Bulls @ Nuggets 8pm CT Mar. 24 2025

[NecessaryEvil]

Another really fun win and its on the back of the young talent. After a few seasons of rudderless drifting on a team that clearly had no future as constructed it feels so nice to finally have direction, and especially seeing wins as a result.

Just a bunch of young guys here hooping, it’s an awesome thing to see. If the Bulls aren’t balling, I’m not interested in the NBA at all nowadays. The young guys have renewed my love for the game.

Huerter 26
Collin’s 27
Jokes 25

Once we get rid of Carter and Vucevic, we’ll have a super young basketball club. AK is getting the ship right.

[Dan Z]

The reason to prioritize the draft is to get contending ceiling young talent that you can’t otherwise convince teams to trade to you. It remains, objectively speaking, by far the most likely way to obtain the types of elite franchise players every team needs, despite those odds still being poor. It’s just inherent to how it works.

But if you have young contending level talent on your team the scale slides and priorities change. Some fans - whether they believe it or not and I don’t believe they do and are being deliberately intellectually dishonest - love to claim “tankers” just mindlessly want to tank until they get Wemby. Not at all true.

With Giddey’s play, which I am now fully convinced is sustainable, and Coby’s rise as a seemingly ideal backcourt mate who fits with Giddey hand-to-glove (offensively), tanking does become less important. It’s a spectrum.

It would still be best, barring some legit franchise talent actually wanting to come to Chicago, to rise and fall with the youngsters for one more full year to see though. We should, for whatever that looks like, stay young to maximize our picks the next two drafts.

While for many years, superstars just did not change teams while in their prime, migratory bird LeBron James changed this culture:
recent finals mvps who werden't drafted by the winning team of the finals:
2020 Lakers L.James
2019 Raptors K.Leonard
2018 Warriors K.Durant
2017 Warriors K.Durant
2015 Warriors A.Iguidala
2013 Heat L.James
2012 Heat L.James

That means that teams can win championships now by aquiring their best player via free agency.
Precondition however is that those free agents don't join them while they are losing teams. They join them when everything is comfortable prepared for them to get a ring.

Absolutely happens. But when it does it’s usually because a guy demands to land in one of 2-3 specific places and no one else even gets a seat at the table. So it does not mitigate at all the significance of the draft. You want to be the team that drafts these guys so you have a chance to contend with them and keep them in house during their primes. That some leave later doesn’t change that.

It's also been 5 years since the LeBron Lakers team won. Here are the 4 championship teams since that time:

2024 Celtics
2023 Nuggets
2022 Warriors
2021 Bucks

None of those teams have a major free agent who signed with them. The same with their opponents in the finals (Mavs, Heat, Celtics and Suns).

[MrSparkle]

While for many years, superstars just did not change teams while in their prime, migratory bird LeBron James changed this culture:
recent finals mvps who werden't drafted by the winning team of the finals:
2020 Lakers L.James
2019 Raptors K.Leonard
2018 Warriors K.Durant
2017 Warriors K.Durant
2015 Warriors A.Iguidala
2013 Heat L.James
2012 Heat L.James

That means that teams can win championships now by aquiring their best player via free agency.
Precondition however is that those free agents don't join them while they are losing teams. They join them when everything is comfortable prepared for them to get a ring.

Absolutely happens. But when it does it’s usually because a guy demands to land in one of 2-3 specific places and no one else even gets a seat at the table. So it does not mitigate at all the significance of the draft. You want to be the team that drafts these guys so you have a chance to contend with them and keep them in house during their primes. That some leave later doesn’t change that.

It's also been 5 years since the LeBron Lakers team won. Here are the 4 championship teams since that time:

2024 Celtics
2023 Nuggets
2022 Warriors
2021 Bucks

None of those teams have a major free agent who signed with them. The same with their opponents in the finals (Mavs, Heat, Celtics and Suns).

Heat/Jimmy.. but yeah, the last 4 years were different. 2020 was the last time we had big FA movement, and that capped a decade of some wild UFA acquisitions. Since all the top dogs landed in their preferred big market destinations (4 of them in LA to be exact, 3 in NY), it closed the door on that approach.

