBE 10 guys in the league at any given time. Those guys are incredibly tough to acquire. If they're healthy, in this modern era with wildly better training and sports science, they can be at that level for 10-15 years. That means the guys that can really do that come along very rarely.

On the other hand, most of the "stars" out there are just good, talented, flawed players who look the part........ For the moment. There's a 100% chance that a big chunk of the so called young stars for the grass-is-greener teams will be viewed as bad contracts within a few short years as their teams add more talent and yet don't get better. That's just how the league works.

For most guys outside of those elite 5 to maybe 10 players, they COULD appear to be very good in the right circumstances. Even be top 3 guys on perennial 50 win teams. Basically, I think virtually all individual player stats are poor estimations of overall player quality. But it's worse than that, because maximizing individual player quality (talent) shouldn't even be what teams are trying to do anyway. It's ineffective for winning.

I genuinely think the current Bulls and the Del Negro Bulls teams were more talented than the Thibbs Rose Bulls (at least the two #1 seed teams). But they weren't constructed to win because the parts didn't fit together nearly as well.

Yes, getting a dominant superstar is ideal, but less so every year IMO. I think the skillset of players has gotten so much better across the board that there is just a much smaller difference now between the best and the next best tier. Due to that and CBA realities, I think it's easier to win now without an elite talent superstar than it was for decades. So I think we should focus more on ideal fits and talent evaluation than asset accumulation and superstar power.

Just one more example of my thinking: I was in favor of the Giddey trade even though I don't expect it to work out. He'll never be what I consider an actual superstar cause his feet are encased in cement. But he could very plausibly be a "star building block", even for a good team, with the right OPPORTUNITY. The right opportunity, for him IMO, would start with playing in a unit with 4 legit good defenders and never guarding an opposing 1 or 2 again. He's a forward. Now, again, that doesn't mean that I think he's special or valuable, or that we should concede to paying him a lot. I think MOST players can thrive as a starter with the right OPPORTUNITY. It may be easier to put together a high quality lineup by prioritizing fit than quality. If for no other reason than it's easier to zig when everyone else is zagging.

This dynamic may explain, for example, the current high level performance of teams like the Knicks and Rockets. From a talent standpoint I'm not sure either of those teams are even above average.

[DuckIII]

Okay, but how many of these teams were able to sign Emmanuel Miller?

Presumably all of them. We were just the ones who did it. We can’t even be the best at facetious things.

[dougthonus]

Good elaborations here on your perspective. I love that you're among the relative few that aren't title or bust, and would be pretty happy with consistent good teams that aren't elite.

I very much enjoyed the baby Bulls era of Chicago even though the were 40s win teams, so yeah, I just want generally good basketblal.

If I read you correctly here, you kinda believe that players are either going to become great or not based on their own internal talent / drive etc. I'm just saying this because of how you describe knowing very early in a player's career whether his team has "received" an emerging star. Is that your perspective?

I think the internal talent / athleticism / work ethic etc are the most important factors.

I very strongly disagree with that notion. Yes, talent and drive are obviously very important, but IMO, opportunity is an absolutely enormous, and underrated factor. A LOT of guys that have been perceived as stars or building block types simply got an opportunity to maximize their abilities, and so they LOOK like they're good, especially to casual observers (which, by God, 99% of fans and media are IMO for players outside of their own teams).

I mean virtually everyone gets opportunity. Dalen Terry and Julian Philips have opportunity here. If they were killing it, that opportunity would increase. Ayo has a ton of opportunity, Coby has a ton of opportunity. While I absolutely agree that opportunity is important, I find that it is rarely the thing that is lacking for a guy who is going to make it.

There are definitely some guys who will not have had enough opportunity relative to their play and struggle to get on the floor due to some reason or another, but I think that's a real minority of the cases.

There are so many examples of this I could go on forever, but one that came to my attention a couple days ago was that D'Angelo **** Russell was apparently an all star at age 22. He's now 28. He was a #2 overall pick. A #2 overall pick who was an all star at 22 should be a great player at 28 right? Wrong. He sucks. He has always sucked. I mean sure maybe he's an NBA rotation player, but the point is that guys can often seem WAY better than they actually are due to opportunity.

Russell's probably a starting caliber guy, and yeah, because of his draft position he had way more opportunity, but I don't think Russell ever had a reputation as a really great player.

And by no means is that only about minutes. It's about who they play with, who they play against, what their coach is dictating, etc. Taj Gibson is a guy on the other end of the spectrum. IMO once he figured out his mid range jumper and post up game he was a really, really, really good player. Like probably a top 60 NBA player. WAY better than Russell has ever been. But he was almost 30 years old by the time he became that guy (due to offensive skill set expansion), so no one outside of Chicago really gave a ****. If his opportunity timeline had been different, he may have been a max player for someone. That's how fickle I see the landscape of who is considered good.

I mean Taj was 24 when he was drafted and his rookie year was already over his career averages. He made only iterative improvements from his rookie year onwards, he had opportunity immediately that he earned in training camp. Think you overrate Taj quite a bit if you think he was a top 60 player in the league. I mean he was a good player, but he's a rotation big. He was always pedestrian on offense, and the glass, solid help defender.

