Red Larrivee wrote:If Cowley is right that they're "$5-6M apart" I don't understand how they expect to re-sign him.
All it takes is Mark Cuban landing his jet in Chicago with a 4/60 contract and Deng is outie. It just seems like a dumb chance to take, especially if there's interest from several teams. There could be a scenario where Deng is the best player available at the trade deadline. Why not take advantage of that?
It's simple. The Bulls probably think that there is a
slight chance that Deng won't get offers as high as he's expecting (13-16 million per year). The Bulls probably feel that that slight chance is worth waiting for. Maybe, especially with a 5 year offer, they can end up getting him for like 10 million per year. If you resign Deng to an extension right now, everyone will know that Boozer is 100% gone and any slight trade value he may have had will be gone.
The Bulls may know that they will
likely have to pay Deng 13-15 million per year this summer, and feel that because they are willing to do that and confident Deng will re-sign if they give a competitive/best offer, there is no reason to re-sign him to an extension now and completely eliminate the even small chance that they can end up getting him for like 10-11 mil per year.
The Bulls just have no incentive to re-sign him early. For all the Bulls know, Deng is dying to stay (cause he likes Chicago? doesn't want to play for a bad team or in a bad city?), and is just bluffing (as a good agent would have him do) that he'll only sign for 14 a year, when in actuality he'd be willing to sign for 10 a year to stay here. I'm not saying it's the case, I'm saying basically that I think the Bulls want to re-sign him, no matter what it takes, but are wisely trying to tactically influence that amount to be as low as possible.
Also, I've said this a million times, but don't be surprised at all if the Bulls offer Deng a no-trade clause as a first offer to him this summer at like 9-11 million per year. It's really impossible to gauge how much value that will have to Deng. For a player who has dealt with trade rumors his whole career, to be guaranteed to spend 15 years in one of the few great NBA cities for one of the better organizations, who knows, he might value that at 2 million per year. And the no-trade clause cannot be offered right now per CBA rules. I have a feeling the Bulls are going to pull this out as a suprise tactic to try to get him to re-sign this summer for 9-12 million per year instead of 13-16. And then if he doesn't like that, then they'll probably say, OK, he's your 15 mil per year offer or whatever. The Bulls have a pretty well established history of letting the market set the price for players and then paying that market, yet not doing so preemptively. They publicly believe that early extensions are supposed to come at a discount for the team.
