Simmons: Reinsdorf Runs Bulls Like Small Market Team

[Space Indaver]

Since the dynasty, has there been the talent to warrant overspending until Derrick came along?

You get Derrick, you miss out on Lebron to put next to him. So you put that cap space towards getting a guy who should have been a fantastic second scorer and a good rebounder. Which he mostly was. But he was still overpaid, which hindered the team. But I wouldn't say the Boozer move was terrible. All the while they were making sure they had younger players coming in, and in theory Taj, Butler, Mirotic and possibly Snell are the fruit of that. Plus we have two picks.

I think you should go deep into the luxury tax once in a while when you have the talent to justify it, as a way of repaying the fans for the years of profitability. But I don't think you just go nuts on B-tier players' contracts just to make the first round. That's NBA mediocrity purgatory.

If Boozer is amnestied, this summer will only be the Bulls' second chance at doing the ballsy move since the dynasty broke up. Last time, they dipped their toe in after missing out. This time I hope they're making damn sure they don't **** it up. If we don't get Melo or Love, I think we should keep the cap space or invest in picks/youth. It would suck to just spend that cap space on another hard to move contract.

[Pnjguy]

For example, if we were over this summer (signed Deng to a nice big contract and didn't amnesty Booz), we couldn't complete a sign and trade. If we were over this summer, we couldn't use the full MLE, this summer.

There is no 'over this summer" it's "over at the end of the regular season"

I don't know how else to help you man... if you truly believe it is at the end of the season, that means a team can go wild while currently being over the apron as long as they weren't in the previous year. That makes no sense at all.

There has to be a beginning of where you start the next tax year. This is not a fluid thing. It's determined on a single date. Teams have an opportunity to get under the tax by the end of the year. If you're over by that date, you have the restrictions in free agency we've talked about. Then you have by next regular season to get under. What am I missing here.

[KeithBoothfan]

I'll mention it again... 2000 T Duncan and G Hill didn't even visit Chicago when the Bulls had space for 2 max contracts and a rookie who just put up 20/10.

Forgive me, as this is a bit of a tangent, but related:

What does 2000 free agency have to do with anything? If anything it goes against the "Bulls are cheap" meme. The Bulls were ready and able to offer those guys the max. In fact, if the CBA hadn't just been renegotiated to introduce the max contract scale into free agency, the Bulls would have offered both of those guys and/or McGrady the kind of money Kevin Garnett had gotten from Minny right before the max salary was instituted (partly in response to his contract, IIRC). Being denied the opportunity to overbid for these guys (plus Eddie Jones...dodged a bullet there) is part of the reason they struck out and got Ron Mercer instead, and were bad for all those dark years.

Duncan and Hill didn't come to the Bulls for many reasons: because Duncan in particular was already in an excellent situation, because the Bulls had just concluded a 17-65 season, their only useful players were both rookies (and not franchise players), and, maybe most importantly, because fairly or not (and let's not rehash it here) Krause was viewed as a bumbling evil moron in the aftermath of the dynasty ending. Also, some of those guys maybe didn't want to have to play in MJ's shadow. In short, the Bulls were a terrible team and a league pariah at the time. And with max contracts, the Bulls couldn't outbid the other cap space team that summer, warm-weather Orlando (coming off a .500 season), in order to compensate for the above-described disadvantages. That had been Krause's plan all along, but the new CBA and max contracts screwed it up. I think the Bulls would have at least gotten McGrady that summer if they could have offered him any amount of money they wanted.

But we didn't miss on those guys because we were cheap. Quite the opposite - we would have been spendthrift to get them if we'd been allowed to, but the new CBA tied our hands. And unlike Riley in 2010, who had a reputation as a winner and someone players wanted to play for, we had universally-loathed Krause and Benny the Bull making the sale, and Tim Floyd (!!!) as coach.

/tangent. For some reason I still get exercised about that era. The pain. Man, the pain.

