You don't like the Vuc? What were the alternatives?

[kingkirk]

How many guys are needle movers regardless of all other things they can do that have these two traits that Vuc has:

1: League average (or below) efficiency
2: Near bottom of the league defensive ability at their position

This speaks to my point:

1. I believe his efficiency is what it was in Orlando because a) they were a team full of inefficent players who couldn't create, thus making it much easier to load up and make things more difficult on Vucevic and b) he's never played with anyone on offense that is even close to commanding the attention of LaVine, or any player for that matter who can consistently get him quality looks.

2. I don't think his defense is as bad as you claim. Positionally, he's in the right spot the majority of the time. He's not going to protect the rim like some centers do, when positionally, with the drop scheme, he plays it correctly. I don't think he's a good defender, however, I also don't think he's a negative on that end, either.

Moreover, the going rate for a 2-time all-star who has produced what Vucevic has is what the Bulls paid for him.

What, or maybe how, are people expecting to acquire actual talent via trade if not giving something back, an amount I would consider to be not that overpriced considering the value given up in trades for other similarly tiered players.

[dougthonus]

If you feel this way about Vuc you should be feeling the same way about LaVine because LaVine has never been able to move the needle either from a Win / Loss Perspective. I don’t see the same upside that you see in WCJ. He is always going to be an undersized center and his athleticism will never be that great. I think his ceiling has already been met and he may improve marginally but I never see him becoming an All Star Center. In 3 years Vuc will be 33 but I don’t see much of a decline as his game is based on footwork and shooting. He can remain the same level player for the next 5 years just based on his fundamentals and shooting ability. He loses neither skill set as he ages.

I absolutely feel there is similar concern with LaVine, but LaVine has been in the league seven years and has shown improvement every year and iterative improvement could still be there. However, if we just gave up two 1sts and a guy I view as a future starter for LaVine, and LaVine were 30, then I'd probably be against that trade too.

I also agree that WCJ will likely never be an all-star caliber center. I think he'll be a pedestrian starting caliber center. Vuc is an awful defensive center, but at 33, he will dramatically worse, the footspeed issue will become a massive problem on defense.

From a title perspective the Bulls maybe had a small window before Rose got hurt but this Organization has not been a title contender since Jordan left. The GarPax regime has already tried to build a team through low level lottery picks. I think there is enough of a sample size to see that this doesn’t work. Something new and different had to be done. I don’t think the Bulls would be any better off remaining status quo and hoping that the next 7-12 pick pans out.

The vast majority of good teams are built in the draft, about half of those are built around picks that aren't in the top four. It is pretty rare to achieve results outside of the draft, but the other model is two superstars decide they should join your team (Brooklyn / Clippers). We aren't set up for that scenario either.

If Vuc were 27, I would be a lot happier about this trade, because we would have time to find pieces and make it work. He's not.

[dougthonus]

This speaks to my point:

1. I believe his efficiency is what it was in Orlando because a) they were a team full of inefficent players who couldn't create, thus making it much easier to load up and make things more difficult on Vucevic and b) he's never played with anyone on offense that is even close to commanding the attention of LaVine, or any player for that matter who can consistently get him quality looks.

Maybe, we'll find out. Certainly if he becomes a highly efficient offensive player, then I will feel better about this trade, I just don't expect that at 30 he will be a better player than he was previously. Maybe there are tons of examples of players that were poor efficiency wise and joined a team with somewhat better offensive talent then become highly efficient offensive players.

2. I don't think his defense is as bad as you claim. Positionally, he's in the right spot the majority of the time. He's not going to protect the rim like some centers do, when positionally, with the drop scheme, he plays it correctly. I don't think he's a good defender, however, I also don't think he's a negative on that end, either.

Ok.

Not sure what to tell you if you think he's a net neutral defender.

Moreover, the going rate for a 2-time all-star who has produced what Vucevic has is what the Bulls paid for him.

