Lauri_Legend wrote:Bulls trade: Nobody
Bulls receive: Solid FA in summer of 2018
This is essentially what I've been hoping for too. Only I'm in the "trade for someone next season" camp instead of the "sign someone in FA" camp. If we pick up Niko's option, then we have a huge amount of trade capital next season that we could leverage into a star. We would have $30m in expiring contracts from Niko, RoLo and Holiday! Plus young guys! And all of our Picks! I mean consider this deal next year.
Trade 1: NO gives
Anthony Davis, Solomon Hill (or E’twaun Moore, or Omar Asik, really all 3 of them have terrible contracts for NO so whichever contract they would rather be rid of)
Bulls give:
Niko, RoLo, Holiday, 2 of -Grant, Portis, Valentine, Payne (whichever 2 they want) and some draft picks.
NO takes the deal because they get 2 young rotation players with upside, some draft picks, and out of the luxury tax while also shifting to build around Boogie with players who can space the floor.
Trade 2: NO gives
Anthony Davis, Solomon Hill, Omar Asik
Bulls give:
Niko, Holiday, RoLo, LaVine, 1-2 of Grant, Portis, Valentine, Payne (again whichever 2 they want), and some draft picks
In this one, they get LaVine as a nice piece to sell hope to their fans. Also they get rid of 2 bad contracts.
Yes, it would be a salary dump for NO. But at the beginning of next season, they will have $91m invested in 9 players (and that’s not counting the huge deal they need to give Boogie!). So let’s say they are at 116m with 10 players (25m/yr Boogie). Now add in 2 draft picks, so $5m ish more, and they are at 12 players at 121m already. They have some super crappy contracts and they need to fix it. Well we can come in and offer a solution to fix their cap. Our asking price would be Davis. But they wouldn’t be dumping Davis JUST for salary reasons. They would fear him declining his player option and walking away in FA for nothing, so they would try to get assets back while he still has value. But I think the fact that they are in the luxury tax would be an added incentive to take on the expiring contracts of RoLo, Niko, and Holiday. The biggest threat of other teams that can offer a better deal is probably Boston. NO has said all along that they are keeping AD. I think Boston gets tired of waiting and deploys their assets this year to go all in on winning the title now. I don’t think NO trades AD until next season at the earliest. If that’s the case, then the Bulls will be in prime position to make a fairly strong offer. And I assume LaVine will be going to them as a blue chip (or Dunn but not both because they have Holiday taking up a starting guard spot). I just don’t know how much $$ LaVine will sign for this off-season so it’s kind of hard to project what salaries NO and CHI will have to equal up. Niko, Holiday, and Lopez don’t even count as players to them (well maybe they try to retain Niko) because they would just let them walk that next off-season since they won’t have the money to pay them. They are purely half season rentals that replace several years of bad Asik, E’twaun, and/or Hill contracts.
Basically NO has to match AD’s salary with another team in a trade. Not many teams are going to have access to $30+m in expiring contracts. If NO takes players with multiyear deals in exchange for AD, then they are stuck with Boogie, Jrue Holiday, Asik, E’twaun, Hill, and whichever players they get back as their team until the 2020-21 season, paying the luxury tax the whole way. I think they will value having some flexibility in free agency and being below the tax line more.
NO obviously wouldn’t want to give AD up, but if they can get $30m in cap relief, 2-3 young players with some upside, and 2-3 draft picks, I think they at least consider that offer. Is it really so hard to imagine their management looking at a team of Jrue Holiday, LaVine, Valentine, Portis, Boogie, whatever rookie they draft this year, 4 1st rd picks in the next 2 drafts (2 from us, 2 of their own), and some cap space to sign FAs as not a decent return for losing AD???
Now that is just one scenario. You can basically replace Davis’s name with anyone next season who a team wants to move on from. But if we keep Niko and RoLo then next year we can look at guys with 1 or 2 years left on their deals who teams might consider moving for fear of losing them for no return. Here are some players on bad teams, small market teams, or teams that are capped out and will be hitting UFA soon (meaning their team will want to get something for them for fear of possibly losing them for nothing):
Kemba Walker
Kevin Love
DeMar DeRozan
Harrison Barnes
Nikola Jokic
Klay Thompson
Dramond Green
Anthony Davis
Andre Drummond
Hassan Whiteside
Obviously, some of them will get extensions, but I could also see some of them being moved. We could offer a package of $30ish mil in expiring contracts, LaVine (or Dunn), 1-2 of our young rotation guys, and 1-2 draft picks for someone. That’s really not a bad haul for a team if they are planning on losing the player anyway. Not many teams can offer that kind of compensation. Then once we have that player, it will make us more appealing for someone else to come want to team up with them. I like that scenario more than trading Niko and RoLo for a late 1st this year and hoping we get a pick high enough to get a difference maker in the lottery. Both scenarios are calculated risks, I personally like the build through trade and FA route a little better right now.