[Pnjguy]

28. What is the hard cap? When are teams subject to it? How does it work?

As described in question number 23, teams above the apron -- the point $4 million above the tax line -- have a smaller Mid-Level exception, cannot use the Bi-Annual exception, and cannot receive a player in a sign-and-trade transaction. These exceptions are reserved for teams that are below the apron. This applies to the entire season in which one of these exceptions is used -- for example, if a team is below the apron and utilizes its Bi-Annual exception, it commits itself to remaining below the apron for the remainder of that season (through the following June 30).

In other words, when a team is below the apron and uses its Bi-Annual exception, receives a player who is signed-and-traded, or uses its Mid-Level exception to sign a player to a contract larger than the Taxpayer Mid-Level exception allows, the team becomes hard-capped at the apron for the remainder of that season. This eliminates any potential loophole where a team could first use one of these exceptions and subsequently add salary to go above the apron, since adding salary first and then using the exception would be illegal.

If a team is hard-capped, it cannot exceed the apron under any circumstance. If the team subsequently needs to sign a player (for example, to replace injured players) it must first create room under the apron by waiving player(s) with non-guaranteed salary, waiving player(s) with guaranteed salary and utilizing the stretch provision, trading downward in salary, etc. A team that is hard-capped can sign players to non-guaranteed contracts for training camp or the regular season, but must rid themselves of such players before their salary would take the team above the apron. A team subject to the hard cap can also sign players to rest-of-season contracts during the season, as long as the salary pro-ration keeps the team below the apron.

A modified version of the team salary calculation is used for all transactions related to the apron and to the hard cap. See question number 14 for details.

[organix85]

There is no 'over this summer" it's "over at the end of the regular season"

I don't know how else to help you man... if you truly believe it is at the end of the season, that means a team can go wild while currently being over the apron as long as they weren't in the previous year. That makes no sense at all.

There has to be a beginning of where you start the next tax year. This is not a fluid thing. It's determined on a single date. Teams have an opportunity to get under the tax by the end of the year. If you're over by that date, you have the restrictions in free agency we've talked about. Then you have by next regular season to get under. What am I missing here.

That is exactly my point in that last post. You add up everything you currently have on your roster including those incentives or what have you. If you add all those up and you are under the apron, it guarantees you will not go over the apron when they give a final tax number at the end of the year. This way, you are in compliance with that part of the CBA and can (or cannot) go ahead with a trade/signing.

[organix85]

A modified version of the team salary calculation is used for all transactions related to the apron and to the hard cap. See question number 14 for details.

This is exactly the answer to the question you just proposed. That whole section explains the hard cap which would prevent you from violating the CBA at the end of the year tax calculation.

[kingkirk]

In relation to the comments around spending and it's correlation to titles, what those teams have in common is the fact that they have some of the games best players on their roster.

Once you have that player in place, you can begin to add players on deals.

You have outliers like NY and BKN, but those teams paying a heap are generally those teams sporting some of the best players.

As to the Bulls, once it was clear Rose was a gun, and someone to build your team around for years to come, we started making moves.

We never landed a trade for a 2nd option or another big name, but that is more due to not wanting to trade Deng and Noah more so than not wanting to pay.

I hated the Korver move, I didn't really care too much about the Asik loss. If we retain both though, our salary without Rose that season with an ACL would have pushed us towards 85-90m.

That's crazy money if you're not competing.

[LobosJordan]

Bulls can squash this perception this summer if they so choose. Or they can continue to go business as usual which is being in NBA hell.

[MAQ]

Bulls can squash this perception this summer if they so choose. Or they can continue to go business as usual which is being in NBA hell.

Sorry, but it's not as simple as the Bulls signing Melo and squashing this perception. I agree this is a perception (whether true or not is another discussion) that needs to be changed, but unfortunately Melo CAN choose to not come here...The T-Wolves CAN choose to trade Love to some place else.

