I started thinking about this, and it occurred to me that given the way the Bulls run their team and the realities of the cap, Deng is about the worst player possible for the Bulls. 1. To build a contending team, most teams need to not pay excess salary that's not on the floor. If we rooted for a team that was willing to try paying its way to a winner (Dallas, Portland, perhaps Denver or the Lakers), then perhaps it would make sense to have a player who was good but had a high-risk for injury and missing time. Those teams will take ownership (in Jerry Reinsdorf's words) of that contract and not let it affect their other decisions. To me, at least, owning a decison means you don't sell off a bunch of other assets in order to compensate for the expense of the poor performing asset. 2. In that context, Deng seems hard to justify. He's missed significant time with injury. His back has something going on with it that caused it to be uninsured by the league's insurer. He's a lot like the just traded Emeka Okafor, isn't he? But a SF version, with a partially uninsured contract that'll make him even more difficult to trade. And a more serious injury history. In short, he's a good but not great player, making a lot of money and carrying a lot of risk. 3. The amount of money he's making seems even more of a problem given the increasing likelihood that the next couple years of salary caps and the new CBA will be more stringent that what he was signed under. Basically, Deng's contract is going to be one of the league's most expensive, while the overall pool of money team have to spend on is going to shrink. We don't know for sure how this will turn out, but the likely outcome would seem to be that much less flexibility for as long as the Bulls have him, but still need to make significant improvements to be a contender. 4. Style of play. So far, Deng hasn't seemed all that well suited to playing with Derrick Rose, who's clearly a better player on a cheaper deal. So in summary, the Bulls are not the sort of team to spend their way out of a jam. They need flexibility in any case, but especially because they won't do this. While Deng is a good player in the abstract, he doesn't seem to be an ideal player for how the Bulls are trying to play, or to pair with Rose. And yet, because of his long-term contract, it's difficult to see how the Bulls will be able to build a contender around Rose if and when the cap falls over the long run, since we'll be even more locked into Deng.
If he doesn't do well the first half of the season, Deng will most definitely be traded if they can find a taker and cut some $ in the process.
I agree with KY, I think Gar will have the lines open about Deng for the season and making calls, but will crank it up toward the deadline if he underachieves.
Deng is a talent, obviously if he stays hurt there is nothing you can do, but i wouldn't be assuming he will be this year, give the man some time/credit.
good luck finding any team in the league interested. i'll be shocked if the bulls are able to move deng without taking back a comparable bad deal or having to give up some significant value to convince a team to take him off their hands.
I think this is the sort of situation where his value needs to be built up. If he plays poorly, he won't be tradeable. If he plays well, then he's tradeable, but it'll be tough to justify trading him away when he's playing well. I suppose my point is that the Bulls should do it anyway, since even if he plays well for a bit, he's still high risk and the Bulls aren't the sort of team to just eat his contract and not let it affect their other decisions. And at some level of salary cap cost, they can't even if they want to.