Maybe that is the price for a 30 year old fringe all-star that doesn't add wins. If so, I'd not pay it.

What, or maybe how, are people expecting to acquire actual talent via trade if not giving something back, an amount I would consider to be not that overpriced considering the value given up in trades for other similarly tiered players.

Trades in general are something like:
Long term value for short term value (or reverse)
Long/Short term Value for money
Similar value in money/talent that improves fit or new situations for both teams

A team in the low 30s wins should be trading short term value for long term value or money for long term value IMO. The bulls traded long term value for short term value while not being in position to meaningfully capitalize on it.

This is a general theoretical approach ignoring whether the value was good or bad in this trade in particular. In my opinion, it was also poor value overall, but that's because I think Vucevic is a lot worse than you do, but ignoring my individual valuation of the player, trading long term for short term struck me as an awful decision at the moment from a philosophical perspective too.

[Wingy]

I'll concede an All Star is around 20-30% of the time in the 7-14...15...16ish range every year. That does not mean the odds of the Bulls drafting an All Star with our pick are 20-30%. We don't get 9 picks to cash in on that 20-30% chance...we get 1 pick. Depending on where that pick falls, tons of guys on the list aren't even a possibility for us.

We traded two picks not one, so we get two shots at it, not one.

I'm not sure why you think I'm being disingenuous when I used straight objective math over a 18 year sample size

Well, first - part of my statement is wrong in that if we had 9 picks in that range each draft, then in theory we'd have an excellent chance at getting an all star...say 80 or so%.

Regardless, my point was that I believe benefiting from the full odds of your objective math only applies if you get the 7th pick in both drafts. The further your pick falls, the more the field of potential all stars dwindles, and the less likely you're going to hit on one of your dart throws. In fact, only 6 of those 21 guys were picked outside the top 10. So picks 11-14 yielded an all star only 8.3% of the time (6/72 picks). It matters where you pick, and we could certainly fall in that upper half given so many key guys being young/inexperienced (they can only improve), plus marginal improvements made by the FO via smaller trades, and signings.

My "random" example with Booker/Winslow, though maybe drawn out, is simply truth in that teams do have to take their team context, and current players into account. They rarely just loose any dart they want at the whole board, and it's not unreasonable. That makes it harder to hit on the small pool of available all stars. Even if teams ignore their roster, and blindly take BPA no matter what (even when they're evaluated as negligibly better like my made up Booker/Winslow scenario) - does that drafted player, and/or the existing roster player ever realize their all star potential while they're able to stay together on the same team? Does a Zach/Donovan Mitchell-type pair work, and you see both guys rise? Maybe...good players often figure it out. Then again, you could also be diminishing both players from what they could become because they don't fit, and are too redundant.

Again, I think your overall stance is perfectly reasonable, but I still think you're overselling the alternative. It's funny, the Bulls have actually been in position to pretty much maximize the odds of your all star analysis. Yet, yes...they have been worse than random chance.

2016 - Val (14)
2017 - Lauri (7)
2018 - WCJ (7)
2019 - Coby (7)
2020 - Pat (4)

While I don't know how to calculate the odds exactly, I'm quite confident the 20-30% you're giving us is quite inflated.

Edit: I should note it's still plenty early enough for one of these guys to make the game, but none of them have the look of it happening soon. If they do...they're probably on the longer term 6-7+ year plan.

[Leslie Forman]

If you feel this way about Vuc you should be feeling the same way about LaVine

maybe some of us do

[kingkirk]

I'll concede an All Star is around 20-30% of the time in the 7-14...15...16ish range every year. That does not mean the odds of the Bulls drafting an All Star with our pick are 20-30%. We don't get 9 picks to cash in on that 20-30% chance...we get 1 pick. Depending on where that pick falls, tons of guys on the list aren't even a possibility for us.

We traded two picks not one, so we get two shots at it, not one.

