What do you think AK's plan is?

[SirKaiser]

I don't think he has one. Whatever plan he had is gone by trading Lavine. At this point he's just rolling the dice on Buzelis and whoever he might get with the 2025 FRP.

No one else is worth building around.

[Jcool0]

Watch on YouTube

\

One of the best Bulls youtubers in my opinion. He thinks that AK is making a move at a star like LaMelo or Zion, which going by our front offices records, where they don't really value picks, the way they've stacked their roster with short term contracts, I could see a scenario where they are going to take a gamble on a player like Zion. I just don't believe they are willing to be patient and work via the draft.

I hope he is wrong, but this opinion video and what thinks will happen seems relatively in line with how this front office has worked.

Stopped the video when he called Coby great and a cornerstone. That's just crazy talk.

[coldfish]

His plan A was pretty clear. Use up the existing assets to build a good team and use trades to improve from there.

When plan A failed, his plan B has basically been to try to cover his ass to retain his job and hope that he gets lucky on something.

[Evil_Headband]

I thought the following quote was interesting: "We obviously value draft compensation and young players and flexibility, I think in that order."

I think he will definitely consider trading expirings next year to facilitate trades for other teams in order to get more draft compensation. However, that's flexible. If it makes sense to him to try to trade for a star, he will.

I mentioned this before but I'm comfortable with the current direction of the team. I'm in the 1%, I guess.

[dougthonus]

Of course all of these things and many others should be constantly weighed by an exec in making decisions.

I don't know what to tell you, but if your plan is "just do whatever makes the most sense in the moment over a small micro event and never look at the big picture but only look at each event by itself with no regard to the context it arrives in" then you are a terrible decision maker.

I'm just saying that I don't recognize or identify coherent strategies. I mean the strategy would always be to win every game and every title, no?

No, that's a goal, not a strategy. A goal is a desired outcome. A strategy is method by which you attempt to achieve that outcome.

You then make tons of constant micro and macro decisions on individual things that you intend to make you better, rather than worse, over some timeline. I don't believe in the binary reduction to "buying or selling", because it treats picks as if they are cash when they are not, and ignores the subtleties of the specifics.

You don't need to buy or sell in a binary sense, but you absolutely need your moves to complement each other. If you are chasing draft picks, you probably don't want to buy short term win now players even if they are good deals in a vacuum, because they are only good deals at a time you don't need, and adversely affect another part of your strategy.

If you are on the cusp of a title, you probably aren't trading a rotation player for a good set of picks, even if the value is high overall, because the present roster value is worth more than the value of future picks while in contention.

The conditions of your team affect all of the microdecisions, because these decisions are not made in a vacuum, they are good or bad relative to circumstance and combining them all together in the correct circumstance is part of your holistic strategy. A decision that is good for one team isn't good for another team because their context is different and their current goals are likely different.

[Guru]

The plan seems pretty straightforward. Build a team with young, versatile players (Matas, Giddey, Ayo, Smith), trade the vets at the highest possible price for young players or draft capital (Caruso for Giddey, Lavine for 1st and Jones, etc) try to cash in on your picks (Bulls own there 1st and Portland's).

I suspect Coby and Vuc to be gone in the summer. They resign Giddey and maybe Jones.

Giddey / Jones / Ball
Ayo / Huerter
Williams / Terry
Matas / Phillips
Smith / Collins

Top 10 pick plus whatever they get in Vuc and Coby trades. The team will be bottom 7 bad next year as well, get another top pick, and after that I suspect they'll use cap space to try and sign ppl again.

This is the plan minus Jones/Huerter (maybe) and with Ball playing a more primary role (definitely).

And then pivot should Matas or the draft pick be lightning in a bottle.

Also hold on to White if you don't get enough back

[League Circles]

Of course all of these things and many others should be constantly weighed by an exec in making decisions.

I don't know what to tell you, but if your plan is "just do whatever makes the most sense in the moment over a small micro event and never look at the big picture but only look at each event by itself with no regard to the context it arrives in" then you are a terrible decision maker.