On the other hand, most of the "stars" out there are just good, talented, flawed players who look the part........ For the moment. There's a 100% chance that a big chunk of the so called young stars for the grass-is-greener teams will be viewed as bad contracts within a few short years as their teams add more talent and yet don't get better. That's just how the league works.

For most guys outside of those elite 5 to maybe 10 players, they COULD appear to be very good in the right circumstances. Even be top 3 guys on perennial 50 win teams. Basically, I think virtually all individual player stats are poor estimations of overall player quality. But it's worse than that, because maximizing individual player quality (talent) shouldn't even be what teams are trying to do anyway. It's ineffective for winning.

I disagree that after 5-10 guys everyone is basically the same and it is all circumstance. There is a gradual decline. Like is Jason Tatum a guy who could lead any team to a title? Probably not. Is Jason Tatum still a hell of a lot better than anyone on the Bulls regardless of opportunity? Hell yeah.

This dynamic may explain, for example, the current high level performance of teams like the Knicks and Rockets. From a talent standpoint I'm not sure either of those teams are even above average.

I don't really follow the Rockets enough to know how their young guys are, so I have no opinion. The Knicks have 3 all stars on their team, none of which you would define as the top 5 guys, but all really good players, they seem to almost be the exact counterpoint to what you just said. Talent matters. Brunson, Bridges, KAT, OG are really talented players, just not superstars.

[drosestruts]

Always fun talking basketball with you Doug

This entire premise just reminds me a lot of Nivk Friedell getting on the radio during he Heatles year and just repeating that the Bulls don't have enough to win.

You listed 9-10 teams that are on your perceived "road to nowhere"

You could have easily listed 10-15 more.

Cleveland is having a great regular season, but if we're all being honest, if everyone remains healthy - the Celtics will be the team most likely going to the Finals.

Does that put every other Eastern Conference team on the "road to nowhere"

I'm not a championship or bust guy, so I don't view it that way at all. I'm a "try to win 50 games" guy.

There are not 10-15 teams that have experienced as few playoff wins as us. There are 5 total in the league. 24 teams have experienced more playoff wins. Of those teams that have our level of playoff wins, they are investing in high risk / high reward upside strategies that have some chance to get htem out of that boat, and we really don't.

I guess I'll start here - is the goalpost winning 50 games or playoff wins?

On the 50-game front I'd point to winning 46 games in 2021-22 despite injuries to Lonzo, Caruso, and Pat.

Health/injuries are a variable that can kneecap anybody - I certainly think it's been a significant factor in our lack of success over the past three years (note: not the only factor, I do think the roster construction was talented but flawed an ill-fitting).

Even then, there was the bones of a 50 win team here. In my view at least.

We're currently on pace to win 35 games this year, though many have pointed out we have a projected easy schedule for the remainder of the year. Trades could also move that needle in a variety of directions. I'm projecting us to be at or above .500 by mid-January based on our schedule. I see us as closer to a 40-42 win team than the currently projected 35.

Now this doesn't translate to playoff wins. Which is flukey and can be very matchup based/timing. We've seen this with the Hawks ECF run and the Pacers ECF run last year. I don't think either team is a perennial contender, they just caught lucky breaks. We didn't.

You could even argue this for some of Miami's deep playoff runs - Giannis going out in their series, etc.

I think there's just a lot of glass half empty perspectives amongst Bulls fans, and as always, a lot of thinking that the grass is greener on the other side.

Who do we have greener grass than? Over the AK era 24 teams have more playoff wins than us. Over the next 4 years, how many teams do you think we will win more playoff games than? I'd put the over/under on playoff wins in the next 4 years for the Bulls at 2?

I don't know if I have an answer here. 4 years is a long time. 4 years ago the Rockets were a 2nd round playoff team being led by James Harden. That guys been on 3 teams since then, and the Rockets have rebuilt an entirely new team.

I think we're positioned to win more playoff games this year than at least 10 other teams at minimum. From there it may depend on matchups/seeding.

You seem to place a large emphasis on players in the top-10 that were drafted by a team, but not value on having top-10 draftees of the roster - of which we have several.

Yes, because if you get them on their second contract when you know you haven't received a star player, it doesn't matter. Top 10 is ambiguous, it doesn't have to be top 10, that doesn't mean anything, it's just a short handed way to say how many high upside chances is your team taking to gamble on getting a really great player?

Star player can also be subjective - but we may just have different perspectives on our players. It seems like the book is very much closed for you on a lot of our players.

I'm someone who still holds out hope (for lack of a better word) or patience for guys like Giddey, Williams, Ayo, and even Smith.

I also refuse to write off LaVine has some finished product that can't be any better - as evidence by him having perhaps his best season ever this very year.

Is Jalen Brunson a star? Is Mikal Birdges? Were they stars during their first contracts?

Would Giddey and Smith somehow hold more value in your eyes if we had drafted them rather than acquired them via trade or free agency?

If we acquired them as rookies, no. Acquiring them after they have established baselines and you are certain they aren't going to be elite players? Yes, that has less value and is not what moves the needle to make large steps forward.

Again, here I just think you've written off players that I haven't yet.

