The Zach Lavine Problem

[BahamaBull]

Derrick Rose was pretty amazing before the ACL wasn't he?

[kyrv]

Lavine is the most bona fide talent we got in return for Jimmy (health willing), however I would argue that he is not the type of guy you want to jump start a multi-year rebuild.

This is because he only has 1 year left on his contract. If he's going to be a part of this rebuild, we are going to have to pay him A LOT of money which greatly diminishes his value. When building a new core, the last thing you want to be doing is handing out expensive deals to non-max players. Those are almost always the worst value contracts in the NBA. Very rarely do the contributions of such players exceed their cost.

Will Lavine blossom into a max player?

Even if not, will he receive a max contract anyway a la Harrison Barnes?

Would we have been better off getting future draft picks that would line up better with our lotto picks to come?

Nothing is jump starting a rebuild.

It's going to be many years of being bad.

Exactly what we demanded. I don't understand the confusion.

Lavine's contract matters little.

[kyrv]

What's the problem? If he plays really well then he'll be worth the contact and if he doesn't then he won't get a max deal and it will be easier for the Bulls to match.

Bingo. There is no problem.

The team is not being built around Lavine.

[kyrv]

Rebuilding teams have a problem spending enough money to avoid penalties, maxing out Lavine if that's his tier will be trivial. It's not money out of anyone's pocket but JR's.

You have to spend 90% of the cap in recent CBA. This leads to situations where rebuilding teams like the Sixers trade FOR McGee & Gerald Wallace's contracts so they can pay them, and then immediately waive them.

It really won't be an issue. Guys like Otto Porter and Caldwell-Pope will get max, Lavine is at least on that level.

Right. Been a long time since the Bulls were bottom of the league (for real, not our pretend). Maybe Duck or someone can make a sticky primer on rebuilding. He and others laid out very well what will happen.

[HomoSapien]

Lavine's potential is interesting but I always thought he would most likely be more of a Jamal Crawford type of player than a perennial All-Star.

[Showtime:Part2]

Look I'm a lakers fan so I have no dog in this fight. I will admit I like Lavine from his ucla days. Those of you cry bc of the Acl injury are completely off base. Acls don't impact anything post op/long term. They are easily replaced w strong grafts. What is concerning is a meniscus surgery. Meniscus transplants rarely work (they often re tear and the initial tear has to tear a specific way to even get a transplant) so you usually end up getting it partially removed. Now this is problematic bc the meniscus is like the shock absorber of your knee. Without it you get one bone smashing the other and eventually swelling and arthritis. As long as he doesn't tear that he's going to come back 100%. Take it from a guy w five knee surgeries who has read numerous studies and spoken to the top orthopedic surgeons in the country.

[bennjuiced34]

I don't view LaVine as a core piece so I'm meh either way.

If he turns into something, great. Maybe we can keep him long term. 6th man option down the road?

If he gets hurt again or doesn't regain pre-injury form, which wasn't great to begin with, meh. Cut your losses.

Only piece in the deal that I see as a long term option, or at least hope he is, Markkanen.

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[fenominon]

The thing that drives me crazy is that we had to give up a pick to deal JIMMY BUTLER!! How is it that we didn't get that package from the Wolves plus a future first or two!

[Rerisen]

People can down play the ACL, and maybe its true due to his age, he'll bounce back relatively the same as he was.

But I gotta wonder, with Thibs having his last team torpedoed by an ACL to his star in Derrick Rose, if he just didn't want take that chance again on a key guy.

[kingkirk]

He also happens to play the same position as Luka Doncic, who is probably the target at #1, assuming the Bulls are dedicated fully to a tank.

[chrispatrick]

He has been a Bull for 2 hours and he already has a "problem"????????

Yes, this was explained why in the opening post. It's a strong argument that LaVine is in no way an asset because he's about to be highly paid and probably not worth it (only because the vast majority of players on their 2nd contracts are overpaid except for the guys who are better than their max contracts, like say, Jimmy Butler).

[Rerisen]

Summer 2018 re Lavine's contract:

Pax: "We love Zach, he's an incredibly hard worker and has been nothing but great for Fred. But we think at this point in time we are going a different direction with the team. We really want to keep our options open going forward."

