What's the plan - Blow-it-up or Maximize?

[drosereturn]

If I was AK, I would blow it up and make trades early and often.

He does not have any attachment to any of these players, and its in his best interests to find guys early on he believes will fit his vision for this team.

This does not necessarily mean taking a step back, it could just mean moving guys out for a equal amount of talent back that more fits his long term plan.

I would start with one way players, and try to bring back two way guys. You have to keep Zach, unless you could bring back another guy with similar offense. Maybe in year another guy might show some promise allowing him to be moved.

But until then, I think Zach should stay. (He either improves, or someone else makes him expendable).

Having attachment to any of these players is terrible gming bc none of them are even close to all star or will be one.
That being said you cannot keep lavine and expect a roster overhaul since he has the most value like a top 5 pick.
AK has to build a roster that can make the playoffs with just spending 60mi so he can add 2 max players like the Nets did.
Its not really a blow up if Lavine is making one thired of your cap and not contributing to a number 1 option.
Lavine, Lauri, Carter, Porter are making big money yet doing nothing. Same with White. I dont want to wait another 3 yrs to blossom when they have to pay him and eliminate any cap space. Need more nba ready players that that like Herro, Nunn who can contribute from day 1.

[drosereturn]

There's nothing to blow up here. You can't trade guys for a whole lot anyway. You draft the best players available regardless of fit because no one here is good enough to worry about their feelings. I don't think you go about intentionally losing. That wasn't a good strategy too often regardless of the times and is a lot worse of one with the new lottery odds.

At the same time, there's not a position on this roster where you say "we're all set there, I'm not going to draft this guy".

You need to keep blowing up every yr esp if guys are contract extension looming (Lavine, Lauri, Porter) and rookies thats not going to be good until their next extension. (White, Carter) None of these players are performing compared to their draft stock or the salary they are making and your just literally wasting time developing when they will be fas by the time you spent yrs.

I just never understand why the Bulls prospects take so many yrs to develop. Why cant they be just like MPJ and be a unicorn?
Its not like these guys even have a ceiling and mostly are high floors. Just terrible assortment of players.
If the Bulls can get 80% of their worth they need to trade every single guy to create 100 mil cap space and start over with 5frps.

[dougthonus]

You need to keep blowing up every yr esp if guys are contract extension looming (Lavine, Lauri, Porter) and rookies thats not going to be good until their next extension. (White, Carter) None of these players are performing compared to their draft stock or the salary they are making and your just literally wasting time developing when they will be fas by the time you spent yrs.

What does that mean in reality though? You aren't going to get much of anything for any of those guys. You want to dump every young player for 50 cents on the dollar just to "blow it up" because they don't have high ceilings? I mean in the end, if you do find a unicorn or two then you will need decent players next to them.

I just never understand why the Bulls prospects take so many yrs to develop. Why cant they be just like MPJ and be a unicorn?
Its not like these guys even have a ceiling and mostly are high floors. Just terrible assortment of players.
If the Bulls can get 80% of their worth they need to trade every single guy to create 100 mil cap space and start over with 5frps.

In the end, you are right that you need to find talent, but I wouldn't throw away the decent talent players we have for picks that have an 80% chance to end up being less talent and come due in the future. If you are aiming for this class, it's awful, if you're aiming for the future, then it really depends on what you're getting back. There's obviously a pretty wide gap between getting a pick from a good team and a lousy one.

[Bulldog23]

Lavine is the weak spot, outside of his ability to score..no other value. He can’t defend, And he doesn’t make many assists. If there is trade out there for him...he should go. But then again...not sure what a average coach can get out of this team and it’s players..I think the Bulls wait it out till AK can see how they play together with an actual coach.

[dougthonus]

Lavine is the weak spot, outside of his ability to score..no other value. He can’t defend, And he doesn’t make many assists. If there is trade out there for him...he should go. But then again...not sure what a average coach can get out of this team and it’s players..I think the Bulls wait it out till AK can see how they play together with an actual coach.

