The Kevin Love Thread: Update PG. 67, 78

[Susan]

Why would we help GS get more assets to attain Love? They have no picks available to go for Love and they can't offer any salary relief like we can.

This goes against everything logical and right in the world.

[bad knees]

Now I'm calling BS, but take this for what you will -

From the Chicago Bulls Reddit page...

http://www.reddit.com/r/chicagobulls/co ... liar_with/



I can't really see how this isn't made up but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. This will be a long few weeks.

Also, he said "I'm familiar with people within the FO" yet says 'I hope I don't lose my job". Thought I'd post it but yeah, I'm not convinced either but what he said or the credibility of who he says he is.

Ralph has touched on this. The other stuff I have read and heard indicate that the Bulls have a truly awful plan in place that will get going on draft night. If you are one of the "burn it down" guys, you very well might get your wish. It conflicts somewhat with the Love leaks.

As in keeping Booz and drafting euro stashes to avoid the tax???

Keeping Booz on draft night and drafting two Euro stashes would be fine with me, because it would suggest that the Bulls believe that they are serious contenders for either Melo or Love. Drafting Euros, who once stashed would not count against the cap, would facilitate the Melo as FA scenario. And drafting Euro stashes with high potential such as Nurkic or Porzingis would be more valuable as trade chips in a Melo or Love trade than any US collegian we might choose at 16 and 19. Keeping Boozer is not an issue because he is a prime potential trade chip in many Love and Melo scenarios, and if a trade can't be worked out, he can be amnestied on July 10.

[coldfish]

Fish, I'm fond of the Gibsons and Butlers. But we will never get a Love or Melo without sacrificing them. Maybe management has learned from their overvaluing of BG, Deng, Kirk, Noc and Duhon.

That's not it. You know how I hate the pure capspace plan where the Bulls send out Gibson and Dunleavey to sign Melo? I would take that a million times over rather than get the shaft that the Bulls are about to give us. I would HAPPILY trade Gibson, Butler and picks for Love too.

We will see. Hopefully I am reading the tea leaves wrong.

[RedBulls23]

Ralph has touched on this. The other stuff I have read and heard indicate that the Bulls have a truly awful plan in place that will get going on draft night. If you are one of the "burn it down" guys, you very well might get your wish. It conflicts somewhat with the Love leaks.

What awful plan is that? Sorry if I've missed it earlier in the thread.

If it includes Butler and 16 for Barnes (as Ralph has mentioned on several occasions) - I'm going to weep. Literally weep. I'll be inconsolable.

Not because I value Jimmy that much, but because I think Barnes is just that bad.

I was assuming it was trading away a pick to get rid of Boozer's contact trading Taj and or Dunleavy to create more cap space.

[RedBulls23]

Fish, I'm fond of the Gibsons and Butlers. But we will never get a Love or Melo without sacrificing them. Maybe management has learned from their overvaluing of BG, Deng, Kirk, Noc and Duhon.

That's not it. You know how I hate the pure capspace plan where the Bulls send out Gibson and Dunleavey to sign Melo? I would take that a million times over rather than get the shaft that the Bulls are about to give us. I would HAPPILY trade Gibson, Butler and picks for Love too.

We will see. Hopefully I am reading the tea leaves wrong.

So are you saying the Bulls aren't really going to go after Melo or Love?

[Magilla_Gorilla]

Fish, I'm fond of the Gibsons and Butlers. But we will never get a Love or Melo without sacrificing them. Maybe management has learned from their overvaluing of BG, Deng, Kirk, Noc and Duhon.

That's not it. You know how I hate the pure capspace plan where the Bulls send out Gibson and Dunleavey to sign Melo? I would take that a million times over rather than get the shaft that the Bulls are about to give us. I would HAPPILY trade Gibson, Butler and picks for Love too.

We will see. Hopefully I am reading the tea leaves wrong.

How are you interpreting the tea leaves?

Taj for cap space?

Boozer and picks to dump his contract?

Butler and pick for Barnes?

All of the above / none of the above?


Each one of these would be demoralizing if the Bulls don't have a guarantee from Melo.

[Payt10]

Fish, I'm fond of the Gibsons and Butlers. But we will never get a Love or Melo without sacrificing them. Maybe management has learned from their overvaluing of BG, Deng, Kirk, Noc and Duhon.

That's not it. You know how I hate the pure capspace plan where the Bulls send out Gibson and Dunleavey to sign Melo? I would take that a million times over rather than get the shaft that the Bulls are about to give us. I would HAPPILY trade Gibson, Butler and picks for Love too.

