Wiretap: Bulls Hope To Re-Sign Zach LaVine At $14M-$16M

[SensiBull]

All players are in it for as much as they can get, and no one begrudges them that. Zach has every right to ask for the max. So does Ryan Arcidiocono. It's not their job to ask for less.

Hell, I should get the max.

It's when fans start talking about not supporting the team any more if they don't give it them that Houston has a problem.

[SensiBull]

Or when the team itself starts talking about actually paying it.

[TheJordanRule]

Dayum.

[BTW TheJordanRule, wasn't it you who was talking about Mario Hezonja?

I went and looked up some of his games, and I really liked what I saw. Moves REALLY well without the ball, has an eye for teammates, dangerous from deep range, defends well in the post for his size.

Stats over the entirety of last season didn't really seem to back that up, and, because I don't follow Orlando, I don't know the ins and outs, but, he seemed to struggle at the beginning of last season, found some form in December, exploded onto the scene in February and then kind of just maintained decency for the rest of the season.

The price tags people are talking about for him next season seem like bargains for a player with an array of facets to his game.]

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Yes, SensiBull, I completely agree with your statement in bold. Mario started 30 games for the Magic-- more games than Zach even played-- and Mario's numbers as a starter were fairly strong: 14 points per game, 5.6 rebounds per game, 2.2 assists on strong percentages (a TS % of .570, which included 46 percent from FG, and 83 percent from the line). Mario's numbers off the bench were awful, but he played his way into a more significant role for the Magic by season's end. This is a kid who came up the hard way, who understands how to be a good teammate instead of a ball stopping black hole, who will probably join us at a third or half the price that Zach will cost us. People are going to devalue Mario because he doesn't have Zach's world class athleticism, but Mario does have a fair amount of potential in his own right as evidenced by the fact that the Magic spent the #5 pick in the 2015 NBA draft on Mario.

[JimmyJammer]

Money is apparently getting tight to the point where many agents are already thinking that they are going to be fired. That bodes well for the fans wanting the Bulls to lowball LaVine. Two years ago, when the shrewd Adam Silver approached the Player's Association about spreading the salary cap increase over multiple years, the Player's Association, shortsighted as usual, was not about to hear it. The idea was to prevent a big escalation of salaries over one Summer. What happened was, average and below average players benefited a great deal from that huge influx of cash in the system. So, today you have a system where guys like Mozgov, Deng, Noah, Tristan Thompson, JR Smith, Michael Conley Jr are some of the highest paid guys in the league. The inequality of salaries is ridiculous. Middle tier free-agents are going to suffer big time this offseason because there appears to be no more middle class in the NBA. Thank God for an organization greatly run like the Bulls, we are not in this predicament. If they were not that smart we'd be in a situation where we have start thinking about supermaxing Butler. Ouch, that **** would have hurt. I actually think that the Player's Association president should be fired already for her lack of judgment.

https://hoopshype.com/2018/06/29/nba-agents-analyze-dry-market-many-of-us-will-be-fired-this-summer/

[chrispatrick]

Money is apparently getting tight to the point where many agents are already thinking that they are going to be fired. That bodes well for the fans wanting the Bulls to lowball LaVine. Two years ago, when the shrewd Adam Silver approached the Player's Association about spreading the salary cap increase over multiple years, the Player's Association, shortsighted as usual, was not about to hear it. The idea was to prevent a big escalation of salaries over one Summer. What happened was, average and below average players benefited a great deal from that huge influx of cash in the system. So, today you have a system where guys like Mozgov, Deng, Noah, Tristan Thompson, JR Smith, Michael Conley Jr are some of the highest paid guys in the league. The inequality of salaries is ridiculous. Middle tier free-agents are going to suffer big time this offseason because there appears to be no more middle class in the NBA. Thank God for an organization greatly run like the Bulls, we are not in this predicament. If they were not that smart we'd be in a situation where we have start thinking about supermaxing Butler. Ouch, that **** would have hurt. I actually think that the Player's Association president should be fired already for her lack of judgment.

https://hoopshype.com/2018/06/29/nba-agents-analyze-dry-market-many-of-us-will-be-fired-this-summer/

Super maxing Butler would have been a very good use of money provided he maintained his current level of play. Question is whether the minor injuries would have taken their toll by the time he's eligible and that's a question nobody can answer for sure. Make no mistake that the current version of Butler is worth that type of contract. Butler's not nearly as valuable as the top 5 or so guys in the NBA but he's still a guy whose current contract was artificially limited by the max, just not to the degree of a LeBron/KD/Harden type who would probably fetch $80+M in an uncapped system.