I'm not sure why you think I'm being disingenuous when I used straight objective math over a 18 year sample size

Well, first - part of my statement is wrong in that if we had 9 picks in that range each draft, then in theory we'd have an excellent chance at getting an all star...say 80 or so%.

Regardless, my point was that I believe benefiting from the full odds of your objective math only applies if you get the 7th pick in both drafts. The further your pick falls, the more the field of potential all stars dwindles, and the less likely you're going to hit on one of your dart throws. In fact, only 6 of those 21 guys were picked outside the top 10. So picks 11-14 yielded an all star only 8.3% of the time (6/72 picks). It matters where you pick, and we could certainly fall in that upper half given so many key guys being young/inexperienced (they can only improve), plus marginal improvements made by the FO via smaller trades, and signings.

My "random" example with Booker/Winslow, though maybe drawn out, is simply truth in that teams do have to take their team context, and current players into account. They rarely just loose any dart they want at the whole board, and it's not unreasonable. That makes it harder to hit on the small pool of available all stars. Even if teams ignore their roster, and blindly take BPA no matter what (even when they're evaluated as negligibly better like my made up Booker/Winslow scenario) - does that drafted player, and/or the existing roster player ever realize their all star potential while they're able to stay together on the same team? Does a Zach/Donovan Mitchell-type pair work, and you see both guys rise? Maybe...good players often figure it out. Then again, you could also be diminishing both players from what they could become because they don't fit, and are too redundant.

Again, I think your overall stance is perfectly reasonable, but I still think you're overselling the alternative. It's funny, the Bulls have actually been in position to pretty much maximize the odds of your all star analysis. Yet, yes...they have been worse than random chance.

2016 - Val (14)
2017 - Lauri (7)
2018 - WCJ (7)
2019 - Coby (7)
2020 - Pat (4)

While I don't know how to calculate the odds exactly, I'm quite confident the 20-30% you're giving us is quite inflated.

Edit: I should note it's still plenty early enough for one of these guys to make the game, but none of them have the look of it happening soon. If they do...they're probably on the longer term 6-7+ year plan.

Agree with everything you noted in this post, and this thread more generally.

Further to your point, I don't believe the 20-30% hit rate for All-Star caliber guys, and if we want to really look at this considering the trade, how many of these stars that went mid to late lottery were actually better than Vucevic?

That to me should be the measure, because if we're keeping picks for players who most definitely don't fit the timeline of LaVine, that 'star' drafted at 7-14 sure as **** better be the real deal rather than passing up the opportunity to add a top 30-40 player next to another top 30-40 guy.

Example: Andre Drummond, Brook Lopez, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng etc. were players drafted in the mid-to-late lottery, of which all were all-star or borderline all-star guys, but I'm not sure if any of them had better careers than Vucevic, at least not to the point where I'm banking on the X% chance you hit on the pick and land a Giannis rather than a Drummond level of star.

[WindyCityBorn]

If you feel this way about Vuc you should be feeling the same way about LaVine

maybe some of us do

You have made quite clear LaVine can do nothing to satisfy you. Guess it kinda sucks that have you another good player to dislike now.

[WindyCityBorn]

This speaks to my point:

1. I believe his efficiency is what it was in Orlando because a) they were a team full of inefficent players who couldn't create, thus making it much easier to load up and make things more difficult on Vucevic and b) he's never played with anyone on offense that is even close to commanding the attention of LaVine, or any player for that matter who can consistently get him quality looks.

Maybe, we'll find out. Certainly if he becomes a highly efficient offensive player, then I will feel better about this trade, I just don't expect that at 30 he will be a better player than he was previously. Maybe there are tons of examples of players that were poor efficiency wise and joined a team with somewhat better offensive talent then become highly efficient offensive players.

2. I don't think his defense is as bad as you claim. Positionally, he's in the right spot the majority of the time. He's not going to protect the rim like some centers do, when positionally, with the drop scheme, he plays it correctly. I don't think he's a good defender, however, I also don't think he's a negative on that end, either.

