Deng for Monta Ellis?

This thread's been here a while and I haven't responded, so...

I won't pretend that I've watched a lot of Warriors games so my take on Ellis is admittedly sketchy. Strikes me as sort of "DRose-lite," though he mostly plays (undersized) SG. Ellis doesn't take the ball to the basket quite as much as Rose, so he doesn't draw as many fouls.

Ellis scores lots o' points (24 per game). He does it by taking lots o' shots (20 per game).

I lack the imagination to see how Ellis and Rose would make beautiful music together (though I'm sure you'd hear some kickass solos).

In any case, as to the proposition of trading Deng for Ellis, I'll decline.

 

Status quo fixes this?

Kyle Korver level skills ain't enough.

 

Denny: I'm going to ask a completely earnest question to which I have no answer to:

We've been sold upstream in the past preaching patience. Its a tactic that was used by the franchise to tell us we should continue to pack the stadium because our young players were destined for greatness. I cringe at the mention of the word.

But . . . .

Is this the appropriate time to preach patience? There are two ways this can go: We can either become Orlando/Cleveland who lost all of their assets, and any chance of winning, chasing after the next move that would put them over the top.

Or you can become the Spurs/Mavs and kind of hang around, until the right season comes along and you win a championship. Both of those franchises continued to make moves, but they were smaller retooling maneuvers and the core remained the same. My money is on Wade not being healthy every year. The window could be the next year or the year after that. Who knows?

So is it wise to just sit and make smaller lateral moves until a real upgrade presents itself (Howard for example) or until the Heat falter due to injuries? Or should we aggressively pursue improvement options, even if there is a reasonable chance the franchise does not improve from them?

I've obviously given the former a positive spin, but I think it's a legitimate question.

 

It was obvious to me and others that we were going to have trouble in the playoffs. I bumped FJ's post yesterday from earlier in the season...

Dallas hasn't stood pat. 3/5 their starters weren't on the team 2 years ago. Miami's lineup is very different than the times we faced them in the regular season, too.

If we could have pulled off a deal for Mayo at the deadline, standing pat might make sense.

Maybe we can still make a deal for him that won't cost our starting SF.

On the other hand, we should be open to improving at every position by trade or FA if possible.

And waiting around and hoping for other teams to suffer injuries might allow us to win, but it's through attrition vs. by being the best actual team.

Look at Dallas and Miami. They're far more stacked, and their benches are even better than us. We have work to do.

 

Oh yeah...

We've officially stopped being the Grizzlies of the East. You know, the Gasol days when they'd win 50 and exit in the 1st round.

To me, it looks like we're now the Jazz of the East - 60 wins and out in the 2nd or 3rd round.

My ideal is to get beyond that level, too.

 

Denny, this is all so sudden. After game 2, I thought you said that you were optimistic about the Bulls making the Finals.

Now we're the Jazz? And for the record, the Jazz haven't won over 55 games since 97-98.

Sorry, but you're reverting to form.

SST, I agree with Denny that the Bulls need to get better. We all watched the ECF...we get it. This said, the Bulls won 62 games, so while they showed that they're not quite good enough, they also showed that they're very good. It's completely OK to feel good about the season and look forward to the next.

As for patience, since the Bulls are both young and already (and surprisingly) among the NBA's elite teams, there's absolutely no reason for them to get stupid/reckless in their personnel moves (Ellis for Deng would be both, IMO). While we'd all love them to get a lot better, the system's just not set up for 62-win teams to do that. As long as they just try to improve in increments and not get stupid, they'll seriously compete for the title as long as Rose is a viable superstar and the team (read: Rose) believes in Thibodeau.

I agree with Denny that standing pat is the wrong thing to do. I disagree that the Bulls need to add a true star player...it'd be nice, but is both unreasonable to expect and not necessary for a successful title run.

I may be in the minority here, but I actually think that the Bulls FO knows what it's doing. I'll feel this way until I see evidence to the contrary.

 

Transplant: You raise a lot of separate issues in your post. First, I'm not advocating inaction. I think it's helpful, perhaps, to set up a continuum with inaction on one pole, and the Magic on the other. The question is where the Bulls should fit along that spectrum. Acquiring Courtney Lee with a set of picks and Taj Gibson is obviously closer to the inaction pole. Trading Deng, who has been the second best Bull all season, for Monta Ellis is closer to the Magic. That's a high risk high reward maneuver. It may or may not work, like every other trade, but if you make it, you risk severely disrupting the team in a way that trading anyone on the bench, Boozer or even Noah would not. I think we're in agreement here; except I do think the team needs another superstar to beat the Heat at full strength. I'm just not convinced the Heat will regularly be at full strength for the playoffs.

As to trusting management, we've all seen good GMs make stupid decisions. I watched a ton of film of all the domestic players, like many here, leading up to the 2006 draft. Roy was perhaps the most polished NBA prospect I've ever seen, and I loved Aldridge's manning of the paint in Texas. The Bulls instead went for the diamond in the rough, which didn't make any sense at the time, and has proven to be incorrect. I would have loved to been able to follow the careers of either of those players, even if Roy's apparently will be cut short by injuries (which is why I suppose he slipped to 6.) I don't trust any teams' management.