Getting a superstar involves so much luck, it really has nothing at all to do with an organization being cheap or not.

[KeithBoothfan]

Bulls can squash this perception this summer if they so choose. Or they can continue to go business as usual which is being in NBA hell.

Sorry, but it's not as simple as the Bulls signing Melo and squashing this perception. I agree this is a perception (whether true or not is another discussion) that needs to be changed, but unfortunately Melo CAN choose to not come here...The T-Wolves CAN choose to trade Love to some place else.

Getting a superstar involves so much luck, it really has nothing at all to do with an organization being cheap or not.

To add, or reiterate - with the salary cap and, now, extremely punitive luxury tax, spending isn't a good thing, ipso facto. With very rare exception, you need a top-5 player on your team to be a contender. You can't just get one of these players by "spending." You either need to draft him, carve out cap space (which is by definition not spending, at least temporarily), or make a very fortuitous trade if this player wants out from another team. In none of these situations is "spending," in and of itself, a good thing. In fact, to put yourself in position #2 and, with the new lux tax rules, #3 to an extent, restraint and planning are needed.

With the old dollar-for-dollar luxury tax, which didn't affect the availability of exceptions or sign and trades, it was easier to make the Bulls-as-small-market team argument. I've never been a Jerry basher, but there was a definite argument to be made that his "I'll spend for a winner" pronouncement was a bit of a dodge - as in, how can you assemble a winner without spending? How can you have a chicken before an egg? In the early, optimistic Kirk/BG/Deng/Tyson/Eddy seasons, this was a legitimate question. Would he spend to keep that young, winning team together as rookie contracts expired, or alternatively flip some of them for a franchise player, pay him the max, and also pay the remaining pieces to be an excellent supporting cast? Well, the Bulls picked and chose who to pay, traded others, and did some salary dumping too. The pre-Rose faceplant season sort of closed the book on whether that team could be a "spend of a winner" team.

Then we got Rose. I think once he emerged as a budding franchise player, Jerry was been willing to spend on the team, by and large (dumping Korver was a glaring exception). Rose being hurt while his ~$20mil salary clogs the books has muddied the waters, but I think once we had Rose, Jerry saw that we had a window and wanted to contend. We just haven't been very lucky the past few years. Just my opinion.

[AirP.]

I'll mention it again... 2000 T Duncan and G Hill didn't even visit Chicago when the Bulls had space for 2 max contracts and a rookie who just put up 20/10.

Forgive me, as this is a bit of a tangent, but related:

What does 2000 free agency have to do with anything? If anything it goes against the "Bulls are cheap" meme. The Bulls were ready and able to offer those guys the max. In fact, if the CBA hadn't just been renegotiated to introduce the max contract scale into free agency, the Bulls would have offered both of those guys and/or McGrady the kind of money Kevin Garnett had gotten from Minny right before the max salary was instituted (partly in response to his contract, IIRC). Being denied the opportunity to overbid for these guys (plus Eddie Jones...dodged a bullet there) is part of the reason they struck out and got Ron Mercer instead, and were bad for all those dark years.

Duncan and Hill didn't come to the Bulls for many reasons: because Duncan in particular was already in an excellent situation, because the Bulls had just concluded a 17-65 season, their only useful players were both rookies (and not franchise players), and, maybe most importantly, because fairly or not (and let's not rehash it here) Krause was viewed as a bumbling evil moron in the aftermath of the dynasty ending.

Orlando had even less talent then Chicago and it was reported that T.Duncan did verbally commit to Orlando before he left, but was finally swayed by D.Robinson to resign with San Antonio. You can read about it in a later article here(doesn't mention the verbal commitment which was reported back in 2000)...

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/b ... titialskip

Also, some of those guys maybe didn't want to have to play in MJ's shadow.