Even if the middle-tier is going to get less money this year, the middle-tier is still overpaid because they're essentially funneled all of the money that guys like LeBron/KD would get in an uncapped system. The fact that a guy who has been a bad player his entire career in LaVine is going to get an 8 figure per year contract is evidence of that. I'd be surprised if teams have truly learned from shoveling money at mediocrity (or in LaVine's case, worse).

The good thing about getting Lauri in the Butler trade is we can let it go. We don't have to re-sign LaVine to justify the trade, we already have a strong asset in Lauri. While Lauri probably isn't a number one, he's enough that we can all move on and don't have to throw money at sunk costs. We flushed $8M per season down the toilet with Felicio last year, let's not make that mistake again.

[WindyCityBorn]

Money is apparently getting tight to the point where many agents are already thinking that they are going to be fired. That bodes well for the fans wanting the Bulls to lowball LaVine. Two years ago, when the shrewd Adam Silver approached the Player's Association about spreading the salary cap increase over multiple years, the Player's Association, shortsighted as usual, was not about to hear it. The idea was to prevent a big escalation of salaries over one Summer. What happened was, average and below average players benefited a great deal from that huge influx of cash in the system. So, today you have a system where guys like Mozgov, Deng, Noah, Tristan Thompson, JR Smith, Michael Conley Jr are some of the highest paid guys in the league. The inequality of salaries is ridiculous. Middle tier free-agents are going to suffer big time this offseason because there appears to be no more middle class in the NBA. Thank God for an organization greatly run like the Bulls, we are not in this predicament. If they were not that smart we'd be in a situation where we have start thinking about supermaxing Butler. Ouch, that **** would have hurt. I actually think that the Player's Association president should be fired already for her lack of judgment.

https://hoopshype.com/2018/06/29/nba-agents-analyze-dry-market-many-of-us-will-be-fired-this-summer/

Super maxing Butler would have been a very good use of money provided he maintained his current level of play. Question is whether the minor injuries would have taken their toll by the time he's eligible and that's a question nobody can answer for sure. Make no mistake that the current version of Butler is worth that type of contract. Butler's not nearly as valuable as the top 5 or so guys in the NBA but he's still a guy whose current contract was artificially limited by the max, just not to the degree of a LeBron/KD/Harden type who would probably fetch $80+M in an uncapped system.

Even if the middle-tier is going to get less money this year, the middle-tier is still overpaid because they're essentially funneled all of the money that guys like LeBron/KD would get in an uncapped system. The fact that a guy who has been a bad player his entire career in LaVine is going to get an 8 figure per year contract is evidence of that. I'd be surprised if teams have truly learned from shoveling money at mediocrity (or in LaVine's case, worse).

The good thing about getting Lauri in the Butler trade is we can let it go. We don't have to re-sign LaVine to justify the trade, we already have a strong asset in Lauri. While Lauri probably isn't a number one, he's enough that we can all move on and don't have to throw money at sunk costs. We flushed $8M per season down the toilet with Felicio last year, let's not make that mistake again.

We are resigning LaVine. Get over it and get on board.

[Betta Bulleavit]

Money is apparently getting tight to the point where many agents are already thinking that they are going to be fired. That bodes well for the fans wanting the Bulls to lowball LaVine. Two years ago, when the shrewd Adam Silver approached the Player's Association about spreading the salary cap increase over multiple years, the Player's Association, shortsighted as usual, was not about to hear it. The idea was to prevent a big escalation of salaries over one Summer. What happened was, average and below average players benefited a great deal from that huge influx of cash in the system. So, today you have a system where guys like Mozgov, Deng, Noah, Tristan Thompson, JR Smith, Michael Conley Jr are some of the highest paid guys in the league. The inequality of salaries is ridiculous. Middle tier free-agents are going to suffer big time this offseason because there appears to be no more middle class in the NBA. Thank God for an organization greatly run like the Bulls, we are not in this predicament. If they were not that smart we'd be in a situation where we have start thinking about supermaxing Butler. Ouch, that **** would have hurt. I actually think that the Player's Association president should be fired already for her lack of judgment.

https://hoopshype.com/2018/06/29/nba-agents-analyze-dry-market-many-of-us-will-be-fired-this-summer/

Super maxing Butler would have been a very good use of money provided he maintained his current level of play. Question is whether the minor injuries would have taken their toll by the time he's eligible and that's a question nobody can answer for sure. Make no mistake that the current version of Butler is worth that type of contract. Butler's not nearly as valuable as the top 5 or so guys in the NBA but he's still a guy whose current contract was artificially limited by the max, just not to the degree of a LeBron/KD/Harden type who would probably fetch $80+M in an uncapped system.