 

Trading LMA for Tyrus was already mentioned. Not even giving Smith a look was a pretty big mistake, and many of us posted so at the time. Passing on Pau Gasol was another. Placing so much trust in Kirk Hinrich as the face and future of the franchise (Hinrich's face was plastered on billboards throughout Chicagoland advertising the Bulls). With numerous #1, #2, and #3 picks in the past 13 years, Rose and Deng are the only two who are still with the team. They hired Vinnie over Thibs three years ago.

I don't think management particularly knows what it's doing. Given enough shots at the best players coming out of college, they finally scored with Rose, and Rose makes everyone look good.

And I do think that 50+ win teams can add stars to their roster. Consider the Mavericks, who have won at least 50 since 2000. They manage to have Caron Butler, Tyson Chandler, Jason Kidd, Shawn Marion, and Peja Stojakovic on their roster - all were plenty good enough to have earned $10M+ annual paydays, if not MAX contracts. That's on top of Dirk and Terry, who've been with the team for a real long time.

 

I guess the old fights are always the best.

If we're talking about the current Bulls' FO, we can't really pin many missed top-3 picks on them. By my reckoning, the current FO has had three top-3 picks...Gordon in 2004 (good player and probably better than any of the 3-8 picks except for Deng at 8 that year), Tyrus in 2006 instead of LMA (calculated risk, but in hindsight clearly a mistake) and Rose in 2008...Jackpot!.

Detroit's paying Gordon $11.6MM, Charlotte's paying Tyrus $7.3MM and Rose is about to be (deservedly) paid the max. In terms of pure draft picking, that's pretty good as I see it.

Pau Gasol was a rumor. Was it for Deng? I can't recall. In any case, for the team at that time, it's hard to make a case that making that deal would have made them that much better today.

Don't see what Hinrich's face on billboards (actually, I never saw one of these, but acknowledge that he was the "face of the franchise" for several down years) has to do with anything. Did the marketing department damage the team? When they drafted Rose, they eventually (salary) dumped him which was the right thing to do.

Hiring VDN made no sense to me at the time and I said so. My retrospective guess is that the FO didn't much believe in the team and took a flyer on a disposable head coach. In any case, I've gotta give you that one.

I understand that you have no confidence in the Bulls' FO...this hasn't changed in many years. I just disagree with you in terms of the Paxson administration...this also hasn't changed in many years. What I see as calculated risks gone bad you see as evidence of a lack of competence. What I see as calculated risks that paid off, you tend to see as lucky. I suppose we see what we want to see.

Edit: Oh yeah, we missed what I consider to be the worst mistake of the Paxson era...the FA signing of Ben Wallace. Made sense at the time (one-year cap space window and Wallace was the premier FA that year). Kinda worked for one season, but was pretty much disastrous for the next 3 years. Serious suckage.

 

You know, I give Paxson a pass on the Wallace signing. He said at the time (in a complimentary tone) that Reinsdorf was the driving force behind the move. It felt to me at the time like a Reinsdorf move too. You can get into the whole, Paxson should have been better at managing up, but I'm not going to go there.

We should talk about the 2004 NBA draft though. I remember that draft vividly because, if for no other reason, in a pique of basketball dorkness DMD and I saw it live at MSG. My hopes were for Iguodala and Deng. Iguodala was a glorious athlete and a hell of a defender. I never felt as comfortable with Ben Gordon because I wasn't convinced he could guard the two or play point. Deng and Iguodala both had NBA games and NBA positions. I don't think you classify that as a good selection in retrospect. I thought they could have worked together playing the 2 and 3 (which is what I expect stopped the Bulls from picking both) and and still believe they can do so.

 

For the Bulls in the '04 draft, I've always felt that it was Deng or Iguodala. Though Iguodala was listed as a SG, he was described as a swingman and many felt his most natural position was SF...which is mostly what he's played for the past few seasons. As I recall, they liked both a lot. When they got the Suns' pick (7th overall), they hoped that one or the other would be there. Surprisingly, both were and we then discovered that they liked Deng more.

There was lots of talk that the Bulls would try to move down a few picks from #3. They didn't/couldn't. They took Gordon because he was one of the few players in that draft who projected as a "go-to" scorer. With the benefit of hindsight, they were right...Gordon's turned out to be the best scorer taken 3 through 10 that year.

The Gordon-Deng draft may not have been ideal, but IMO there's no way anyone can fairly characterize it as evidence of FO incompetence.

 

You asked for evidence to the contrary.

 

Tell ya what...I agree with you. I retract my characterization of it as a rumor. Still don't think it's evidence of incompetence though.

 

Eh, to each their own I guess. I kinda' like these overview threads that go back a couple of years.

Transplant:

I think you're right. If you're looking for incompetence while Paxson was GM the only thing you can really point to is the hiring of VDN and the embarrassing aftermath. That was a sad day for the franchise. But I think we should expect more; and if you raise the bar a little bit, you'll see that the organization's moves are probably best characterized as slightly above average. We got lucky with the Rose draft and that laid the path for where the franchise is today.

You can't really characterize the '04 draft as incompetent, or the Ben Wallace trade (and Paxson did an awesome job getting out of his contract), or the '03 and '06 drafts as incompetent. You can't characterize them as home runs either. They were all some where in the middle and did not set the franchise up for success.

Johnstone: I'd like to believe that Reinsdorf has learned from his last foray into making moves.