I'm just saying that I don't recognize or identify coherent strategies. I mean the strategy would always be to win every game and every title, no?

No, that's a goal, not a strategy. A goal is a desired outcome. A strategy is method by which you attempt to achieve that outcome.

You then make tons of constant micro and macro decisions on individual things that you intend to make you better, rather than worse, over some timeline. I don't believe in the binary reduction to "buying or selling", because it treats picks as if they are cash when they are not, and ignores the subtleties of the specifics.

You don't need to buy or sell in a binary sense, but you absolutely need your moves to complement each other. If you are chasing draft picks, you probably don't want to buy short term win now players even if they are good deals in a vacuum, because they are only good deals at a time you don't need, and adversely affect another part of your strategy.

If you are on the cusp of a title, you probably aren't trading a rotation player for a good set of picks, even if the value is high overall, because the present roster value is worth more than the value of future picks while in contention.

The conditions of your team affect all of the microdecisions, because these decisions are not made in a vacuum, they are good or bad relative to circumstance and combining them all together in the correct circumstance is part of your holistic strategy. A decision that is good for one team isn't good for another team because their context is different and their current goals are likely different.

I guess I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with that I said. I said every micro decision should be made while considering the impact on the entire roster for the 5 years. I see strategy to mean something along the lines of "we'll make our team good through the draft", or "we'll make our team good via free agency" or "we're going to become good through internal improvement of existing players" or "we're going to do best via trades". I've never understood why anyone would pick lanes like that when the reality is that you should always be looking at all options for everything at all times and considering their specific impact on your entire projected roster over a reasonably long time frame, which I define as a 4-5 year rolling window into the future. Generally most teams should always weigh those seasons equally, so your projected performance 3 years into the future is weighed equally, not more or less valuable, than the next season. With a rolling window of consideration, this balances your perspective. I've always picked that time frame because those are the maximum player contract lengths. The rare exception to that is if you have a really true young star, kinda like a Luka for example, then you'd look a bit further into the future, maybe more like an 8 year window, but that doesn't mean much other than all things being equal, you'd then prefer a secondary star to also be like 25 as opposed to 30+, but that's such a rare chance and scenario anyway, you'd usually just take BPA if you were crazy lucky enough to have the chance.

Talking about a "strategy" that could be given a narrative structure to me sounds like saying "we want to be good by specializing in a reduced subset of roster options".

I don't think teams should ever "chase picks", but that doesn't mean I think that bad teams should try to "win now", because when you're outright bad, moves that would maximize wins in the 1-2 year term probably won't even put you above 500, but may very likely decrease your projected winning in years 3-5 or whatever. I see "chasing picks" or "tanking" in a different perspective but maybe with the same pros and cons appreciated: I just see it as "not signing unwise player contracts". A huge chunk of all nba contracts are ill advised IMO, and teams that don't ink them may be really bad for a couple years if they have no options, but they're then likely to make significant jumps in the 3-5 year term, but only a fraction of that is due to the value of their draft pick(s). A lot if it is that they're also creating big opportunities for multiple players, flexibility with trades and free agency, etc.

[kodo]

Just cycle different players to the Bulls and keep talking about how we can make the playoffs, enough to sell tickets and generate some fan interest. Bulls are a massive revenue stream with minimal effort.

Keep collecting paychecks until Michael, who is brand new to basketball, realizes he's a fraud and eventually fires him, but that might be 5 years down the line of AK doing nothing while making bank. Share the wealth with best buds ME & Billy Donovan. Retire in Hawaii while laughing their ass off at the Bulls ownership & Bulls fans for being idiots.

[dougthonus]

I guess I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with that I said. I said every micro decision should be made while considering the impact on the entire roster for the 5 years. I see strategy to mean something along the lines of "we'll make our team good through the draft", or "we'll make our team good via free agency" or "we're going to become good through internal improvement of existing players" or "we're going to do best via trades".

You do have to have some plan as to how you expect become better. You should always be using all of those tools, but how you use them should align to common purpose where the use of one considers the impact on the others.