We will see. Hopefully I am reading the tea leaves wrong.

Are you referring to anything specifically? The crappy Barnes rumor? Something else?

[Payt10]

Fish, I'm fond of the Gibsons and Butlers. But we will never get a Love or Melo without sacrificing them. Maybe management has learned from their overvaluing of BG, Deng, Kirk, Noc and Duhon.

That's not it. You know how I hate the pure capspace plan where the Bulls send out Gibson and Dunleavey to sign Melo? I would take that a million times over rather than get the shaft that the Bulls are about to give us. I would HAPPILY trade Gibson, Butler and picks for Love too.

We will see. Hopefully I am reading the tea leaves wrong.

How are you interpreting the tea leaves?

Taj for cap space?

Boozer and picks to dump his contract?

Butler and pick for Barnes?

All of the above / none of the above?


Each one of these would be demoralizing if the Bulls don't have a guarantee from Melo.

The two in bold would have me near a ledge, especially dealing Boozer for draft picks when they can just amnesty. Only way that plan is somewhat feasible if it involves Carmelo.

[TheStig]

Fish, I'm fond of the Gibsons and Butlers. But we will never get a Love or Melo without sacrificing them. Maybe management has learned from their overvaluing of BG, Deng, Kirk, Noc and Duhon.

That's not it. You know how I hate the pure capspace plan where the Bulls send out Gibson and Dunleavey to sign Melo? I would take that a million times over rather than get the shaft that the Bulls are about to give us. I would HAPPILY trade Gibson, Butler and picks for Love too.

We will see. Hopefully I am reading the tea leaves wrong.

Maybe I missed something. What more could we give up?

[jump]

First we get a fake claim that the reported Bulls' offer for Love is fake. Then we get a comment that the Bulls are going to give us the shaft, as if that's already known. Sounds like the Negatories are on the loose.

By the way, it's complete changed the tone of this thread.

[Mech Engineer]

Reading stuff about getting Barnes makes me depressed as a Bulls fan. That is the worst thing the Bulls FO will do and it is not that they are dumping some big contract to do that. They are dumping Butler.

[OldSchoolNoBull]

Fish, I'm fond of the Gibsons and Butlers. But we will never get a Love or Melo without sacrificing them. Maybe management has learned from their overvaluing of BG, Deng, Kirk, Noc and Duhon.

That's not it. You know how I hate the pure capspace plan where the Bulls send out Gibson and Dunleavey to sign Melo? I would take that a million times over rather than get the shaft that the Bulls are about to give us. I would HAPPILY trade Gibson, Butler and picks for Love too.

We will see. Hopefully I am reading the tea leaves wrong.

Fish, do you have a source or something? Is there something that you know for a fact, or close to a fact, that you can't share with us outright?

[Betta Bulleavit]

As of now, we know that the Bulls plan to be aggressive. What that will amount to remains to be seen. If it's one thing that we know about our front office it's that they like to keep things as close to the vest as possible. And if something unpopular was about to go down, they will usually have one of their mouth pieces (KC in recent years) drop a piece that basically preps the fans for bad news.

[dice]

This is a good example of why those stats are flawed.

What I find interesting from the results from last season: Love+Pekovic on the court played slightly better defensively than Anthony+Chandler, adjusted for teammates and opponents. I guess that is something to think about ...

Go ask NY fans what they thought of Chandlers defense last season. He had as down a year as he has ever had (and thats saying something). He was a shell of the player that won DPOY two years ago.

1) i'm not exactly gonna trust knicks fans of all people to have watched a single player's defense carefully in a throwaway season
2) RAPM controls for all factors, including teammates. it is a noisy stat, but it is pretty much a fact that kevin love's team was more positively impacted with him on the floor than the knicks were with melo on the floor this season
3) synergy actually has someone watching and recording every possession. the player kevin love was guarding scored less points per possession than whoever melo was guarding. and big men tend to fare better than wings offensively by this measure, making love's advantage more significant
4) love has graded pretty consistently marginally better than melo defensively over the past few years. this season's numbers were not an outlier
5) love, like dunleavy, takes a lot of charges. melo doesn't. like, at all. my guess is that love, like dunleavy (who graded well this season defensively) is a smart defender who makes the most of his limited ability on that end
6) neither guy has a reputation as a good defender, though many will say that melo has more ABILITY as a defender. if he does, he doesn't use utilize it for whatever reason (perhaps due to his large offensive role, though he's not physically active on offense)

[Stratmaster]

Fish, I'm fond of the Gibsons and Butlers. But we will never get a Love or Melo without sacrificing them. Maybe management has learned from their overvaluing of BG, Deng, Kirk, Noc and Duhon.