Is Washington's future somehow brighter due to having drafted multiple top-10 picks?

No, not necessarily, but they are much better positioned to land a star player that can change their future than ours and are achieving the same amount of playoff success.

If you are happy watching regular season games regularly and winning 40 games but not making the playoffs is appreciably increasing your happiness with the team vs winning 20 games and hoping to land star players, then you may be perfectly happy with what the Bulls are doing though.

For some people, there may be a lot of value in the regular season, but that doesn't seem to be how most fans experience the game where the playoffs is disproportionately valuable compared to the regular season.

By better chance to land a star player I'm guessing you mean through the draft? And then of course to what end? Washington is really bad, and I find it highly unlikely any player drafted can take the mess that is Washington and turn them into a playoff team.

So they what - draft a star player and just lose all the time till he demands a trade?

I think guys like LaMelo Ball and Scotte Barnes are both really good players. But their team suck. Other teams have players like Trae Young, or Tyrese Haliburton, or Cade Cunningham - and I see no difference in the overall talent of those teams vs ours.

50 win regular season and sustained playoff success (yes Atlanta and Indiana made deep runs which again I feel are more flukey than anything else) are just as viable for us as it is for them, in my eyes.

This is a grass isn't always greener example for me.

I think the biggest false premise of this is that if we were bad and on pace to have a high pick that we'd somehow be on a better path, rather than just on a different "road to nowhere"

We ARE bad, we are just also not getting the pick. If we were getting to the playoffs every year, I wouldn't call it the road to nowhere. You have extended the road to nowhere to include everyone who is unlikely to win a championship. If you are a championship or bust guy, that's fine. I know there are people who feel that way. I'm not such a guy myself though.

I guess I wouldn't characterize us as bad. And that's where some of the different feelings and perspectives come from.

Washington is bad. Toronto is bad. New Orleans is bad. Utah is bad.

We also might keep our pick. This season is hard to project - I think we could finish anywhere between the 6th seed and out of the play-in.

If we do make the playoffs this year - do you not see it as the first potential year of a multi-year playoff run?

Like even in my most pessimistic mind I didn't think Lonzo would be out for 2+ years.

We won 46 games and got owned by the Bucks while dealing with a lot of injuries.

Then we finish 40-42, 4 games below our projected finish based on net rating. We win a very fun play-in game against Toronto, and then our leading the eventual Eastern Conference champion Heat late in a playoff game before blowing it. I still believe if Billy left Coby in that game and didn't put Beverley back in we would have won.

Then we follow it up with a season without Ball (again) and without Zach.

It's hard to not point to injuries/health when discussing the Bulls shortcomings.

Again - I think we have other issues, but health is playing a major factor in our lack of success.

We're less reliant on Ball now due to the addition of Giddey. Zach is playing great. Vuc is playing great. To me these are positive steps in the right direction.

Again I'm also juts perhaps more optimistic for guys like Giddey, Ayo, Williams, Smith, etc.

There's a lot of ways this current season can go in my view - I'm intrigued to see where it ends up

[League Circles]

Good elaborations here on your perspective. I love that you're among the relative few that aren't title or bust, and would be pretty happy with consistent good teams that aren't elite.

I very much enjoyed the baby Bulls era of Chicago even though the were 40s win teams, so yeah, I just want generally good basketblal.

If I read you correctly here, you kinda believe that players are either going to become great or not based on their own internal talent / drive etc. I'm just saying this because of how you describe knowing very early in a player's career whether his team has "received" an emerging star. Is that your perspective?

I think the internal talent / athleticism / work ethic etc are the most important factors.

I very strongly disagree with that notion. Yes, talent and drive are obviously very important, but IMO, opportunity is an absolutely enormous, and underrated factor. A LOT of guys that have been perceived as stars or building block types simply got an opportunity to maximize their abilities, and so they LOOK like they're good, especially to casual observers (which, by God, 99% of fans and media are IMO for players outside of their own teams).

I mean virtually everyone gets opportunity. Dalen Terry and Julian Philips have opportunity here. If they were killing it, that opportunity would increase. Ayo has a ton of opportunity, Coby has a ton of opportunity. While I absolutely agree that opportunity is important, I find that it is rarely the thing that is lacking for a guy who is going to make it.

There are definitely some guys who will not have had enough opportunity relative to their play and struggle to get on the floor due to some reason or another, but I think that's a real minority of the cases.

There are so many examples of this I could go on forever, but one that came to my attention a couple days ago was that D'Angelo **** Russell was apparently an all star at age 22. He's now 28. He was a #2 overall pick. A #2 overall pick who was an all star at 22 should be a great player at 28 right? Wrong. He sucks. He has always sucked. I mean sure maybe he's an NBA rotation player, but the point is that guys can often seem WAY better than they actually are due to opportunity.

Russell's probably a starting caliber guy, and yeah, because of his draft position he had way more opportunity, but I don't think Russell ever had a reputation as a really great player.