But now that the next-gen. is soon becoming unrestricted (Giannis, Jokic, Shai, etc.), on top of the repeater tax penalties, I do believe 2027-30 will have some unexpected FA scenarios. The max contract trade market is going to be more difficult to navigate, especially if you can’t aggregate salaries when you’re over the 2nd apron. Players might reconsider locking in 5y deals.

[Dan Z]

Absolutely happens. But when it does it’s usually because a guy demands to land in one of 2-3 specific places and no one else even gets a seat at the table. So it does not mitigate at all the significance of the draft. You want to be the team that drafts these guys so you have a chance to contend with them and keep them in house during their primes. That some leave later doesn’t change that.

It's also been 5 years since the LeBron Lakers team won. Here are the 4 championship teams since that time:

2024 Celtics
2023 Nuggets
2022 Warriors
2021 Bucks

None of those teams have a major free agent who signed with them. The same with their opponents in the finals (Mavs, Heat, Celtics and Suns).

Heat/Jimmy.. but yeah, the last 4 years were different. 2020 was the last time we had big FA movement, and that capped a decade of some wild UFA acquisitions. Since all the top dogs landed in their preferred big market destinations (4 of them in LA to be exact, 3 in NY), it closed the door on that approach.

But now that the next-gen. is soon becoming unrestricted (Giannis, Jokic, Shai, etc.), on top of the repeater tax penalties, I do believe 2027-30 will have some unexpected FA scenarios. The max contract trade market is going to be more difficult to navigate, especially if you can’t aggregate salaries when you’re over the 2nd apron. Players might reconsider locking in 5y deals.

You think SGA, Jokic and Giannis might leave their teams? Maybe Giannis and, if he does, I bet he'll be traded.

[MrSparkle]

It's also been 5 years since the LeBron Lakers team won. Here are the 4 championship teams since that time:

2024 Celtics
2023 Nuggets
2022 Warriors
2021 Bucks

None of those teams have a major free agent who signed with them. The same with their opponents in the finals (Mavs, Heat, Celtics and Suns).

Heat/Jimmy.. but yeah, the last 4 years were different. 2020 was the last time we had big FA movement, and that capped a decade of some wild UFA acquisitions. Since all the top dogs landed in their preferred big market destinations (4 of them in LA to be exact, 3 in NY), it closed the door on that approach.

But now that the next-gen. is soon becoming unrestricted (Giannis, Jokic, Shai, etc.), on top of the repeater tax penalties, I do believe 2027-30 will have some unexpected FA scenarios. The max contract trade market is going to be more difficult to navigate, especially if you can’t aggregate salaries when you’re over the 2nd apron. Players might reconsider locking in 5y deals.

You think SGA, Jokic and Giannis might leave their teams? Maybe Giannis and, if he does, I bet he'll be traded.

I don't expect them to, but unrestricted free agency is upon them, so until they ink an extension, you consider the chance. Jokic, Giannis and Shai will have spent most their 20s in small markets. At a certain point, every superstar ever explored a bigger market after their prime, unless they were drafted into it (Magic, Bird, Jordan, Kobe, Curry).

[Dan Z]

Heat/Jimmy.. but yeah, the last 4 years were different. 2020 was the last time we had big FA movement, and that capped a decade of some wild UFA acquisitions. Since all the top dogs landed in their preferred big market destinations (4 of them in LA to be exact, 3 in NY), it closed the door on that approach.

But now that the next-gen. is soon becoming unrestricted (Giannis, Jokic, Shai, etc.), on top of the repeater tax penalties, I do believe 2027-30 will have some unexpected FA scenarios. The max contract trade market is going to be more difficult to navigate, especially if you can’t aggregate salaries when you’re over the 2nd apron. Players might reconsider locking in 5y deals.

You think SGA, Jokic and Giannis might leave their teams? Maybe Giannis and, if he does, I bet he'll be traded.

I don't expect them to, but unrestricted free agency is upon them, so until they ink an extension, you consider the chance. Jokic, Giannis and Shai will have spent most their 20s in small markets. At a certain point, every superstar ever explored a bigger market after their prime, unless they were drafted into it (Magic, Bird, Jordan, Kobe, Curry).

Those three don't seem like the kind of person who care much about big markets, but who knows.

In SGAs case he's on a winning team with a bright future. Why leave it?

I wouldn't plan anything based on their upcoming free agency.