I've never understood why anyone would pick lanes like that when the reality is that you should always be looking at all options for everything at all times and considering their specific impact on your entire projected roster over a reasonably long time frame, which I define as a 4-5 year rolling window into the future.

To me, picking a lane is about aligning your moves in the same direction, not about only utilizing one strategy. AK is a classic "can't pick a lane" guy which is why we don't make the playoffs and also have no high upside assets on the roster and lack a treasure chest of extra draft picks. If he picked a lane, we should have some of those things.

I agree fundamentally, you want to think about how your moves line up over a rolling 4-5 year window though, but on top of that you also want to make moves that are supporting each other over that window. Those moves will fall into every area you mentioned.

[sco]

I don't think he has a plan and I don't think any exec should. That essentializes 15 decisions (on individual
player contracts) into one incoherent one. Flexibility and constantly looking to pivot should be what roughly 25 team execs should be looking to do most of the time.

I would actually HOPE that AK doesn't have a plan, because if he did, that would reveal premature conclusions about the plethora of "maybe" guys that we have in Smith, Matas, Patrick, Giddey, Ayo, Coby, Ball and our pick this summer. Those guys should all be appropriately viewed as "maybe" part of our long term future.

You are absolutely hopeless if you don't have a strategy. There are many things you need to do cohesively together to get a good chance of success. There is a difference between having a cohesive strategy and being unwilling to pivot or to do really dumb things in the sake of that strategy or to predetermine very specific outcomes on individual players.

Ie, the cost of Josh Giddey should weigh in to whether he is on the team going forward. You don't have to have Josh Giddey be the focal point of your strategy, any player that maybe you keep and maybe you don't depending on the price isn't a core piece of your strategy.

You should be deciding very strategically, do you want to try to make the playoffs or chase draft picks. Are you a buyer or a seller? The time line of how long a guy is an asset becomes critically important in these discussions.

As an example, if I know I don't have a reasonable chance to build towards something in the next year, and I am scared of paying them in 2026 then Coby/Ayo were obvious sell candidates this year as it would both enhance your draft capital in return for them, maximize their value prior to UFA, improve your own draft pick this year and next year, and not meaningfully impact your 2026/27 and beyond. It's a no brainer to do that.

If you are trying to make the playoffs this year and next year, then you probably shouldn't trade Zach LaVine, whom is your best player and helps your ability to win for minor role players and cash savings in 26/27.

If you want to pursue FAs via cap space, you should align contracts to end at a specific year. If you want to prioritize trading for stars, you should try to gain a bunch of assets (likely draft picks) that a team trading a star would find valuable.

Of course all of these things and many others should be constantly weighed by an exec in making decisions. I'm just saying that I don't recognize or identify coherent strategies. I mean the strategy would always be to win every game and every title, no? You then make tons of constant micro and macro decisions on individual things that you intend to make you better, rather than worse, over some timeline. I don't believe in the binary reduction to "buying or selling", because it treats picks as if they are cash when they are not, and ignores the subtleties of the specifics.

Like Ayo, Giddey, and Coby. Yes, for sure, the plausibility of them getting "overpaid" should factor into whether or not we keep or trade them, but it's far from the only factor. It's critical to consider what is being offered. Obviously for any player there is a potential trade offer that is the best offer out there at a point in time that is also properly evaluated as inferior to even letting those guys walk in free agency for nothing, which is itself nothing more than a guess. Like for me for example, I think Coby White is a pretty good player. I could still see him being anywhere between the 3rd and 8th best player on a really good team (which is a wide range). So if the best offer out there for him is something I don't value much, like a late first and bad expiring contract value, I'd rather keep him, even knowing the risk of losing him for nothing. Why? Because a late first is nearly nothing. Coby is a #7 pick that has kinda panned out (I think he'd match up reasonably well to the 7th best player in most drafts), so it's very unlikely that a late first will ever be as good as him.