That's not it. You know how I hate the pure capspace plan where the Bulls send out Gibson and Dunleavey to sign Melo? I would take that a million times over rather than get the shaft that the Bulls are about to give us. I would HAPPILY trade Gibson, Butler and picks for Love too.

We will see. Hopefully I am reading the tea leaves wrong.

HEY NOW! What is with the "I know something, and I'm going to tell you I know it, and it's really bad, but I'm not going to tell you what it is" routine?

[IcemanGervin]

Now I'm calling BS, but take this for what you will -

From the Chicago Bulls Reddit page...

http://www.reddit.com/r/chicagobulls/co ... liar_with/

This Bulls "offer" to Minnesota is completely made up (as some of you know already). Bulls aren't too high on Love because of his contract and really both sides haven't talked to each other at all. I will say that i know for a fact that the Bulls have called regarding Love but the convo really didn't go anywhere. This happened about a week ago or so.
Oh ya be prepared for a BIG trade on draft night. Its not 100% but it will sure be the headline if these wheels stayed greased till then.
Regards, Someone who hopefully doesn't lose his job soon

I can't really see how this isn't made up but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. This will be a long few weeks.

Also, he said "I'm familiar with people within the FO" yet says 'I hope I don't lose my job". Thought I'd post it but yeah, I'm not convinced either but what he said or the credibility of who he says he is.

Ralph has touched on this. The other stuff I have read and heard indicate that the Bulls have a truly awful plan in place that will get going on draft night. If you are one of the "burn it down" guys, you very well might get your wish. It conflicts somewhat with the Love leaks.

[Trm3]

My take is this. mysticbb has given us interesting analysis on how Love is better than Melo. I agree to some extent.. However, I think the fallacy is the assumption that you have to have every position on the team be a 3 pt shooter other than your 5.

My take is this.. the Bulls are better with

Rose
Butler
Melo
Taj
Noah

than with...

Rose
Butler or MLE target (?)
MDJ (?) IDK
Love
Noah

The fact is that Melo might be a better 3 pt shooter (better last season, at least by a significant 3FG%-- both have high volume) and probably a better post player than Love... stronger, able to bully ball his way to the rim.

I just think Melo/Taj at the 3/4 is better than MDJ/or unknown/ Love

The fact that the Bulls stayed out of the tax last season means I expect them to be willing to go a little more into the tax the next few years to make a true run. Nothing too frivolous, but enough to keep Taj and still get Melo. I guess in a nutshell.. the difference between Melo and unknown MLE/MDJ is a lot more than the difference between Taj and Love When you look at both ends of the floor

I'm with this..

That Love lineup is not better than the Melo one..Melo is more of a need than Love. I'm not cool with giving up Butler and Taj..we'd have to keep one of them. Butler is awesome on LeBron, I wouldn't like Melo on him..and if we had Melo than Taj is the perfect fit.

[coldfish]

Fish, I'm fond of the Gibsons and Butlers. But we will never get a Love or Melo without sacrificing them. Maybe management has learned from their overvaluing of BG, Deng, Kirk, Noc and Duhon.

That's not it. You know how I hate the pure capspace plan where the Bulls send out Gibson and Dunleavey to sign Melo? I would take that a million times over rather than get the shaft that the Bulls are about to give us. I would HAPPILY trade Gibson, Butler and picks for Love too.

We will see. Hopefully I am reading the tea leaves wrong.

Fish, do you have a source or something? Is there something that you know for a fact, or close to a fact, that you can't share with us outright?

I got a lot of replies to this. I do not have a source. I do have people who have contacts who have contacts, etc. and some of that is being backed up by media reports and poorly sourced leaks like this. I'm not sure what to believe and the picture being painted is not pretty. Don't get excited about my comments. I would just recommend watching on draft night like the reddit source said. I know I will be.

[NZB2323]

I think that we'd all be ecstatic to get either Love or Melo. The issue is we don't know what's going to happen and we could get neither.

[Mech Engineer]

Dealing Boozer for draft picks is a big issue. The Bulls did not want to deal Rip to get a late pick(Snell) in a bad draft. Now, they plan to deal Boozer and lose good draft picks in the process...that's some crap. But, from their comments, they have said that they will amnesty Boozer only for a superstar.

I don't think they will take the backlash of saving money for a possible star acquisition again. That sounds like a bad plan. The only way they get another star is keeping more assets like draft picks/younger players and being opportunistic.