I still don't get this, I keep hearing about this and he's really the only basketball player to ever "scare players off" because he was once on Bulls. Shaq wasn't scared off by the great centers from LA nor a recent superstar in Magic Johnson, didn't hear about anyone not wanting to play in Bird's shadow but MJ... yeah, can't ever go to Chicago because MJ once played there.

In short, the Bulls were a terrible team and a league pariah at the time. And with max contracts, the Bulls couldn't outbid the other cap space team that summer, warm-weather Orlando (coming off a .500 season), in order to compensate for the above-described disadvantages.

Yeah, Orlando only renounce the rights of 3 of it's starters(D.Armstron, B.Wallace and B.Outlaw), and a few other guys named C. Megette, C.Billips and M.Harpring... not much left of that great .500 team.

That had been Krause's plan all along, but the new CBA and max contracts screwed it up. I think the Bulls would have at least gotten McGrady that summer if they could have offered him any amount of money they wanted.

They could have offered the same amount Orlando offered him.

But we didn't miss on those guys because we were cheap. Quite the opposite - we would have been spendthrift to get them if we'd been allowed to, but the new CBA tied our hands. And unlike Riley in 2010, who had a reputation as a winner and someone players wanted to play for, we had universally-loathed Krause and Benny the Bull making the sale, and Tim Floyd (!!!) as coach.

/tangent. For some reason I still get exercised about that era. The pain. Man, the pain.

Well, Lebron and Bosh both turned down the possibility of having the greatest basketball team of all time. The lineup would have been D.Rose, L.James, L.Deng, C.Bosh and J.Noah, that's gotta be close to being the best starting 5 of all time with the offense and defense that 5 brought.

The cheapest way for an organization to keep it's fan base is the promise of tomorrow while cutting costs in the present and that's what the Bulls continue to do, cut payroll and say we're going for the fences in whatever summer you want to pick, then when it doesn't happen they overpay some players and stay under the cap.

I'd like to switch to being a Thunder fan since I'm in Oklahoma City but they're pretty straight forward as a small market team, they absolutely will try to be as thrifty as they can be to stay in OKC while Chicago doesn't need to do that and be very profitable.

[KeithBoothfan]

Orlando had even less talent then Chicago and it was reported that T.Duncan did verbally commit to Orlando before he left, but was finally swayed by D.Robinson to resign with San Antonio. You can read about it in a later article here(doesn't mention the verbal commitment which was reported back in 2000)...

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/b ... titialskip

Orlando was coming off a surprisingly good season with a young players' coach Doc Rivers at the helm and a young, aggressive front office that had a good reputation at that point. We were coming off two absolutely horrific seasons and were led by Krause and Floyd. It was absolutely not clear at the time that we were more talented than Orlando given that, even with Brand and Artest (hindsight is 20/20 - those guys would have been great complementary pieces. Wasn't clear back then). The rest of the roster was laughably bad. And Duncan's dalliance with Orlando doesn't disprove my point that he wasn't going to leave the Spurs for a bottomed-out Chicago team, in any event.

The only way we were going to beat out Orlando for any of those guys was to outbid them by an order of magnitude, and the new CBA wouldn't let us anymore. Eddie Jones only considered us once Orlando spent its money on Hill and McGrady, and deliberately dragged his feet in hopes he'd get a sign-and-trade, which he did. Tim f'n Thomas left us at the altar to stay with the Bucks for less money! We were an embarrassment that summer.

Also, some of those guys maybe didn't want to have to play in MJ's shadow.

I still don't get this, I keep hearing about this and he's really the only basketball player to ever "scare players off" because he was once on Bulls. Shaq wasn't scared off by the great centers from LA nor a recent superstar in Magic Johnson, didn't hear about anyone not wanting to play in Bird's shadow but MJ... yeah, can't ever go to Chicago because MJ once played there.

Shaq didn't come to the Lakers within a couple years of Kareem leaving. The memory of MJ threepeating and then and being driven out of town by Krause was still quite fresh. Maybe this concept was overblown, but I think it did exist.