I mean, you always need to consider the impact of every micro decision on the entire roster for a long time span (I usually say 4 years but I think 5 is just as reasonable). I just don't think of that as a coherent strategy. It's more of a constant simple process of evaluating "what do each of the next 5 years look like for our entire ROSTER if I make this move (draft a player, sign/release a player, or make a specific trade)". You just do that all day every day. I think that boils it down to the essence and is what I want me exec doing rather than having what I'd call a strategy, which would be something more insanely multi-step in conception that's more of a story than a strategy, and would be something like "I will make Giddey and Matas good and then I will trade Coby and Patrick for bad picks which will become good players and then I'll win 52 games in 4 years and then fire Billy and hire Spoelstra and then in 6 years we'll win 58 games and the title in a 6 game series" . It's really all about letting NO STONE go unturned, constantly being as open minded as you can, valuing seasons equally across time for the most part, amd boiling down to the simplicity of the choices you can actually make instead of the story you wish would play out. I view "strategy" as not applying to nba roster management in the way we'd use that term to refer to say business strategies in a market economy. In a way we're just talking semantics I guess.

Kudos on the O.P. I was gonna start the same thread.

LC, you and are in sync, as usual, of late. It's a good feeling!

IMO, AK did a good (albeit imperfect) job initially with his build. Seeing Ball back and healthy and Vuc making 3's this season, I am reminded of just how that could have worked. But Ball's injury really killed it. I think having a good PG was the key to unlocking Vuc. He went all in, but couldn't pair his king in the hole.

He's been scrambling, hoping to get lucky with drafts and pick ups until last offseason when he decided to fold his hand on this crew.

He's made some bad gambles. He got double-screwed with the impact of the new CBA on the value of Zach's contract. The default move used to be to resign your MAX guys and then trade them later, but then nobody could fit that 3rd guy's contract under the 2nd apron. It was a bad decision to double-down and resign Vuc. PWill was also a terrible draft, but he got suckered by Pat's measurables and tools, driven by a small brain.

He made some good moves too. I like Coby's, Ayo's, and Ball's deals. I like Smith's signing. I so far love Matas' drafting. The trade for Giddey is debatable, but his logic was sound.

Bottom line, he's a gambler but one that hasn't gotten lucky in most of his moves. His "strategy" to me seems like trying to rebuild his stake so that he can make another set of big bets.

[Wingy]

He’s planning to:

A) Bring in 2 of Tim Duncan, Grant Hill, or T-Mac via free agency thinking we’re still stuck in the beginning of the 00s

…when star FA signings don’t happen anymore outside of LA/Miami glamour /weather locations.

B) S&T for some 2nd tier star, and/or some always injured could’ve been a star in an alternate reality guy, while pissing away first round draft capital to get it done…leading to a replication of what we just had.

[dawhizz]

My instinct is to answer the question by quoting 30 Rock - “Make it 1997 again through science or magic.”

Sadly, I think the answer is exactly what he said at the press conference the other day - try to put together a championship team made up of 9-10 very good players. Now, that has never actually happened IMO but he seems to be of the opinion that it has happened and can happen again. So he’s going to keep hunting for opportunities to add “very good players” who will stay just competitive enough to be on the playoff fringe and beat just enough good teams that he feels the team is just a little improvement away from a real contender - just hit on one more draft pick, just see one guy level up, just get lucky with one over performing free agent. He doesn’t have the ability to try to actually tear it down/be bad, he can only be slightly less competitive. And that’s where we will be spinning our wheels until he leaves.

[ChettheJet]

I think he had an original plan of building a playoff team that would do well in the slowed down half court game with Vucevic, DeRozan, Lavine, Ball, Caruso. And for like 30 games until Lonzo went down it was working. His injury took out the irreplaceable one of the group and for the next 2 1/2 seasons it just didn't work.

Much like Jerry Krause who showed he understood how to surround Michael Jordan with the role players that could win championships but when he was faced with rebuilding through the draft and free agency, he just wasn't good at that and his plan wasn't successful.

So now AK saw his veteran roster plan including trading away 3 FRP's might have worked but got cut off. So what he has to go with now is slowly, maybe too late and too slowly for most of us, moving on from the veterans he brought in and drafting and developing the core of a future team.