Literally every player on the team is a bigger weakspot than LaVine. I mean you still should be open to trading LaVine, he's not a star, but he's still the best player the Bulls have and isn't on a bad deal. I'd be open to shopping him though only because you are down to two years of control on him and then you'll need to reup at current market prices.

[MrSparkle]

Yeah. As far as trading Zach goes....

The only Bull of true value is LaVine, and I don’t care if he’s Erik Murphy on defense and has 1-eye: he’s by and far the most dominant scorer on the team.

I do think that the Bulls would be fun to watch (offensively) if Zach actually shifted to SF. I’m open to the idea of Hayes.

Hayes-Coby-Zach would be a fun trio. Three 3P threats; 1 great passer and 2 ultra-fast runners. Close your eyes on defense.... but it’s okay because you can potentially get 80 points from the 3 guys.

Bottom-line for a trade would be Edwards (Top-2 pick) and a good player, or a star and pick (Beal and 4/9 swap, Zach for Ingram S&T & #13)... all I can really think of. Or of course a big offer for Simmons, Embiid, etc. Healthy stars aren’t growing on trees. Of course a super 2023-27 unprotected FRP package would be cool, but I don’t know which team would offer that. Maybe GM Brand? I’d do Horford, Richardson, Thybull for Zach, Felicio, Sato if we get back atleast 4 unprotected picks.

[jumpman23j]

It's gonna be almost 2 years since we last saw these guys when they resume-

There will be a lot of movement and players changing teams and revenue becomes a problem for franchises.

I think we wait and see who spent the time bulking up and getting better (Coby/Zach)

All I want is to get rid of Porter and Thad and Felatio.
After that let me see what we have and who is out there for the taking.

@Felatio

[Southpaw]

I'm on the "Blow it up" camp but not right now. I think we should first rebuild the players' values because only LaVine has high value right now. If a good deal comes along tho, anyone is available. Watching these bubble playoffs, it's clear that the most important players right in the league other than the superstars are the interchangeable wings. Look at the remaining teams in the bubble, most of them has at least two 2-way wings who are interchangeable position wise. Boston has Tatum/Brown/Smart, Toronto has OG/Powell/Siakam, Miami has Butler/Herro/Nunn/Iggy/Crowder, Clippers has Kawhi/George/Green/Morris, Nuggets has Harris/Grant/Barton, Houston has Covington/Tucker/Gordon/House/Green and the Lakers has Lebron/Green/Caruso/Kuzma/Morris.

Looking at our lineup, only OPJ and maybe Hutchinson fit the bill and both of them are injury prone. We should target those type of players either through the draft, FA or trades.

EDIT: and for the people pointing to the Philly Process as a cautionary tale on why tanking is bad, they still have 2 superstars and the reason why it is failing now is because of what they did after drafting those 2 superstars.

[MGB8]

The reason that I'm not in the "blow it up" camp, at least not yet, is because of something that someone else brought up on this thread - Jim Boylen.

I tend to think that not only was he a bad coach, generally, but he actually impaired the development of most of the Bulls players -- with maybe the sole exception of Zach LaVine. Zach may be one of those guys who, while not happy, actually does improve when being pushed by a j@ck-wagon... but the other players, not so much.

I also don't think that the Bulls built a team that players in the best position to succeed, in part because they held on to the "big stretch 4, defensive or two-way 5" too long. I think that the "big 4," stretch or otherwise, is largely obsolete --- with the exception of unicorns like Giannis, etc., who have SF skills on both ends but just happen to be 6'10 or taller and so add an extra defensive dimension.

[MGB8]

To build on the above post, if the "big 4" is basically obsolete, as I've come to think, then Lauri has no future at the 4.

So if he has an NBA future, it would be as an "offensive" 5. A guy who is a minor liability on defense - not providing a lot of help defense as well as not strong enough for certain fairly rare matchups - but whose offensive skills outweigh the defensive limitation. Lauri might well have a future there. His feet are "good enough" that he can switch a bit, especially if he's starting on the opposing 5. If they put a slower defender on him, Lauri is quick enough to have a matchup advantage. If they play super small and Lauri is at the 5, then he can potentially isolate in the mid or even low post. I also think he has more passing ability than he's been given the opportunity to show.