In short, the Bulls were a terrible team and a league pariah at the time. And with max contracts, the Bulls couldn't outbid the other cap space team that summer, warm-weather Orlando (coming off a .500 season), in order to compensate for the above-described disadvantages.

Yeah, Orlando only renounce the rights of 3 of it's starters(D.Armstron, B.Wallace and B.Outlaw), and a few other guys named C. Megette, C.Billips and M.Harpring... not much left of that great .500 team.

Like I said, the fact that they were .500 the previous season despite having no headline talent whatsoever gave them a lot of goodwill. Made the front office look good, made Doc look good. Made them seem like a team that could quickly surround a max FA or two with a good cast, even if they had canned some of the holdovers to free up the cap space. Didn't hurt that Orlando has the warm weather thing either. The post-dynasty fail parade that the Bulls were perceived (with justification) as being couldn't compete with that.

That had been Krause's plan all along, but the new CBA and max contracts screwed it up. I think the Bulls would have at least gotten McGrady that summer if they could have offered him any amount of money they wanted.

They could have offered the same amount Orlando offered him.

RIGHT. The Bulls COULDN'T offer McGrady (or Hill, or Duncan) any amount they wanted - just the CBA-imposed max. That's my point. Given the Bulls' sorry performance in recent years and league perceptions of Chicago and Orlando at that time, the Bulls absolutely HAD to be able to throw limitless money at these guys to have a chance to land them and reboot quickly. The fact that they could only offer the same money is maybe the biggest reason they ended up with Ron Mercer.

But we didn't miss on those guys because we were cheap. Quite the opposite - we would have been spendthrift to get them if we'd been allowed to, but the new CBA tied our hands. And unlike Riley in 2010, who had a reputation as a winner and someone players wanted to play for, we had universally-loathed Krause and Benny the Bull making the sale, and Tim Floyd (!!!) as coach.

/tangent. For some reason I still get exercised about that era. The pain. Man, the pain.

Well, Lebron and Bosh both turned down the possibility of having the greatest basketball team of all time. The lineup would have been D.Rose, L.James, L.Deng, C.Bosh and J.Noah, that's gotta be close to being the best starting 5 of all time with the offense and defense that 5 brought.

The cheapest way for an organization to keep it's fan base is the promise of tomorrow while cutting costs in the present and that's what the Bulls continue to do, cut payroll and say we're going for the fences in whatever summer you want to pick, then when it doesn't happen they overpay some players and stay under the cap.

I'd like to switch to being a Thunder fan since I'm in Oklahoma City but they're pretty straight forward as a small market team, they absolutely will try to be as thrifty as they can be to stay in OKC while Chicago doesn't need to do that and be very profitable.

[/quote]

Not sure what the LeBron and Bosh thing has to do with anything. Do you think the Bulls would have been too cheap to sign them if they could have? Do you think they didn't sincerely want to? Do you think their Plan B once those guys went to Miami was a con job? Otherwise that seems like a non-sequitur.

[kulaz3000]

The only way we were going to beat out Orlando for any of those guys was to outbid them by an order of magnitude, and the new CBA wouldn't let us anymore. Eddie Jones only considered us once Orlando spent its money on Hill and McGrady, and deliberately dragged his feet in hopes he'd get a sign-and-trade, which he did. Tim f'n Thomas left us at the altar to stay with the Bucks for less money! We were an embarrassment that summer.

Tim f'n Thomas, thank goodness we didn't end up signing that waste of a talent. This is the guy who thought wearing two head-bands was a good idea.



But back to the point at hand, yes we've missed some opportunities to get some 'big' free agents, but at the same time we were lucky to have missed out on those same free agents due to the fact that most of them didn't even live up to the hype. Would we have been better with a Tim Thomas, or Eddie Jones on our team, yeah, maybe better, but not significantly.