Patrick is finding his way off the bench, I think he might move back to be a starter with Lonzo and Giddey after DeRozan, Lavine and Vucevic are all gone. Matas needs to get strong, get more experience and he'll be a keeper. Lonzo is here for his play and leadership. Some of White, Giddey, Dosunmu, Huerter, Jones probably should stick around. Smith could well be the starter, Phillips is still a work in progress but he's better than some anonymous SRP starting from scratch. Add some size and keep all the draft picks, maybe add more if possible and a few role player FAs.

So what happens is building a 10 deep rotation that Billy can mix and match for match ups starting and for heavier minutes flexibility being the key word. If a star emerges or falls into their lap, great but with the CBA being what it is bringing in what are now $50m or $60M guys who if they don't work out you have to spend all kinds of talent and draft capital to get rid of is crippling to any plan. I think he's going with get as many very good players as he can mostly by drafting, some trading for potential and the fill in FAs. Forget about the $60M alpha dog who you expect to carry the team. Even Giannis in 2 years will be due a HUGE payday but how old and how many miles will he have? Forget the superstars and aim for more very good players. What VP/GM really wants to bet his employment on one or two high priced players that might turn into problem children like Beal and Butler?

[burlydee]

The plan seems pretty straightforward. Build a team with young, versatile players (Matas, Giddey, Ayo, Smith), trade the vets at the highest possible price for young players or draft capital (Caruso for Giddey, Lavine for 1st and Jones, etc) try to cash in on your picks (Bulls own there 1st and Portland's).

I suspect Coby and Vuc to be gone in the summer. They resign Giddey and maybe Jones.

Giddey / Jones / Ball
Ayo / Huerter
Williams / Terry
Matas / Phillips
Smith / Collins

Top 10 pick plus whatever they get in Vuc and Coby trades. The team will be bottom 7 bad next year as well, get another top pick, and after that I suspect they'll use cap space to try and sign ppl again.

IMO, this plan is closer to what I think the Bulls should do, but I don’t think AK has the patience for it.

The more I think about it the more I think you're right and that the plan is to target Lamelo Ball. The Bulls will be able to offer some combo of Giddey, Williams, Coby, Huerter, Collins, Vuc plus their own picks and Portland picks. Giddey (22 mil a year) and Coby (13) with a 27 and 29 pick probably gets you in the ballpark. Bulls would have

Ball / Ball
Ayo / Huerter
Matas / Terry
Williams / Philips
Smith / Collins

Plus their 25 and 26 pick in supposedly deep drafts. That seems more AKs speed as opposed to being patient. I wouldn't be surprised if both sides start making overtures over the summer.

[sco]

The plan seems pretty straightforward. Build a team with young, versatile players (Matas, Giddey, Ayo, Smith), trade the vets at the highest possible price for young players or draft capital (Caruso for Giddey, Lavine for 1st and Jones, etc) try to cash in on your picks (Bulls own there 1st and Portland's).

I suspect Coby and Vuc to be gone in the summer. They resign Giddey and maybe Jones.

Giddey / Jones / Ball
Ayo / Huerter
Williams / Terry
Matas / Phillips
Smith / Collins

Top 10 pick plus whatever they get in Vuc and Coby trades. The team will be bottom 7 bad next year as well, get another top pick, and after that I suspect they'll use cap space to try and sign ppl again.

IMO, this plan is closer to what I think the Bulls should do, but I don’t think AK has the patience for it.

The more I think about it the more I think you're right and that the plan is to target Lamelo Ball. The Bulls will be able to offer some combo of Giddey, Williams, Coby, Huerter, Collins, Vuc plus their own picks and Portland picks. Giddey (22 mil a year) and Coby (13) with a 27 and 29 pick probably gets you in the ballpark. Bulls would have

Ball / Ball
Ayo / Huerter
Matas / Terry
Williams / Philips
Smith / Collins

Plus their 25 and 26 pick in supposedly deep drafts. That seems more AKs speed as opposed to being patient. I wouldn't be surprised if both sides start making overtures over the summer.

It does sound on brand for AK, but I fear the temptation for King's Ball jokes making listening to games unbearable.