Ok.

Not sure what to tell you if you think he's a net neutral defender.

Moreover, the going rate for a 2-time all-star who has produced what Vucevic has is what the Bulls paid for him.

Maybe that is the price for a 30 year old fringe all-star that doesn't add wins. If so, I'd not pay it.

What, or maybe how, are people expecting to acquire actual talent via trade if not giving something back, an amount I would consider to be not that overpriced considering the value given up in trades for other similarly tiered players.

Trades in general are something like:
Long term value for short term value (or reverse)
Long/Short term Value for money
Similar value in money/talent that improves fit or new situations for both teams

A team in the low 30s wins should be trading short term value for long term value or money for long term value IMO. The bulls traded long term value for short term value while not being in position to meaningfully capitalize on it.

This is a general theoretical approach ignoring whether the value was good or bad in this trade in particular. In my opinion, it was also poor value overall, but that's because I think Vucevic is a lot worse than you do, but ignoring my individual valuation of the player, trading long term for short term struck me as an awful decision at the moment from a philosophical perspective too.

Vuc is going to be good for another 4 to 5 years. Is that really short term in the NBA? Nothing about his game suggest a fall of a cliff with age.

[DJhitek]

it reminds me of the khalil mack trade by ryan pace

This looks way more like the James Shields trade. Even down to the situations of the two franchises involved.

At least Mack was an absolute no doubt All Pro, DPOY, future HOF guy. He's the best linebacker of his generation. Trading for an Embiid or something would be more similar to trading for Mack.

Pace actually had a decent idea…shame he had none of the offensive evaluation ability to actually execute it.

Agreed.

The Shields trade will go down as one of the worst trades in baseball history and despite the outcome, the Sox prioritized trying to be competitive over what should have been a tear down.

[DJhitek]

If you feel this way about Vuc you should be feeling the same way about LaVine

maybe some of us do

I’m one of those guys, but to the further the point. At least Zach is a perimeter player and a good offensive one at that. Vuc is a 30 year old center. There is a reason why that position just isn’t that important and finding replacement level centers isn’t that hard.

[qianlong]

If you feel this way about Vuc you should be feeling the same way about LaVine

maybe some of us do

I’m one of those guys, but to the further the point. At least Zach is a perimeter player and a good offensive one at that. Vuc is a 30 year old center. There is a reason why that position just isn’t that important and finding replacement level centers isn’t that hard.

And even if it were, Lavine was already on the team, we did not trade anything to get him.

I repeat my suggested plans:
Improve odds chances: trade Thad, and one or both of White/WCJ for young players or future talent.
Get to the playoff: Trade for M Turner. Similar package to the Vuc trade or better, include white and keep one of the picks. Sato/Lavine/Williams/Markannen/Turner. Not world beater but I believe a more competitive team and fixes one of the issues. Does not solve the offensive/playmaking issue, but improves defensively and maintains the offense as good as before.

Maybe there were other targets but they had to address one of our glaring weaknesses. I think Pakii94 highlighted them, and I would add to them playmaking/perimeter creation which is partially included in his points 1 and 3. If there was no good target than you don't just trade to make a trade.

As Doug says, even dismissing the current underwhelming results, Vuc does not rise the team ceiling much, does not fix one of our main weaknesses and is not a long term fit.

[dougthonus]

Well, first - part of my statement is wrong in that if we had 9 picks in that range each draft, then in theory we'd have an excellent chance at getting an all star...say 80 or so%.

Regardless, my point was that I believe benefiting from the full odds of your objective math only applies if you get the 7th pick in both drafts. The further your pick falls, the more the field of potential all stars dwindles, and the less likely you're going to hit on one of your dart throws. In fact, only 6 of those 21 guys were picked outside the top 10. So picks 11-14 yielded an all star only 8.3% of the time (6/72 picks). It matters where you pick, and we could certainly fall in that upper half given so many key guys being young/inexperienced (they can only improve), plus marginal improvements made by the FO via smaller trades, and signings.

