Dan Z wrote:League Circles wrote:Doug, it's 62 minutes of court time. That's the combined total that Terry and Phillips have played, neither one in the rotation for every game.
Also, we've only seen Phillips for two years, not three.
I think a lot of people have a problem with the one foot in each lane of winning now and winning later. I love it. Like you want to prioritize winning later as you've made clear. Well, winning later primarily means asset management. If Terry and Phillips are both benched entirely such that Noa plays, their current and potential asset value immediately goes permanently to zero for the Bulls. If they play a tiny bit, for now, we have a non-zero chance that they will have value in a trade package mid season, or, much less likely, be re-signed as role player(s) going forward.
This is Terry's last chance, and it's a tiny one. It's not going to hurt Noa's development and it's a marginal future-minded move.
It's probably not at all clear who's better in practice between Noa, Dalen and Julian, but the latter two MIGHT have value in trade this season IF they play well even in small minutes, and we very likely aren't keeping them, especially Terry. Also the role more likely for Noa long term is not the same role those guys are playing now.
Lastly, I don't know the stats on "lottery picks" playing or not playing in their first 7 games, but I do believe that the binary grouping of "lottery" vs "non-lottery" picks has always veen nonsensical. What's the meaningful distinction between say a #11 pick like Noa and a #15 "non lottery" pick?
I just see this as a total non issue.
But I personally would rather see Noa than at least Terry. I just get the strategy. In my world neither Dalen nor Julian's options for this season should have even been picked up (even though I believe both are plus NBA defenders!), but since they're here, and wins and losses this season aren't our top priority (right?!), we should at least nominally see what we have in them, mostly for purposes of in-season trade evaluation and so called pump and dump (on the most basic, minimal level imaginable).
I doubt that Terry or Philips have much in terms of trade value and playing time isn't going to change that. At best they're most likely filler in a trade.
Teams already have two years of Philips and three of Terry to evaluate them.
Of course they don't have any trade value. That's one reason to play them a little bit.
If you don't play them, they absolutely positively for sure don't have any trade value.
If you do play them, and they play poorly, they still have no trade value.
If they play well, they MIGHT have added value in a package deal where maybe they are one of several pieces. The other team might be looking at a situation where they can look at a guy like Phillips and say to themselves "gee, he's nice to have as a young high level athlete who's been playing well this year in understandably limited minutes on a good team" vs "gee, this guy is racking up DNPs all year and wasn't anything impressive in his first two years".
It's definitely of marginal potential benefit, but so is playing Essengue in the first 7 games. 62 minutes so far is what we're talking about. You should still manage assets in ways that at least marginally help your long term prospects. Which is what the Bulls are doing both by giving the other two guys a last chance to be assets, and by not training Essengue to be a 5th man role player the way they screwed up Patrick by trying to do. This is why I'm never in favor of stocking up on too much high end young talent. I think it's virtually an inevitability that you'll ruin them like we did in the post dynasty stacked Krause teams. You ask guys with star talent to be role players and you'll sabotage their development IMO.
FWIW, I loved Essengue as a prospect, but he wasn't the BPA for the Bulls when we drafted IMO because I knew he'd have a hard time seeing the court. I knew we were deep. I knew we didn't need Phillips and Terry, nor Essengue, at least not right away.
It's worth acknowledging that this is the polar opposite of what everyone wants when trying to develop a player. And what the Bulls have done in developing players in the past. 