And by no means is that only about minutes. It's about who they play with, who they play against, what their coach is dictating, etc. Taj Gibson is a guy on the other end of the spectrum. IMO once he figured out his mid range jumper and post up game he was a really, really, really good player. Like probably a top 60 NBA player. WAY better than Russell has ever been. But he was almost 30 years old by the time he became that guy (due to offensive skill set expansion), so no one outside of Chicago really gave a ****. If his opportunity timeline had been different, he may have been a max player for someone. That's how fickle I see the landscape of who is considered good.

I mean Taj was 24 when he was drafted and his rookie year was already over his career averages. He made only iterative improvements from his rookie year onwards, he had opportunity immediately that he earned in training camp. Think you overrate Taj quite a bit if you think he was a top 60 player in the league. I mean he was a good player, but he's a rotation big. He was always pedestrian on offense, and the glass, solid help defender.

On the other hand, most of the "stars" out there are just good, talented, flawed players who look the part........ For the moment. There's a 100% chance that a big chunk of the so called young stars for the grass-is-greener teams will be viewed as bad contracts within a few short years as their teams add more talent and yet don't get better. That's just how the league works.

For most guys outside of those elite 5 to maybe 10 players, they COULD appear to be very good in the right circumstances. Even be top 3 guys on perennial 50 win teams. Basically, I think virtually all individual player stats are poor estimations of overall player quality. But it's worse than that, because maximizing individual player quality (talent) shouldn't even be what teams are trying to do anyway. It's ineffective for winning.

I disagree that after 5-10 guys everyone is basically the same and it is all circumstance. There is a gradual decline. Like is Jason Tatum a guy who could lead any team to a title? Probably not. Is Jason Tatum still a hell of a lot better than anyone on the Bulls regardless of opportunity? Hell yeah.

This dynamic may explain, for example, the current high level performance of teams like the Knicks and Rockets. From a talent standpoint I'm not sure either of those teams are even above average.

I don't really follow the Rockets enough to know how their young guys are, so I have no opinion. The Knicks have 3 all stars on their team, none of which you would define as the top 5 guys, but all really good players, they seem to almost be the exact counterpoint to what you just said. Talent matters. Brunson, Bridges, KAT, OG are really talented players, just not superstars.

Just to reiterate, I think opportunity is about way, way more than playing time or shot attempts etc.

Taj Gibson was an all NBA caliber defender for a long time IMO, just not flashy enough or featured enough to get noticed enough. I think his skillset expansion was very significant and not easily shown by per game stats or other individual stats. Jalen Brunson is basically a short, slow, 2nd round pick. He's not in the top half of nba talent. But he's VERY effective relative to his skillset because his team and coach are geared to maximize the talent that he does have. The Knicks are roughly the kind of team we should try to be!

I'm not saying that after the top 5-10 guys in the league that everyone is the same. I'm saying that beyond the top 5-10, the value of most players is very highly impacted by who they play with, who they play against, and what schemes, priorities, strengths and weaknesses their coaches and teammates have rather than their individual talent. To try to illustrate what I mean, let's say you have a number 1 guy (whether it's a top 10 guy or top 30 doesn't matter for this). If, for your 2nd best player you have a choice between the 35th best player in the league whose skills are redundant with your #1, and say the 70th best player who has more complementary skills, your team is probably going to be a lot better with the 70th best guy, especially since he might come cheaper.

It's tricky for the Bulls because they don't really have a #1 guy. Zach isn't the kind of #1 you'd want not because he doesn't score enough points or do it efficiently enough, but because he's not the kind of "threat" you want in that role. He doesn't command a ton of defensive attention and he's not a constant threat to score an easy bucket, cause he's primarily a (really good) (mostly contested) jumpshooter. Those guys are rarely "threats" outside of a Steph Curry type.

So the challenge for the Bulls right now is primarily one where they have a bunch of decent talented pieces, who do not come close to ideally complementing one another, and none exactly worthy of "starting with". Fit could easily be the difference for a guy like Giddey between being the engine of a top 5 offense or being a benchwarmer. Fit could be the difference between a guy like Coby being a 3rd scoring option, secondary ball handler and a bad contract overpaid 6th man. Etc. Certain guys are more easily plugged into various lineups than others without it affecting their value as much, such as maybe Ayo, Patrick, and Smith.

I don't have all the answers but my main concern, in contrast to many whose priority is keeping our 2024 pick, is being VERY careful in what contracts we give out. That really elevates the need to make decisions, and thus possible trades, of Giddey, Coby, Ayo and Ball. The contracts we potentially give them (if we even should at all), should be heavily impacted not just by how they play between now and the deadline, but on how OTHER guys play and what other player(s) we might be able to being in. Which reminds me. One of the overlooked downsides of relying on the draft is that teams are often compelled to draft "BPA" whose fit is going to be highly questionable and hard to predict. By no means can you always "figure it out later". I'm not suggesting that teams should focus on drafting for need. Just noting that you really can't always trade your surplus redundancies because other teams know you don't have much leverage.

Like, for example, whether or not Vuc remains past the trade deadline will have an impact on how much I'd be willing to offer Coby or Giddey. Why? Because at least for next season, which is going to be 20 or 25% of the length of their contract, if Vuc is here, the value of Coby and Giddey goes down IMO relative to what it would be if Smith was starting. Cause of defense. Likewise, if we happen to keep Ball, I'm less desperate to dump Vuc, cause Ball's defense helps mitigate Vuc's lack thereof.