Even if the middle-tier is going to get less money this year, the middle-tier is still overpaid because they're essentially funneled all of the money that guys like LeBron/KD would get in an uncapped system. The fact that a guy who has been a bad player his entire career in LaVine is going to get an 8 figure per year contract is evidence of that. I'd be surprised if teams have truly learned from shoveling money at mediocrity (or in LaVine's case, worse).

The good thing about getting Lauri in the Butler trade is we can let it go. We don't have to re-sign LaVine to justify the trade, we already have a strong asset in Lauri. While Lauri probably isn't a number one, he's enough that we can all move on and don't have to throw money at sunk costs. We flushed $8M per season down the toilet with Felicio last year, let's not make that mistake again.

I see your angle. I honestly do. However, just because Lavine hasn’t performed well by certain metrics doesn’t make him a bad or otherwise, negative value player. We don’t know what kind of a jump he would have taken last year had he not had to spend all last off season and the first half of the regular season rehabbing. For all of the talk of him being a net negative player, he was widely regarded as a rising player up to that point. I know this is difficult for the naysayers to accept, but that much is a fact.

Zach is a guy that we know has the ability to be an elite level scorer that has defensive deficiencies that tend to hurt his overall value on the court. We also know that he’s been in situations up to this point that haven’t done him any favors in that regard. Nobody is arguing that he doesn’t need to get significantly better in certain aspects of the game. Just that at the age of 24, there is still a strong chance that that could happen and we should be the ones reaping the benefits if and when that happens.

So then we get to the topic of the money. People need to realize that the money that we don’t spend on Zach is going to be spent somewhere. And as you look across the league, there are several guys with similar value to Zach that are going to make significant dollars. So it’s just a matter of which player are you going to take your gamble on. If you gamble on Zach, you’re basically taking a gamble on the idea that he will become a better player defensively. If he does, you will have a potential all star. If he doesn’t, you got an overpaid Jamal Crawford for a few years until he becomes an expiring contract. Either way, it isn’t going to prohibit us from going after a max FA if we decide to do so in 2019.

[JimmyJammer]

Money is apparently getting tight to the point where many agents are already thinking that they are going to be fired. That bodes well for the fans wanting the Bulls to lowball LaVine. Two years ago, when the shrewd Adam Silver approached the Player's Association about spreading the salary cap increase over multiple years, the Player's Association, shortsighted as usual, was not about to hear it. The idea was to prevent a big escalation of salaries over one Summer. What happened was, average and below average players benefited a great deal from that huge influx of cash in the system. So, today you have a system where guys like Mozgov, Deng, Noah, Tristan Thompson, JR Smith, Michael Conley Jr are some of the highest paid guys in the league. The inequality of salaries is ridiculous. Middle tier free-agents are going to suffer big time this offseason because there appears to be no more middle class in the NBA. Thank God for an organization greatly run like the Bulls, we are not in this predicament. If they were not that smart we'd be in a situation where we have start thinking about supermaxing Butler. Ouch, that **** would have hurt. I actually think that the Player's Association president should be fired already for her lack of judgment.

https://hoopshype.com/2018/06/29/nba-agents-analyze-dry-market-many-of-us-will-be-fired-this-summer/

Super maxing Butler would have been a very good use of money provided he maintained his current level of play. Question is whether the minor injuries would have taken their toll by the time he's eligible and that's a question nobody can answer for sure. Make no mistake that the current version of Butler is worth that type of contract. Butler's not nearly as valuable as the top 5 or so guys in the NBA but he's still a guy whose current contract was artificially limited by the max, just not to the degree of a LeBron/KD/Harden type who would probably fetch $80+M in an uncapped system.

Even if the middle-tier is going to get less money this year, the middle-tier is still overpaid because they're essentially funneled all of the money that guys like LeBron/KD would get in an uncapped system. The fact that a guy who has been a bad player his entire career in LaVine is going to get an 8 figure per year contract is evidence of that. I'd be surprised if teams have truly learned from shoveling money at mediocrity (or in LaVine's case, worse).

The good thing about getting Lauri in the Butler trade is we can let it go. We don't have to re-sign LaVine to justify the trade, we already have a strong asset in Lauri. While Lauri probably isn't a number one, he's enough that we can all move on and don't have to throw money at sunk costs. We flushed $8M per season down the toilet with Felicio last year, let's not make that mistake again.