A Ball/Ball/Matas/Smith core is intriguing.

[PJSteven22]

What plan? AK is a moron. He has no plan and the only way we are getting out of this mess is if we get extremely lucky.

[prolific passer]

There's a plan?

[Evil_Headband]

Connecting some dots, the plan may be to get the Ball brand established in Chicago.

The huge get from the Zach trade was to get control of their first rounders again. Did you notice that AK even used the "control" word in the presser? It's because he may trade them away. The trade for LeMelo would be multiple firsts plus expirings (the Bulls have plenty). Maybe a young player too depending on where negotiations go. Maybe Coby and/or Pat get to play in their home state.

Wonder why Lonzo suddenly agreed to an extension? Coincidental timing? Maybe not.

The next step would be rumors about LeMelo wanting to be traded to Chicago. Stay tuned.

[TheEndIsNigh]

I think Sam Quinn stated it very well in his article grading every teams outlook post trade deadline. TLDR: there is no plan. I happen to agree.

Chicago Bulls: F
The press conference Bulls lead executive Arturas Karnisovas had after Thursday's deadline was about as distressing a public address as any NBA executive has delivered in recent memory. This team has no plan whatsoever. Consider the following quote: "There's different structures that you can try to get to a championship," Karnisovas said. "There's 2-3 star players and then a lot of role players or you can build it as 9-10 very good players." The premise is almost entirely faulty, but I suppose the 2004 Pistons exist, and the restricting CBA might open doors for teams to try winning with depth over star power. Fine. But here's the problem: the Bulls don't have nine or 10 very good players. They don't have two or three very good players either. Karnisovas set the standard of a championship in that quote. The Bulls, right now, do not have a single player on their roster who would have started for either team that played in the 2024 NBA Finals. The only thing that should matter to this franchise right now is talent acquisition. The first step in acquiring talent is acquiring the assets used to land that talent. So why is Nikola Vucevic still on the team? Or Lonzo Ball? Or Coby White? These are players that teams with two or three stars, or those that aim to build around nine or 10 players instead, might have been able to use. Instead, they're hanging around on a Bulls team going nowhere for reasons that remain unclear, hurting Chicago's draft pick in the process. Speaking of Chicago's draft pick, it was the only asset of value the Bulls got back in the LaVine trade. The only reason they needed to trade for that top-eight protected pick back was because they didn't tank well enough to keep it in the first place, which either suggests that they were incapable of executing a proper rebuilding plan, or more likely, they wanted control of their pick either way so they could chase the Play-In in peace. Karnisovas all but admitted that, saying that sacrificing draft position for a shot at the postseason is "worth it to me." Whether it's Karnisovas pulling the strings or the Reinsdorf family, there is just no reason to trust the people making decisions here.

[Dominator83]

You are absolutely hopeless if you don't have a strategy. There are many things you need to do cohesively together to get a good chance of success. There is a difference between having a cohesive strategy and being unwilling to pivot or to do really dumb things in the sake of that strategy or to predetermine very specific outcomes on individual players.

Ie, the cost of Josh Giddey should weigh in to whether he is on the team going forward. You don't have to have Josh Giddey be the focal point of your strategy, any player that maybe you keep and maybe you don't depending on the price isn't a core piece of your strategy.

You should be deciding very strategically, do you want to try to make the playoffs or chase draft picks. Are you a buyer or a seller? The time line of how long a guy is an asset becomes critically important in these discussions.

As an example, if I know I don't have a reasonable chance to build towards something in the next year, and I am scared of paying them in 2026 then Coby/Ayo were obvious sell candidates this year as it would both enhance your draft capital in return for them, maximize their value prior to UFA, improve your own draft pick this year and next year, and not meaningfully impact your 2026/27 and beyond. It's a no brainer to do that.

If you are trying to make the playoffs this year and next year, then you probably shouldn't trade Zach LaVine, whom is your best player and helps your ability to win for minor role players and cash savings in 26/27.