Deciding the first domino to drop in this mess might be critical. More critical maybe even than whether we keep our pick.

My instinct, which means very little, is that the first domino to drop should maybe be trading at least one of Vuc, Coby, or Giddey before the trade deadline. Those 3 as a trio are incompatible with winning in the NBA.

[League Circles]

We've got a number of guys that might be able to pass going forward as starters at most positions:

4: Patrick, Giddey, Matas
3: same, lol. Zach, Ayo or Ball maybe too.
2: Zach, Coby, Ayo, Ball
1: Ball, Coby, Ayo

But we have a pretty glaring lack of future possibilities at the 5 spot. Nobody wants Vuc to stay on another contract. So it's gotta be Smith or somebody else. I'd really try to see if we can trade for a legit C now. If we can't, I'd prefer to plan on starting Smith next season even if we keep Vuc, and choosing our other players accordingly.

[sco]

Good elaborations here on your perspective. I love that you're among the relative few that aren't title or bust, and would be pretty happy with consistent good teams that aren't elite.

I very much enjoyed the baby Bulls era of Chicago even though the were 40s win teams, so yeah, I just want generally good basketblal.

If I read you correctly here, you kinda believe that players are either going to become great or not based on their own internal talent / drive etc. I'm just saying this because of how you describe knowing very early in a player's career whether his team has "received" an emerging star. Is that your perspective?

I think the internal talent / athleticism / work ethic etc are the most important factors.

I very strongly disagree with that notion. Yes, talent and drive are obviously very important, but IMO, opportunity is an absolutely enormous, and underrated factor. A LOT of guys that have been perceived as stars or building block types simply got an opportunity to maximize their abilities, and so they LOOK like they're good, especially to casual observers (which, by God, 99% of fans and media are IMO for players outside of their own teams).

I mean virtually everyone gets opportunity. Dalen Terry and Julian Philips have opportunity here. If they were killing it, that opportunity would increase. Ayo has a ton of opportunity, Coby has a ton of opportunity. While I absolutely agree that opportunity is important, I find that it is rarely the thing that is lacking for a guy who is going to make it.

There are definitely some guys who will not have had enough opportunity relative to their play and struggle to get on the floor due to some reason or another, but I think that's a real minority of the cases.

There are so many examples of this I could go on forever, but one that came to my attention a couple days ago was that D'Angelo **** Russell was apparently an all star at age 22. He's now 28. He was a #2 overall pick. A #2 overall pick who was an all star at 22 should be a great player at 28 right? Wrong. He sucks. He has always sucked. I mean sure maybe he's an NBA rotation player, but the point is that guys can often seem WAY better than they actually are due to opportunity.

Russell's probably a starting caliber guy, and yeah, because of his draft position he had way more opportunity, but I don't think Russell ever had a reputation as a really great player.

And by no means is that only about minutes. It's about who they play with, who they play against, what their coach is dictating, etc. Taj Gibson is a guy on the other end of the spectrum. IMO once he figured out his mid range jumper and post up game he was a really, really, really good player. Like probably a top 60 NBA player. WAY better than Russell has ever been. But he was almost 30 years old by the time he became that guy (due to offensive skill set expansion), so no one outside of Chicago really gave a ****. If his opportunity timeline had been different, he may have been a max player for someone. That's how fickle I see the landscape of who is considered good.

I mean Taj was 24 when he was drafted and his rookie year was already over his career averages. He made only iterative improvements from his rookie year onwards, he had opportunity immediately that he earned in training camp. Think you overrate Taj quite a bit if you think he was a top 60 player in the league. I mean he was a good player, but he's a rotation big. He was always pedestrian on offense, and the glass, solid help defender.

On the other hand, most of the "stars" out there are just good, talented, flawed players who look the part........ For the moment. There's a 100% chance that a big chunk of the so called young stars for the grass-is-greener teams will be viewed as bad contracts within a few short years as their teams add more talent and yet don't get better. That's just how the league works.

For most guys outside of those elite 5 to maybe 10 players, they COULD appear to be very good in the right circumstances. Even be top 3 guys on perennial 50 win teams. Basically, I think virtually all individual player stats are poor estimations of overall player quality. But it's worse than that, because maximizing individual player quality (talent) shouldn't even be what teams are trying to do anyway. It's ineffective for winning.

I disagree that after 5-10 guys everyone is basically the same and it is all circumstance. There is a gradual decline. Like is Jason Tatum a guy who could lead any team to a title? Probably not. Is Jason Tatum still a hell of a lot better than anyone on the Bulls regardless of opportunity? Hell yeah.

This dynamic may explain, for example, the current high level performance of teams like the Knicks and Rockets. From a talent standpoint I'm not sure either of those teams are even above average.

I don't really follow the Rockets enough to know how their young guys are, so I have no opinion. The Knicks have 3 all stars on their team, none of which you would define as the top 5 guys, but all really good players, they seem to almost be the exact counterpoint to what you just said. Talent matters. Brunson, Bridges, KAT, OG are really talented players, just not superstars.

Good points guys!