The trickle-down effet of signing Butler to a supermax contract would have been to sign other middle tier players to generous deals to keep the treadmill going. We tried to do that with Rondo and Wade, to much no avail, and it would have kept on going had we not let go of Butler. I call that the perpetual journey to mediocrity. Additionally, I don't foresee Butler having a long productive career that would have matched his salary. He has been one of the guys playing the most minutes over the last three years in NBA, and his style of play makes matters worse. He'll break down like Luol Deng did. My point is there are too many average and below average players who are poisoning the system, which is going to make it hard for guys like Lavine, kantavious Pope, Bledsoe and Bradley to get a fair deal this offseason.

[TheJordanRule]

We are resigning LaVine at the right price. Get over it and get on board.

Fixed lol. An unqualified yes on Zach regardless of price tag? Who are you to say that? Please don't tell me you're working for the team UNLESS *gasp*... you were involved in the deal we made to re-sign Felicio weren't you lol.

[bullsnewdynasty]

If Bulls didn't believe in LaVine then why did they trade Jimmy for him as the centerpiece of the deal? Has LaVine done anything to fall out of favor since then? I don't really think so. Keep in mind he's only 23 too so on a 5 year deal you get his prime.

[bullsnewdynasty]

Ok If Lavine is fully recovered IMHO he is our best asset/player beside Lauri hands down. I’m not understanding how you can sit here and type that Lavine is one of our worse On this roster?

Let's see. Lowest IQ player on the roster. Tunnel vision. Despite scoring a bunch of points, he doesn't make the offense better. Didn't make the the Wolves offense better when on the floor, in fact made it WORSE. One of the worst defensive players in the entire league. Makes the Bulls defense much much worse. Made the Wolves defense much worse. Not a good playmaker, or passer. Doesn't make anybody around him better, in fact makes everybody who plays with him worse. The team got beaten down by 13.2 PP100 when he was on the floor.

In what World is that a top player on any team. He jumps high, runs fast, won the dunk contest. He's not a good basketball player though. At least hasn't been in his four years in the league.

He has been a negative impact player for four seasons. Ok, for three seasons. Even in the period just before his ACL injury when he was semi efficient, he still was a negative impact player.

A lot of people said the same things about Rose when he was here, but to each his own. I hope you remember that even in his MVP season people were trying to say the Bulls' defense was 10 points better with Rose off the floor and net neutral on offense so those +/- arguments can always go both ways. No one is really saying LaVine is a star right now but don't you think you're being a little tough evaluating a 23 year old who was basically still rehabbing his injury for 20 games? I don't think anyone can deny that LaVine has the physical tools to be a star, and yes you would be paying him based on potential that he has not yet achieved. But if you're the Bulls and you made the trade for him, you clearly believed in his talent, so why would you give up on him so early?

[dynasty_maker]

Isn't it amazing that despite all of the core and talent on the Celtics that top FA's seem more attracted to the Lakers than the Celtics?
That's insane from a basketball standpoint.

If I'm an upcoming Star who is still in my 20's, I would rather cement my legacy on a team where I can be featured player, and build a legacy and not jump on a team which just made it to the ECF. And who wouldn't prefer to live in LA over Boston?

That's just me personally though.

Boston is a great city.

[transplant]

LaVine has played 20-something games for the Bulls. He was undeniably bad. If the Bulls re-sign him, I can understand giving the FO the benefit of the doubt, but I can't blame fans who don't want serious money thrown at him. You can't ask them to unsee what they saw.

[StunnerKO]

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[petebraun0]

I just read an interesting paragraph on Zack Lavine that mentioned that we do not risk his injury concerns, but sign and trade him. Instead of letting him walk for nothing in return, what about a sign and trade?
Who would or should we trade him for? The Kings seem to want him. What about a sign and trade of Lavine for Buddy Hield and a salary equalizer to the Kings?

[randybrown]

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[patagonia]

"plan to discuss" - I mean let's be serious, discussions have already happened and there's a 50% chance we hear something 1 second after 11pm.

[Lauri_Legend]

I think don't think Hield is any good. But I'll take back a rookie contract player, why not

[AshyLarrysDiaper]

I’d gladly take back Hield in a sign and trade.

OP, do you have a link?

[Evil_Headband]

I think don't think Hield is any good. But I'll take back a rookie contract player, why not

He's shot 41% from 3s in his career on high volume. That alone makes him at least partially good.