Sometimes it's not as devastating as it seems to miss out on certain talent when you factor in that some players value ends up being higher just because a free agent class is weak, and then you end up crippling your team even further because you go out and give a big contract to a player who is undeserving of it.

Then you have teams like the Knicks who have had success in attracting big time talent through the years, and where has that got them? They end up being stuck as a big spenders with massively overpaid talent with teams that never seem to match or exceed their expectations.

At times the Bulls are thrifty with their spending, but most often they are smart. They'll often overpay to resign younger players, even if they don't end up being the stars they expect them to be, but and yet, they are smart enough to not resign certain players once they reach a certain age and they feel that they wouldn't be worth the contract they are demanding. Is that being cheap or being smart?

Then there is the situation with Ben Wallace, massively overpaid but people forget he was the top tier free agent of that off season and WE the Chicago Bulls landed him, from a divisional rival team no less! But like I said previously, sometimes it ends up being a loss to get the top free agent when it's a weak free agent class, and though with him we had some success ultimately it was a bad deal, but the Bulls management quickly changed course of the team on the fly, and whether it be because of pure luck or not, we managed to land D.Rose thereafter.

To me it doesn't make sense whether a team is a small market team or a big market team, it's about how smart a team function and builds their team which is most important. How many teams do we have to see who have had owners with deep pockets, to spend crazy on players only to have the team fail, there are so many cases of this, and yet there are people who bring up the small market, big market attitude argument - it's rubbish. Give me an organization who sets themselves up for success, and spends wisely on the right players and as such puts a solid group together, over a team who has free reigns to spend however they want, but has no clue how to use the money or form a cohesive team.

[Michael Jackson]

I'll mention it again... 2000 T Duncan and G Hill didn't even visit Chicago when the Bulls had space for 2 max contracts and a rookie who just put up 20/10.

Forgive me, as this is a bit of a tangent, but related:

What does 2000 free agency have to do with anything? If anything it goes against the "Bulls are cheap" meme. The Bulls were ready and able to offer those guys the max. In fact, if the CBA hadn't just been renegotiated to introduce the max contract scale into free agency, the Bulls would have offered both of those guys and/or McGrady the kind of money Kevin Garnett had gotten from Minny right before the max salary was instituted (partly in response to his contract, IIRC). Being denied the opportunity to overbid for these guys (plus Eddie Jones...dodged a bullet there) is part of the reason they struck out and got Ron Mercer instead, and were bad for all those dark years.

Duncan and Hill didn't come to the Bulls for many reasons: because Duncan in particular was already in an excellent situation, because the Bulls had just concluded a 17-65 season, their only useful players were both rookies (and not franchise players), and, maybe most importantly, because fairly or not (and let's not rehash it here) Krause was viewed as a bumbling evil moron in the aftermath of the dynasty ending. Also, some of those guys maybe didn't want to have to play in MJ's shadow. In short, the Bulls were a terrible team and a league pariah at the time. And with max contracts, the Bulls couldn't outbid the other cap space team that summer, warm-weather Orlando (coming off a .500 season), in order to compensate for the above-described disadvantages. That had been Krause's plan all along, but the new CBA and max contracts screwed it up. I think the Bulls would have at least gotten McGrady that summer if they could have offered him any amount of money they wanted.

But we didn't miss on those guys because we were cheap. Quite the opposite - we would have been spendthrift to get them if we'd been allowed to, but the new CBA tied our hands. And unlike Riley in 2010, who had a reputation as a winner and someone players wanted to play for, we had universally-loathed Krause and Benny the Bull making the sale, and Tim Floyd (!!!) as coach.

/tangent. For some reason I still get exercised about that era. The pain. Man, the pain.

Duncan really really screwed up with his choice to stay with the Spurs. Laughable career since then. Think how much better he would have been with Elton Brand and Artest!