I have been a big proponent of needing one of those top 5-10 guys as a starting point to contend, with the difference between that top 5 and 10 guy is the quality/fit of the necessariy surrounding cast to get there. What I do know is that we don't have a top 5-10 guy on the roster right now. Prob too soon to call Matas as a rook.

As such I'm still in the camp that would prefer to focus on that first, ahead of other things, but I'm quite convinced that AK would rather keep closer to having a ready-made team to contend if he somehow lucks into a #1 guy from some other means than tanking. I don't agree with him, but if I was in his job, I doubt I'd have the guts to do it either.

To digress on the Knicks, you guys know I watch them too, and I think you are selling Brunson short...he is the rage embodiment of League Circles late development concept, but doesn't have the same hype as a guy like Morant or SGA, but I have him at the same level.

[dougthonus]

Always fun talking basketball with you Doug

Haha, same!

I guess I'll start here - is the goalpost winning 50 games or playoff wins?

On the 50-game front I'd point to winning 46 games in 2021-22 despite injuries to Lonzo, Caruso, and Pat.

Health/injuries are a variable that can kneecap anybody - I certainly think it's been a significant factor in our lack of success over the past three years (note: not the only factor, I do think the roster construction was talented but flawed an ill-fitting).

Even then, there was the bones of a 50 win team here. In my view at least.

I don't know that I have an exact specific permanent set of goal posts, TBH. It's like however you want to look at it, this group has been really bad when looking at the post-season (50 wins, playoff makes, playoff wins, series wins). I hated our plan when we put together that 46 win team, but mid way through that season, I said "Wow, maybe I was wrong, these guys are better than I thought". Their advanced metrics were really poor for their winning percentage though, it was a weird covid year, and it never felt sustainable. The injuries definitely hurt, but I would have been okay with that team if that ended up being something sustainable, but we quickly saw that it wouldn't be and kept hanging on.

We're currently on pace to win 35 games this year, though many have pointed out we have a projected easy schedule for the remainder of the year. Trades could also move that needle in a variety of directions. I'm projecting us to be at or above .500 by mid-January based on our schedule. I see us as closer to a 40-42 win team than the currently projected 35.

I agree with your projection and view it the same way if we do not make trades that point the arrow down instead (which we may or may not do and may or may not be a good idea if we do depending what they are).

Now this doesn't translate to playoff wins. Which is flukey and can be very matchup based/timing. We've seen this with the Hawks ECF run and the Pacers ECF run last year. I don't think either team is a perennial contender, they just caught lucky breaks. We didn't.

You could even argue this for some of Miami's deep playoff runs - Giannis going out in their series, etc.

I think the difference is that when you look at our team, we feel exceedingly unlikely to be "playoff lucky", we seem like a team that is going to get schemed to hell in the playoffs when people can attack Giddey / Vuc and target us and play us over and over again.

Of course, it may not end up that way, just my feel for it. The types of things that translate to better playoff success aren't the areas we have strengths in IMO.

I don't know if I have an answer here. 4 years is a long time. 4 years ago the Rockets were a 2nd round playoff team being led by James Harden. That guys been on 3 teams since then, and the Rockets have rebuilt an entirely new team.

I think we're positioned to win more playoff games this year than at least 10 other teams at minimum. From there it may depend on matchups/seeding.

Man that seems incredibly optimistic to me. I would not be surprised if we win 0 playoff games in the next four years. I think our best bet is this year. I don't think Zach can keep up morale / good performance for the long haul, and same with Vuc, and we just do not have a lot behind those guys right now. Maybe we get something out of nowhere or see Matas really step up, there are always options, you are right that 4 years is a long time, but I'd put us as one of the worst teams in the league in terms of go-forward playoff equity (not necessarily in terms of wins, I think other teams that are bad and hoping on the lottery will draft the wrong guys and have much fewer wins, but the team that do well in the draft will pass us).

Star player can also be subjective - but we may just have different perspectives on our players. It seems like the book is very much closed for you on a lot of our players.

I'm someone who still holds out hope (for lack of a better word) or patience for guys like Giddey, Williams, Ayo, and even Smith.

I also refuse to write off LaVine has some finished product that can't be any better - as evidence by him having perhaps his best season ever this very year.

For stars? Yeah, the book is closed on most of our guys to me. Zach can be a low rung star player. He's already shown it. Giddey possibly, but it's going to be a struggle for him to improve the areas he needs to improve in and also only projects to low rung star, for guys that really move win totals? I don't know that we have much equity like that on the roster.

Is Jalen Brunson a star? Is Mikal Birdges? Were they stars during their first contracts?

Jalen Brunson? Yeah, for sure. Mikal Bridges? Probably not.

Again, here I just think you've written off players that I haven't yet.

Fair enough, I probably being overly definitive, I could say where the odds are extremely low and be more semantically correct with my thoughts.

By better chance to land a star player I'm guessing you mean through the draft? And then of course to what end? Washington is really bad, and I find it highly unlikely any player drafted can take the mess that is Washington and turn them into a playoff team.

So they what - draft a star player and just lose all the time till he demands a trade?