But as a 4, he was relegated to a spot up shooter and there wasn't a lot of space inside - he and Wendell Carter Jr. competed for the same sorts of looks and touches. More than that, he's not quick enough to get past smaller, quicker defenders, and his size isn't that great an advantage against those defenders if he's stuck at the perimeter. So I do think that there's an issue of "not knowing what we have." I think that there's a 50% chance or so that Lauri could be a high-quality "offensive 5" - a net positive. And maybe a 25% chance that he can be just "passable" and a 25% chance that he's more of a liability than a benefit.

But we never really tried Lauri as an "offensive 5" in a more "run and gun" game plan.

I think that there's about a 95% chance that WCJr. is a starting level, non-liability but non-matchup advantage "two-way" 5 --- a guy who's "good enough" but doesn't change the game either way --- "passable" --- and a 5% chance that he becomes better than that. But I also think that, in the modern NBA, there's about a 95% chance that these two players do not work next to each other on a lineup (except for in very rare matchup situations) - and that playing them together hurts both players (a la playing Old Man Horford next to Embiid).

[MGB8]

As for the guards in wings, I think that there may be a 50% chance that Coby and Lauri can in fact share the ball enough that they would make an effective starting backcourt. But because of the disorganized slop that the Bulls put out there -- very little structure, something that's very important for rookies and younger players like Coby or not naturally high BBall IQ players like LaVine, so I don't think that we really got a chance to see if that could happen.

As for the wings, injury more than anything else makes it hard to see what the Bulls have. But at this point my feeling is that, until proven otherwise, the Bulls have nothing. Even if Porter is healthy, he doesn't seem to likely be in the long term plan - meaning the Bulls need two "small forwards" - one for the 3, and one for the 4.

That said, if Porter was available for a lower salary for another contract, I could see him fitting as a "small forward" 4. But even then, I'm not sure his creation abilities meet what teams are looking for nowadays. While his game is more versatile than Deng's was, I don't think he's even where Mikal Bridges is in terms of ability to make a play with the ball in his hands, much less even a Harrison Barnes (or a Blake Griffin, who, if fully healthy, has the athleticism of a wing in a 4's body, and the handle to boot - ditto Aaron Gordon but he has a serious lack of bball IQ and doesn't fit with the higher upside, if he's every healthy enough, Isaac). The notion of a guy who is almost fully limited to scoring off catch and shoots and their own movement, outside of defensive 5's, I think, like the "big 4" is now more or less obsolete.

[FriedRise]

I'd gut this team if we can get back one of these high caliber small forwards. You need at least one elite 6'6 - 6'9 two-way star to build around and then surround him with complimentary players/shooters if you want to succeed in this league. The archetype of Kawhi, Butler, PG13, LeBron, Doncic, Harden, Tatum, Brown, Durant, Giannis, etc.

It's too bad that the majority of the Bulls lottery picks were spent on bigs, because after forwards and guards, that's about the last position you need to round out the team. Houston already stopped pretending that centers matter; you can't offer them Wendell or Lauri and expect to get much back because they really don't value that position much, and this is the direction of the modern NBA.

The irony here is that we had one of these players in Butler and could've / should've built around him after the 3 Alphas season. But GarPax' incompetence prevented us from doing that and being able to draft, develop, or flip any of our assets we had at the time (and why our cupboard seemed so bare). They kept trading better players for a collection of worse players so we ended up with nothing in the end.

[The Box Office]

These current kids will be gone anyway. 100%. They missed 3 consecutive years of playoffs. Not "barely" missed either. They missed it by a massive gap the previous 3 years. No one currently here is worth keeping. No one.

[MGB8]

These current kids will be gone anyway. 100%. They missed 3 consecutive years of playoffs. Not "barely" missed either. They missed it by a massive gap the previous 3 years. No one currently here is worth keeping. No one.