[chrispatrick]

Look I'm a lakers fan so I have no dog in this fight. I will admit I like Lavine from his ucla days. Those of you cry bc of the Acl injury are completely off base. Acls don't impact anything post op/long term. They are easily replaced w strong grafts. What is concerning is a meniscus surgery. Meniscus transplants rarely work (they often re tear and the initial tear has to tear a specific way to even get a transplant) so you usually end up getting it partially removed. Now this is problematic bc the meniscus is like the shock absorber of your knee. Without it you get one bone smashing the other and eventually swelling and arthritis. As long as he doesn't tear that he's going to come back 100%. Take it from a guy w five knee surgeries who has read numerous studies and spoken to the top orthopedic surgeons in the country.

I agree an ACL purely on it's own isn't too concerning at LaVine's age, but ACL tears very frequently come with other unreported damage. With Rose, we all heard rumors that there was other stuff going on his knee when he had surgery and none of us can really how clean the injury was until 12-24 months later when they're back to full speed.

[chrispatrick]

Lavine's potential is interesting but I always thought he would most likely be more of a Jamal Crawford type of player than a perennial All-Star.

This is how I've viewed him as well. Get ready to ask yourself whether Jamal Crawford is worth 20+ million.

(I'd rather pay Butler the supermax).

[chrispatrick]

To what end? We are paying him big money to make our draft picks worse?

in case he turns out to be good?

if the only price is money, we should be willing to spend on young players who have a realistic shot of turning into good nba players! we can afford to swing and miss right now if it turns out he doesn't return to form

Being good isn't enough. He'd need to turn out to be a max level player.

What you're describing is not an effective way to build an NBA contender.

The point of rebuilding is to acquire a core of eventual max talents. Filling the team with "good" players will only hurt your lotto odds. Ideally you will be able gather a few max talents on rookie deals, and then spend up to the soft cap prior to needing to re-sign the young guns. The 76ers are doing this to a T.

Lavine is likely incompatible with that approach. We should deal with LaVine like the 76ers dealt with MCW.

This is absolutely true. You don't get good by paying good players good money. You get good by finding players who can outperform max contracts. The Bulls don't have a player on their roster with that potential.

[chrispatrick]

mcw was much more likely to be bad and the sixers got a good asset for him

if the bulls can obviously win a trade centered around lavine, sure, go for it. but he's not good enough on his own to inflate this team's record meaningfully, and he's not bad enough to discard out of hand. he's an intriguing young talent. take some time to see where that goes.

Why do we say MCW was more likely to be bad? MCW never had terrible on/off court numbers and was healthy.

LaVine is really your volume stats on a bad team guy, albeit with exciting athleticism.

[chrispatrick]

Last year, he's rank 66th among 86 PG in the league in RPM. (Dunn is 68th, please kill me)

His team ORtg is 109.5 when he is on course
112.1 when he is off course (read : his team score more effectively when he is NOT play)

And we traded the #3 RPM player in the league for them.

Chrissake do we have an analytics team? I know we do, maybe they aren't any good, or our old gumshoe GMs refuse to listen to them.

It's actually hugely concerning that he's a negative despite already being very efficient. I mean where's the upside? He's not likely to get better at defense to help that end, and he's close to maxed out on offense, unless he turns into Durant, which is a pipe dream.

At least you'd hope they could steal some kind of overlooked impact guy off another team, who might not have volume stats, but rather offers intangibles to help a team win. But nope.

If you're a fan of basketball analytics, you are in disbelief over this trade. It's clear our front office is not a fan, which is partially what got us in this mess to begin with.

[realEAST]

He also happens to play the same position as Luka Doncic, who is probably the target at #1, assuming the Bulls are dedicated fully to a tank.

I think Doncic is going to be SF in NBA. But if in position I'd take Porter over him every time. He'd have greater impact than Rose had on the team.

[packforfreedom]

You will love him. I still think, he's got more upside than Wiggins. His shot is wonderful, he has great range even beyond the tree point line, he moves very well without the ball, he is a good catch and shooter, improving as a cutter, he's improved a lot in terms of playmaking, last year he was attacking the rim more often, which worked out pretty well for him, he's a major tough shot maker and the type of player who can save the game by making 3 long threes in a row. He's a great fastbreak player and his work ethic might be one of the best in the league. He also seems like a really nice guy.

His defense is still bad, but he's getting better. his shot selection is still suspect at times, but this is what great scorers do.
In my opinion he's a max player without a question.

[Zipserino]

LaVine is the only good piece of this trade.