SA was really bad before Wemby, Milwaukee was really bad before Giannis, Dallas was really bad before Luka. That's the point of getting a superstar. The thing is, very few players add a lot of wins relative to their contract cost. When you get a guy who does, and then you spend normal money for normal performance on the rest of your roster, you end up with a good team.

It's generally not that hard to add market value guys to the team around exceptional value guys to create the good team. The hard part is getting the exceptional value guy.

I think guys like LaMelo Ball and Scotte Barnes are both really good players. But their team suck. Other teams have players like Trae Young, or Tyrese Haliburton, or Cade Cunningham - and I see no difference in the overall talent of those teams vs ours.

I agree, I don't see some massive gap between those guys and our team necessarily, maybe Haliburton is better than our guys because he's a two way guy, but then I'm not excited about Toronto, Atlanta, Indy, or Detroit necessarily either. Detroit has a lot more young upside guys, so time may push them well ahead of us, Indy has more current talent (but not like tons more), Toronto probably has a slightly better pile of young talent and is hoping to add a draft pick, again, I'd view their situation as slightly better than ours.

That said, I don't look at any of those teams with great envious eyes except that iteratively they're slightly better off or have front offices doing slightly better things while being positioned similarly.

I guess I wouldn't characterize us as bad. And that's where some of the different feelings and perspectives come from.

Washington is bad. Toronto is bad. New Orleans is bad. Utah is bad.

Yeah, those teams are certainly worse. And maybe I'll say I don't value being the 20th best team in the league, and I'd say that's where we are. I'd rather be 30th and getting high pick odds or 16th and at least making the playoffs. 20th is really about the worst case scenario, minimizing your odds of improving and also not experiencing anything particularly good. It might be a bit different if you just evaluate us better than I do (which you seem to).

We also might keep our pick. This season is hard to project - I think we could finish anywhere between the 6th seed and out of the play-in.

Yeah, the East stinks, so you never know. I'd imagine Philly passes us unless they have even more injuries. I don't see us passing anyone unless another team gets big injuries, but it probably doesn't take a lot for the Pacers to fall off injury wise. Really had for me to see us getting past 8 though.

If we do make the playoffs this year - do you not see it as the first potential year of a multi-year playoff run?

It's hard to say, how long would you rely on Vuc, Zach, and Lonzo to do what they are doing? For a variety of reasons on each guy, I'd be highly concerned about any ability to repeat any of that. Also the case we probably won't be able to keep everyone on the team because of Giddey's new contract, so Lonzo probably needs to go next year if Giddey stays.

It's hard to not point to injuries/health when discussing the Bulls shortcomings.

Again - I think we have other issues, but health is playing a major factor in our lack of success.

Zach / Lonzo were known large health risk guys and DeMar / Vuc were older players that naturally would have more health risks. I think we built a roster that was highly susceptible to health risks.

We're less reliant on Ball now due to the addition of Giddey. Zach is playing great. Vuc is playing great. To me these are positive steps in the right direction.

Vuc is 34 and is playing great on offense, but is still an absolute disaster defensively. Zach is playing well, but I think there is considerable risk that his rehab my image tour isn't going to hold up for 2.5 years, and so may be hard to keep going forward.

Again I'm also juts perhaps more optimistic for guys like Giddey, Ayo, Williams, Smith, etc.

There's a lot of ways this current season can go in my view - I'm intrigued to see where it ends up

If you are super optimistic about those guys it makes sense you're more excited than me.

[HomoSapien]

I wonder where the Bulls would rank in number of top 10 picks on their roster. #1 in the league????

LaVine, Ball, Williams, White, Giddey, Buzelis, Smith, and Duarte are all lottery picks.

Vuc and Terry are both mid-first-round picks.

Ayo, Tucker, and Philips are all overachieving 2nd round picks (maybe not Philips yet).

I think there is a bit of a perception thing going on here. If we had used our own draft capital to draft most of these guys it would suddenly feel like we're building something with purpose. For whatever reason, acquiring these guys through trades/free-agency is less fulfilling.

Coldfish said something earlier that's really stuck with me but it was along the lines of first-round picks being the most over-valued asset, whereas recent former lottery picks who haven't instantly figured things out tend to be the most undervalued.

I agree that we're firmly on the road to nowhere. We're not winning enough and we're certainly not losing enough. We're also bleeding assets for no reason. I don't know how we can right this ship with AKME steering it. This off-season we added Giddey, Smith, and Tucker -- all young guys who have shown promise earlier in their careers but were somewhat undervalued. Maybe that's going to be their strategy moving forward. Adding young, underappreciated talent, and hoping one or two of them has untapped development.

[League Circles]

I wonder where the Bulls would rank in number of top 10 picks on their roster. #1 in the league????

LaVine, Ball, Williams, White, Giddey, Buzelis, Smith, and Duarte are all lottery picks.

Vuc and Terry are both mid-first-round picks.

Ayo, Tucker, and Philips are all overachieving 2nd round picks (maybe not Philips yet).

I think there is a bit of a perception thing going on here. If we had used our own draft capital to draft most of these guys it would suddenly feel like we're building something with purpose. For whatever reason, acquiring these guys through trades/free-agency is less fulfilling.

