the ultimates wrote:The Bulls were right though. Deng had more value at that time than anything Memphis actually gave up. The trade looks good in hindsight for Memphis because Marc Gasol a 2nd round pick became a franchise player but that is an extreme rarity. The rest of the names in the deal Grievoius Vasquez, Aaron Mckie, Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittendon a first round pick that was used on Donte Green and a second rounder used on Devin Ebanks.
They ended up being wrong, very, very wrong. Deng's value got worse for a few years after the deal, while Gasol went on to be one of the best players in the league and carve out the essentials of a likely HOF-career in LA with two NBA championships.
This is from a Q&A Michael Heisley (Grizzlies owner at the time), did after the trade
Q. When did you realize that a financial deal had to be made?
A. I realized it when we tried to negotiate with Chicago. They weren't interested in giving us financial relief. We had other conversations with teams and the people they were giving us back were veterans with substantial money left on their contracts. They were not of the same quality that Pau was.
We didn't feel like we had a trade that was going to give us quality for quality or someone that would change the direction of the team that much. We had conversations with Chicago which were non-satisfactory. They didn't want to take on the luxury-tax situation and Los Angeles was. In this league, if you're in a big-market area you can afford to do those things. We negotiated as hard as we could for quality players and (Chicago) refused to give up anybody in their core group. What they offered us were guys who play on the second and third team, so we turned them down.
Basically, in order to make the salary work, the Bulls needed to sign P.J. Brown to go into the luxury tax to sign-and-trade P.J. Brown on a one-year contract to the Grizzlies with a rookie contract. Management refused, Gasol became a Laker and the rest is history. So there was a scenario where the Bulls likely could have had Deng, Gasol, probably Noah and they still said no because they didn't want to pay the tax.
I don't blame them for the Kobe deal however. LA wanted Deng, but Kobe wanted Deng in Chicago. Nothing gave. The Gasol situation was inexcuable though. It was cheap and bad player evaluation.