Btw good post overall


YES THE BULLS ARE CHEAP

By cheap though it doesn't mean they are unwilling to spend. Far from the case as noted above. Do they refuse to go over the cap for New York type results? Mostly but even they have blundered being so cheap that they payed a player some 50 million dollars to barely play in three years and boozer.

Seriously Reinsdorf is not cheap, he is just crazy smart. Would you rather he be Dolan? I can't see how a guy who basically is doing everything within the rules to spend money is considered cheap because he doesn't pay an OJ Mayo, but he does a boozer. How many bad contracts does the dude need to sign. Look at the Sox. Dude breaks even at best. No CBA. Hmmmm interesting. Oh wait I hear the arguments. Jerry uses the bulls money to pay for the Sox! Nope legally impossible two different rich ready to sue each other groups that own each. Jerry loves baseball more! Yup likely, guess what though he doesn't have the CBA to deal with.

Now is Jerry the best owner in sports? I don't know. These cheap arguments are for the birds. It is a weak point IMHO. I am also with an IQ of 32 so MHO means nothing. The real argument should be about the choices.

ie...

Are going after these big names and getting consolation prizes like mercer and boozer really the best options?

Maybe it is still the curse of Jordan, but hell the curse of the bambino turned around and so did the curse of Bill Wirtz. Maybe it is this year.


How about them Cubs? So glad that businessman Sam Zell sold them so that a fan who loves the team could buy them and instantly turn them into a high payroll contending team!

Honestly the NBA needs to go to what the NFL does. Hard cap, bonuses and non guaranteed contracts. Why not? Carrers are shorter in the NFL than any other major sport.

[Wingy]

Bulls are cheap. I just said it in another thread, but now with the current CBA, the way we traditionally operated is now prudent and the way most everyone will be doing business.

We were just ahead of the curve.

[GetBuLLish]

It's interesting to me that about 60% of the board shares that same opinion that the Bulls are run like a small market team, but that when Simmons says it everyone calls foul and yells conspiracy!

Habit of this board: outsiders (i.e. non-Bulls forum posters) are not allowed to be critical of the Bulls, even when they voice the same exact critiques that posters here make.

[DJHill]

I am excited to hear Simmons thoughts on money management of big market teams like the Nets and the Knicks.

Dumping Kyle Korver for nothing just because he made 5 mil (in a year w/o Rose I get it) isn't exactly the same thing as signing Joe Johnson to a max deal...

[ChiCitySPORTS#1]

I like him

[Trm3]

So the Bulls are a small market mentality because they wouldn't and/or won't pay 2 bench players who nobody else wanted? But they aren't a big market spending team for paying Rose 20 mil, Taj 9 mil, Boozer 16 mil, Deng whatever he was making, Noah his salray etc.

This board is crazy sometimes. We have whined for years about Boozer, Taj and Deng being overpaid. We have 20 mil being spent on a player who hasn't played in the playoffs for 3 straight seasons, and we whine about our front office being misers. Crazy. Batsh** crazy.

I did say we'll take care of own..maybe u should read it again. I'm saying there's guys we've had that would help a lot with OFFENSE which we struggle with but we chose to let them go cause we were cheap.

There's a reason Rose is blowing out his knees..he feels he has to do it all and he does cause he knows he has no help offensively.

I'm not saying we should spend money like the Nets..I'm saying there's been guys we should have kept.

??? Kyle, Nate and DJ were/are "our own". I don't get it.

My point was we'll take care of our own..Rose, Noah, Gibson, Deng (guys we drafted are our own)..but when it comes to keeping guys (FA's) that would help greatly on offense like a Nate or Korver or DJ (we don't know about him yet)..we'll say we can't afford them. Sorry, it wasn't really that difficult on what my point was.

[Trm3]

Bulls are cheap. I just said it in another thread, but now with the current CBA, the way we traditionally operated is now prudent and the way most everyone will be doing business.

We were just ahead of the curve.