See, I don't know about that. First, the team was very young - and absent a superstar young teams don't tend to make the playoffs. Even the Grizzlies this year were a bit older than the Bulls - and they had Ja Morant and JJJ, along with Dillon Brooks and the veteran Valenciunas.

The Bulls don't have a Morant, but Porter was injured and that made a big difference. Meanwhile, the coaching instability, and particularly how bad a coach Boylen was, has to play into calculations.

LaVine is a very solid NBA player and frankly underrated by some of the loudest voices on this forum. Coby White had poor efficiency but, despite everything, was trending in the right direction. Now the rest of the players actually regressed from what they had done in the past: Sato and Thad both underperformed significantly as to recent years; Dunn looked improved on defense but his stats on offense were terrible; Markkanen took a step backwards, Carter Jr. barely improved in his 2nd season, and Hutchinson was both injured and unimproved! Valentine didn't even really get much of a chance to show was also trending backwards.

But Boylen is gone, and getting rid of a negative influence for a net neutral or, gasp, positive influence (see Spo, Stevens, etc.) could really change how we see the Bulls "assets" as it were.

I'm not saying I'm optimistic - I think that there are real problems with the roster, though more due to the change in the nature of the NBA than the players themselves (that we have a glut of guys who need to play the "5" in the new NBA in Lauri, WCJ, and Gafford, and while Thad can hold down the fort at the 4 well enough, and Porter and Hutchinson contribute at the "small forward 4" of the new NBA as well, the Bulls are low on quality wings). But I can't discount that the Bulls players may be significantly better than the trash heap we saw last season.

[nomorezorro]

His physical limitations aren't really going anywhere. Poor wingspan with below average vertical explosion. Makes it highly likely he's never going to be a guy getting to the line all that much.

His shooting projects as decent enough but surely not elite.

Similarly, he certainly hasn't shown anything (in college or the pros) to indicate he's going to have above average vision or passing as a guard at the NBA level.

He's fine, but it's pretty obvious he's a bench guard. Yet people here talk about him like he's some sort of pillar of the rebuild.

i straight-up hate analyzing a 20-year old like this

i'm all for tempering expectations, and i don't think you should plan around coby being a needle-moving player. but he's played 65 games in the nba! people get better sometimes!

[nomorezorro]

i think the OP is a false dichotomy. you can't blow the roster up overnight, and you can't be so locked into keeping your roster in tact that you're not willing to make a smart move ASAP should the opportunity arise.

from a team-building perspective, you have to balance all of that. i think it's pretty obvious that nobody on our team has established themselves as irreplaceable, but you also can't write off the possibility that they're useful pieces in the right context.

short-term decisions probably lean more toward creating a better environment for the players who are already here — to help their development, to inflate their value and to give the front office a better sense of who they are in an optimal scenario.
long-term decisions should be focused on getting a legitimate franchise centerpiece + acquiring players that put the bulls in a good position to build a winning team.

[meekrab]

There's nothing to blow up here.

Unfortunately, this. We don't know how the team would have looked with OPJ healthy for the last two years, but based on the games we got to see, this is a team of bench players, rookies, and Zach LaVine.

The right move IMO is to hire an experienced head coach and let him know he's running the show, draft BPA, give them 6 months to do their thing and see what offers you've got at the trade deadline. This shouldn't be a dramatic offseason unless Boston or OKC come calling after LaVine.

[Onibuh]

Need to Keep the Young Talent and build something up.
Need to stop paying guys like Sato and Young to those contracts and have Felicio and Porter gone after the Season.

[BullsFTW]

Hire the best coach candidate, draft the BPA, stand pat. Use next season to evaluate the team and go from there. LaVine, Coby, Lauri, and WCJ should all be given an opportunity to showcase their talent under a new coach and new management. I think AKME will be patient with this process.

[MrFortune3]

Keep building. You have the #4 pick in the draft. If properly selected and developed you should be taking a franchise cornerstone and helping boost the overall team.