Mech Engineer wrote:bigworld2017 wrote:Lavine's contract will be viewed as a complete steal for The Bulls based on the production I expect to see next season. Especially if he has a back court running mate other than Dunn. Brogdon would be perfect if we can get him. Lavine is a workout junkie. He's always looking to improve himself physically and as a player. When he's on he can make it look ridiculously easy to score in the NBA. He makes it look effortless. He's still getting better. He hasn't peaked yet. And we might not be able to afford him after this contract runs out.
Lavine looked promising(not like a rookie draft pick) as a winning NBA player with some flashes for a small period of time. But, let's not go overboard and say he is a steal. First, the most important thing for an NBA player is to be on the court. That's the #1 skill. He has been hurt/injured and so has been Lauri. Hopefully, some of it was the Bulls FO deliberately doing this to lose games.
But, until he is scoring on a winning team(a playoff bound team), he has not taken the 1st or 2nd step. Then, he has to contribute at the same rate on a playoff team which wins games. Then, there is a level where he needs to contribute on a deep playoff team etc..
There is a long, long way to go...
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Not sure how to define steal but his contract is very high value.
I grabbed all non-rookie contracts in the neighborhood of Lavine's production (21-24 ppg, 4+ apg 4+ rpg) and averaged their contracts. Westbrook qualified but I threw him out because much of his value is his 10 rpg / 10 apg which nobody else has anything close to. The list ended up being Lavine, Holiday, Derozan, Kyrie, Blake.
The average value of their contracts was $26.4M. Lavine at $19.5M is only 73% of that average. Kyrie was also close at only $20M.
Lavine's contract value will also only likely grow even if Lavine never improves, because he's young and Lavine never gets any raises.
In 2022 Lavine will be 26 and making $19.5M.
In 2022 Jrue will be 31 and making $27M.
In 2021 Derozan will be 31 and making $28M.
Everyone on that list except Derozan has had injury issues, so it mostly equals out. Kyrie, Holiday, Blake are high injury risks and still got those contracts.