Fair point.

My "random" example with Booker/Winslow, though maybe drawn out, is simply truth in that teams do have to take their team context, and current players into account. They rarely just loose any dart they want at the whole board, and it's not unreasonable. That makes it harder to hit on the small pool of available all stars. Even if teams ignore their roster, and blindly take BPA no matter what (even when they're evaluated as negligibly better like my made up Booker/Winslow scenario) - does that drafted player, and/or the existing roster player ever realize their all star potential while they're able to stay together on the same team? Does a Zach/Donovan Mitchell-type pair work, and you see both guys rise? Maybe...good players often figure it out. Then again, you could also be diminishing both players from what they could become because they don't fit, and are too redundant.

The same thing could randomly apply for us to take a player that would be an all-star that we would have avoided otherwise. Say we had it was Kawhi and Malik Monk, and we liked Monk more but thought he was a worse fit with Zach so took Kawhi. There's no reason to believe this influences the odds.

Again, I think your overall stance is perfectly reasonable, but I still think you're overselling the alternative.

I think I'm overselling the reverse scenario a heck of a lot less than people are overselling the current scenario. People constantly say we have two all-stars now which is technically true, but pick any two all-stars at random from this year's list and you have about a 98% chance of having a better core than we do.

While I don't know how to calculate the odds exactly, I'm quite confident the 20-30% you're giving us is quite inflated.

Almost every team that is really good is built through the draft or had multiple superstars decide they want to sign there. We aren't in position to do either of those things now. We're in position to win 40ish games for two years then full rebuild with way less assets than we'd have had otherwise.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes. I see a few outcomes, but all of them are awful. I'll just sit back and hope I'm wrong, but I'd guess in three years we have a complete dead end team with a pretty bare cupboard.

[dougthonus]

Further to your point, I don't believe the 20-30% hit rate for All-Star caliber guys, and if we want to really look at this considering the trade, how many of these stars that went mid to late lottery were actually better than Vucevic?

That to me should be the measure, because if we're keeping picks for players who most definitely don't fit the timeline of LaVine, that 'star' drafted at 7-14 sure as **** better be the real deal rather than passing up the opportunity to add a top 30-40 player next to another top 30-40 guy.

Quite frankly, that's a god awful way to understand value if you apply any mathematical approach to it at all. This method of looking at total on court value with no time period or cost would lead to the worst run franchise in the league if applied as a broad decision making platform. At a very superficial level, you'd at least need to consider:

1: On court value
2: Time this on court value will last
3: Cost of this on court value towards roster flexibility
4: Context of the team and where it is at this moment

Example: Andre Drummond, Brook Lopez, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng etc. were players drafted in the mid-to-late lottery, of which all were all-star or borderline all-star guys, but I'm not sure if any of them had better careers than Vucevic, at least not to the point where I'm banking on the X% chance you hit on the pick and land a Giannis rather than a Drummond level of star.

I would rather have a 2% chance of getting Giannis than a 1st round ceiling the next 2 years before I completely rebuild with my bare cupboard.

Anyway, I get tired of arguing about it. In two years, I'll either be proven right or wrong. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly cheers some drinks with all of you and celebrate, and if I'm right I sure won't take any joy about it, because it will massively suck for me too. That's the most depressing thing about the whole situation to me.

[dougthonus]

Vuc is going to be good for another 4 to 5 years. Is that really short term in the NBA? Nothing about his game suggest a fall of a cliff with age.

Why would you think that?

He most likely won't be able to guard anyone in the league in three years, and his game over his prime has been of only pedestrian efficiency. People like to say things like shooters age great, but they still decline significantly. I'm sure Kyle Korver will be able to shoot at 50 but he won't be on an NBA roster.