If you want to pursue FAs via cap space, you should align contracts to end at a specific year. If you want to prioritize trading for stars, you should try to gain a bunch of assets (likely draft picks) that a team trading a star would find valuable.

Of course all of these things and many others should be constantly weighed by an exec in making decisions. I'm just saying that I don't recognize or identify coherent strategies. I mean the strategy would always be to win every game and every title, no? You then make tons of constant micro and macro decisions on individual things that you intend to make you better, rather than worse, over some timeline. I don't believe in the binary reduction to "buying or selling", because it treats picks as if they are cash when they are not, and ignores the subtleties of the specifics.

Like Ayo, Giddey, and Coby. Yes, for sure, the plausibility of them getting "overpaid" should factor into whether or not we keep or trade them, but it's far from the only factor. It's critical to consider what is being offered. Obviously for any player there is a potential trade offer that is the best offer out there at a point in time that is also properly evaluated as inferior to even letting those guys walk in free agency for nothing, which is itself nothing more than a guess. Like for me for example, I think Coby White is a pretty good player. I could still see him being anywhere between the 3rd and 8th best player on a really good team (which is a wide range). So if the best offer out there for him is something I don't value much, like a late first and bad expiring contract value, I'd rather keep him, even knowing the risk of losing him for nothing. Why? Because a late first is nearly nothing. Coby is a #7 pick that has kinda panned out (I think he'd match up reasonably well to the 7th best player in most drafts), so it's very unlikely that a late first will ever be as good as him.

I mean, you always need to consider the impact of every micro decision on the entire roster for a long time span (I usually say 4 years but I think 5 is just as reasonable). I just don't think of that as a coherent strategy. It's more of a constant simple process of evaluating "what do each of the next 5 years look like for our entire ROSTER if I make this move (draft a player, sign/release a player, or make a specific trade)". You just do that all day every day. I think that boils it down to the essence and is what I want me exec doing rather than having what I'd call a strategy, which would be something more insanely multi-step in conception that's more of a story than a strategy, and would be something like "I will make Giddey and Matas good and then I will trade Coby and Patrick for bad picks which will become good players and then I'll win 52 games in 4 years and then fire Billy and hire Spoelstra and then in 6 years we'll win 58 games and the title in a 6 game series" . It's really all about letting NO STONE go unturned, constantly being as open minded as you can, valuing seasons equally across time for the most part, amd boiling down to the simplicity of the choices you can actually make instead of the story you wish would play out. I view "strategy" as not applying to nba roster management in the way we'd use that term to refer to say business strategies in a market economy. In a way we're just talking semantics I guess.

Kudos on the O.P. I was gonna start the same thread.

LC, you and are in sync, as usual, of late. It's a good feeling!

IMO, AK did a good (albeit imperfect) job initially with his build. Seeing Ball back and healthy and Vuc making 3's this season, I am reminded of just how that could have worked. But Ball's injury really killed it. I think having a good PG was the key to unlocking Vuc. He went all in, but couldn't pair his king in the hole.

He's been scrambling, hoping to get lucky with drafts and pick ups until last offseason when he decided to fold his hand on this crew.

He's made some bad gambles. He got double-screwed with the impact of the new CBA on the value of Zach's contract. The default move used to be to resign your MAX guys and then trade them later, but then nobody could fit that 3rd guy's contract under the 2nd apron. It was a bad decision to double-down and resign Vuc. PWill was also a terrible draft, but he got suckered by Pat's measurables and tools, driven by a small brain.

He made some good moves too. I like Coby's, Ayo's, and Ball's deals. I like Smith's signing. I so far love Matas' drafting. The trade for Giddey is debatable, but his logic was sound.

Bottom line, he's a gambler but one that hasn't gotten lucky in most of his moves. His "strategy" to me seems like trying to rebuild his stake so that he can make another set of big bets.

Jalen Smith was a very good signing that i was very much a fan of. But its pointless when hes relegated to a 14 minute per game role behind a mediocre juorneyman center. matas just barely started getting OK playing time. Giddey is often not even played to his strengths, as we usually have way too many cooks in the PG kitchen. Even when they make clever moves, they never make the most of them.