By strike out, I mean their ability to sign a big name FA. If the Bulls can S&T Boozer, the can end up with a $20M player. Why would anyone take him since the Bulls talked his value down and he can be had for cheap after amnesty. I see no S&T. If they Amnesty Boozer, they'll have $9.7M in cap space, but lose MLE and BAE. I saw a fairly detailed analysis of how much money is out there to spend on FAs. It was basketball insiders.com, I think. Something like $239M. They figured in guys likely to stay with their teams, so LeBron's salary is on the books for Miami, not part of that $239M. They figured in the cap holds that won't be renounced. Interesting in all. So with $239M out there we are seeing big contracts offered and signed by lesser players. Avery Bradley for example. There will be a bidding war for the elite talent on down. Pau isn't going to have to settle for $9.7M to start. Realistically, the Bulls won't land any of the top 15-30 FAs. The math doesn't support it.
I'm convinced. I am officially a Knicks fan and will bide my time with that until the next World Cup.
No reason to be a knicks fan. Read what Friedell has to say in the other thread. IMO, the Bulls would already need to have MAX money cleared, to show FAs they mean business. That would mean regardless of Boozer's situation.
Right. The Bulls were turned down time after time when they had a "full boat" to offer. This time around, they could not even plan to do that. There are creative ways to get Melo but we're going up against teams that can just flat out pay him closer to what he's supposedly worth. I know Melo likes Thibs, but if I'm in his shoes, if I'm taking less $$$$, it better be a damn superteam I'm going to. With Rose's status and the orgs inability to get top talent to choose to come here, I'd be leary. That being said.... if Rose is the old Rose.... but from Melo's perspective that's quite a gamble for the amount of $$$ he's leaving on the table.
If I'm Melo, I'd be looking at how the Bulls are treating Boozer (and Deng, and...) and figure that's what's coming my way before my contract is done.
So many disagreements. So little time. The only team that could be absolutely certain of getting an amnestied Boozer would be the Milwaukee Bucks (by virtue of having the worst record in the league) and then only if they were willing to bid Boozer's full salary. Any other team that wants to be certain of getting Boozer would have to trade for him. I don't believe that there is any team out there that wants Boozer at his current salary ($16.8mil) or anything close to his current salary. The Bulls "talking down" Boozer has nothing to do with this. Boozer's play has everything to do with this. Every NBA team has video facilities and trained people to review video. And while it's true that the Bulls have not come out strongly to say that they will not amnesty Boozer, this would do them absolutely no good because every single team would know that they're lying. All this said, I've never thought the Bulls were going to get a big-time FA this offseason and have said so in the past. Of course, my reasons for feeling this way aren't nearly as entertaining as some others.
Boozer is a big expiring contract and he's still good enough to put up 14/8 in limited minutes. Someone took bargnani's equally bad contract when it wasn't expiring and he's garbage at both ends. I think there's no excuse. His situation has been botched. Given how FA is going for us, Boozer at $11M for one year (the cap space he's worth) may be the best they can do. As for amnesty, if Boozer doesn't want to play for the Bucks, they'd be assholes to take him anyway. Not all management is like ours.
Well, the main reason was that the team had decided that $10mil was as much as they would pay Deng and Deng didn't accept their offer, but I don't see how that relates to the comment to which you referred.
For whatever reason, many in the fanbase believe (led to believe?) that dumping Deng would help lead to the signing of a big time free agent. There are many people pouring a lot of time and energy into Melo tracking. Its seems that both you and I agree that its likely a pipe dream,yes? It will be curious to see how GarPax make the roster stronger without the addition of a all-star level player, which Deng was.
K4E, those quotes from Forman and Paxson were basically the bullshit GMs tell their fanbases and most knowledgeable fans recognize the bs when they hear it. This isn't a knock on Forman or Paxson...it's part of the job. Yeah, I agree that the Anthony thing is a bit of a pipe dream. I mean, if you ask Knicks' beat writers, Anthony is basically in it for the money (btw, I don't blame him for this at all). The Bulls can't come close to offering a max FA offer and the Knicks understandably have no interest in a S&T involving Boozer. This is why I was never optimistic about Anthony. I don't know about your "replace Deng" thing. If that's the big challenge of this summer, we may be OK, because when the Bulls subtracted Deng from last season's team and added pretty much nothing, they didn't experience any sort of drop off.
That was interesting to see in the regular season. In general though, in NBA playoff wars, the more battle tested all-star level players you have the better. I think we all saw in the series against the Wizards (and in previous seasons) that there is a difference between grinding out regular season games and winning playoff series. Its looking more and more like the Bulls will have dumped two time all-star Luol Deng to avoid the "tax" and will not replace him with anything very meaningful. That's not a step in the right direction, if winning championships is the goal. I do hope that GarPax do manage to get something meaningful done.
The replace Deng thing makes sense if you're interested in more than profits. We went from a team with, say, 3 all-star candidates to one with 2. I don't see how that really translates into anything better than maybe more regular season wins but a beating in the 1st round.
Clearly, the FO agrees that the team needs another stud hoss. We all hope they succeed in their efforts.
There's one sure way to get that stud hoss. Trade for a guy who's contract isn't expiring this season.