How many 270 lbs centers haven't declined significantly at age 33? The wear and tear on their bodies from years of physical pounding and carrying around all that weight make it incredibly likely there is decline.

[TheSuzerain]

The obvious alternative was a soft reboot. Keep Lavine but trade Thad/Sato for value. Trade Lauri/Coby/WCJ for value if you can. Maximize the value of our '21 pick and maximize cap space.

Trading Lavine is a separate question. It's tough to discuss because you don't know what that trade package would look like. I think it's reasonable to say he would have returned more than Vuc did which is interesting to think about.

But yeah, we've seemingly doubled down on a garbage team. Highly questionable decision-making by AK as this was GarPax's garbage and not his.

[Stratmaster]

Man with every passing game vuc seems more and more overrated. He's a nice offensive piece but he's not worth disassembling the whole team for him especially when you consider the negative he is on defense.

Yes. With every double double he puts up he shows he is overrated.

Sent from my SM-G965U using RealGM mobile app

[PaKii94]

Man with every passing game vuc seems more and more overrated. He's a nice offensive piece but he's not worth disassembling the whole team for him especially when you consider the negative he is on defense.

Yes. With every double double he puts up he shows he is overrated.

Sent from my SM-G965U using RealGM mobile app

Andre Drummond put up double doubles too. Maybe we should have gotten him?!?

[Leslie Forman]

If you feel this way about Vuc you should be feeling the same way about LaVine

maybe some of us do

You have made quite clear LaVine can do nothing to satisfy you. Guess it kinda sucks that have you another good player to dislike now.

Maybe, just maybe…there's somewhere between "yeah this guy sucks" and "yeah this guy is a superstar we need to give $200million to and build the whole team around."

[chefo]

Vuc will be fine until his mid 30s, probably. He uses strength, footwork and quick shooting to get up shots. I don't think any of these are going to change to his detriment over the next 4 years, give or take.

For one thing, I think it should be obvious that whatever it is we're doing on D makes our C look like trash defenders. Gafford just had a 4 block, 4 steal game and looks like DeAndre reincarnated with DC. WCJ looks like at least he's not a complete bust. Odds are, Vuc is nowhere near as bad as he's made out to be.

The issue with one-way stars is you need to warp the roster around them, if they're good enough. I think if Vuc and LaVine can give you 50 points / game on 60% TS, that's good enough to build around for the next 3-4 years. The issue is really that you can't have kids playing with them like Pat, Brown, (bad) Coby etc.

You need vets that hustle, can hit a 3 at a high rate, and can defend like bulldogs--Bridges, prime Ariza, KCP, Green, etc. And, you need a PG that can direct traffic a bit as well so the wheels don't fall off like they did post trade.

Coby may be able to sneak into such a rotation if he cuts down on the TO and actually becomes not worst in the league at guarding anybody with a pulse, but other than him, and maaaybe Theis, if he ever remembers how to shoot, we don't have anybody that's a good match to share the floor with them.

Pat definitely doesn't fit. Slow release, hesitant shooter, nowhere near agile enough to stay with people outside. As written above, Coby may be able to fit, but it's not a given and that will be at the expense of a guard that actually knows how to run a team. Lauri's not a good fit. Thad's not a good fit. Sato's not a good fit because he's a very hesitant shooter and not that good on D. Temple fits, but only when he can actually hit a shot, and he's old and he's definitely not worth $5M per.

You go down the roster, and they all need to go next offseason to make this thing work. Maybe keep Thad and Sato for the bench, but that's a lot of $ to shell out for two 18 minute backups. It's pointless to have 2 really good offensive players on the team, only for them to share the floor for 30 min / game with Coby and Pat who are -10 net players this season.

[Rose2Boozer]

I guess the alternative would've been to shop a package involving Markkanen/Satoransky and hold onto Carter Jr., Gafford, and two first round picks.