Coldfish said something earlier that's really stuck with me but it was along the lines of first-round picks being the most over-valued asset, whereas recent former lottery picks who haven't instantly figured things out tend to be the most undervalued.

I agree that we're firmly on the road to nowhere. We're not winning enough and we're certainly not losing enough. We're also bleeding assets for no reason. I don't know how we can right this ship with AKME steering it. This off-season we added Giddey, Smith, and Tucker -- all young guys who have shown promise earlier in their careers but were somewhat undervalued. Maybe that's going to be their strategy moving forward. Adding young, underappreciated talent, and hoping one or two of them has untapped development.

I hope so. I agree with the notion that "first round picks" are highly overvalued, who then often become undervalued almost immediately, at least by 29 other teams. For some reason teams usually overvalue their own picks for several years.

Random side note - I HATE pick protections. I would prefer that the next CBA makes those impossible. It really throws a wrench into roster building for so many teams. Never knowing when a pick will convey etc. It feels like most first rounders are protected when they're traded these days which practically undermines the entire purpose of trading for a pick.

[HomoSapien]

Random side note - I HATE pick protections. I would prefer that the next CBA makes those impossible. It really throws a wrench into roster building for so many teams. Never knowing when a pick will convey etc. It feels like most first rounders are protected when they're traded these days which practically undermines the entire purpose of trading for a pick.

Also random, but I've never understood why a team would agree to a pick eventually turning into a second-round pick if it doesn't convey after a certain number of years. If anything, the longer it takes to convey the less protected it should become.

[drosestruts]

By better chance to land a star player I'm guessing you mean through the draft? And then of course to what end? Washington is really bad, and I find it highly unlikely any player drafted can take the mess that is Washington and turn them into a playoff team.

So they what - draft a star player and just lose all the time till he demands a trade?

SA was really bad before Wemby, Milwaukee was really bad before Giannis, Dallas was really bad before Luka. That's the point of getting a superstar. The thing is, very few players add a lot of wins relative to their contract cost. When you get a guy who does, and then you spend normal money for normal performance on the rest of your roster, you end up with a good team.

It's generally not that hard to add market value guys to the team around exceptional value guys to create the good team. The hard part is getting the exceptional value guy.

As someone who was waiting to crown Wemby, I'm ready to crown him. But the success of San Antonio isn't his alone - I'd give lots of credit to Chris Paul (still an elite playmaker and ass:to ratio) and Harrison Barnes (at time this season has been great - see the Player of the Week award).

But yes - Wemby is awesome. I'm also happy to point out that there is no Wemby in this draft.


Milwaukee wasn't good but they also weren't bad before drafting Giannis. They made the playoffs the year they drafted Giannis. Giannis himself didn't win a playoff series until year 6.

Dallas was bad before Luka. Great trade by Dallas - though Trae Young is certainly a good player too (he's just no Luka).


Looks like we should wait for a year with a highly touted international rookie to make our high pick selection

In the end I guess it feels like using the draft to "Get your guy" is more something you can somewhat control.

Trades and free agency have a lot more variables involved


This is why we should just go full Leroy Jenkins and trade Coby, Giddey, and Williams for Jimmy Butler

Ball-LaVine-Butler-Craig-Vucevic with Ayo, Smith, Matas could make some noise. I'd be here for it.

[sco]

I wonder where the Bulls would rank in number of top 10 picks on their roster. #1 in the league????

LaVine, Ball, Williams, White, Giddey, Buzelis, Smith, and Duarte are all lottery picks.

Vuc and Terry are both mid-first-round picks.

Ayo, Tucker, and Philips are all overachieving 2nd round picks (maybe not Philips yet).

I think there is a bit of a perception thing going on here. If we had used our own draft capital to draft most of these guys it would suddenly feel like we're building something with purpose. For whatever reason, acquiring these guys through trades/free-agency is less fulfilling.

Coldfish said something earlier that's really stuck with me but it was along the lines of first-round picks being the most over-valued asset, whereas recent former lottery picks who haven't instantly figured things out tend to be the most undervalued.

I agree that we're firmly on the road to nowhere. We're not winning enough and we're certainly not losing enough. We're also bleeding assets for no reason. I don't know how we can right this ship with AKME steering it. This off-season we added Giddey, Smith, and Tucker -- all young guys who have shown promise earlier in their careers but were somewhat undervalued. Maybe that's going to be their strategy moving forward. Adding young, underappreciated talent, and hoping one or two of them has untapped development.

I hope so. I agree with the notion that "first round picks" are highly overvalued, who then often become undervalued almost immediately, at least by 29 other teams. For some reason teams usually overvalue their own picks for several years.

Random side note - I HATE pick protections. I would prefer that the next CBA makes those impossible. It really throws a wrench into roster building for so many teams. Never knowing when a pick will convey etc. It feels like most first rounders are protected when they're traded these days which practically undermines the entire purpose of trading for a pick.

Good points!

I tend to agree. That said, the "value" of a first is the slim, but real, chance it becomes a superstar. IMO, there's a difference between a good value player (i.e. a guy who figures the NBA out after his rookie deal signed for a cheap deal), and a superstar.

[drosestruts]

Also - everytime I read this thread title I begin singing Talking Heads