Official: Jimmy Butler, #16 to Minnesota for Lavine, Dunn, #7 - merged/Justin Patton injured

[Warren G]

You need to supplement with analytics to figure out who is being mis-cast/low-valued. When you have multiple young kids, someone is being under-valued.

True enough. There is some value in targeting the bad teams that have lots of kids. That said, the overwhelming issue, as always, is to find a #1 option. Otherwise, we do a lot of good moderate things and end up back as a low playoff seed, or at least not a true title contender. And the whole purpose of the Butler trade was to avoid just being pretty good, right?

Or you have a free agent who sees a team that plays unselfishly and defends hard, with a lot of young talent, and they go "they do things right, these young guys are good, I should go there I can help them"

As opposed to a marginal superstar recruiting a former superstar in serious decline like Butler did with Wade. Did Steph Curry look like a #1 option on a title team 4 years ago?

[Stratmaster]

Just saw a new article pop up that the Hornets were trying to make a trade for Butler before he went to the Twolves. I love the way the article characterizes the Bulls response:

"Sources say the Bulls had no interest in anything the Hornets could offer for Butler."

Poor Charlotte

[bulls4ever]

Jimmy developed cause .. it was lost. Rose was down. Gave the keys for anyone to try. He and noah took the best of opportunities. Were in the same situation.
From what i see, niko is the one takinf most of opportunity

[TheStig]

So the Bulls wanted either the #3 pick from BOS or the #4 pick from PHO for Butler, and were turned down. Those because Jayson Tatum and Josh Jackson. I would trade either of them right now for Lauri, let alone also thrown in Kris Dunn and Zach Lavine.

Kris Dunn has a chance to be an all-star one day. So does Lauri. Maybe Lavine, too. That in fact is what I DID like about the trade- instead of putting all our eggs in one basket, we got three players in return, any one of which could be better than that single #3 or #4 pick.

I'd take Tatum over Lauri

Would you take him over Lauri, Lavine, and Dunn?

It wasn't just Tatum. They would have had to send over some combo of IT, Crowder, Bradley or something.

But I do think Tatum has a higher ceiling than any of them.