Poster YaoPau at Blogabull does some in depth statistical analysis and comes away thinking Joe Johnson would be a very dangerous signing. To us. I wholeheartedly agree with the evidence presented by Yao and the general thrust of it For those reasons, I’m generally of the opinion that Joe Johnson will be a bad thing. At this point, what I think is really the best thing is probably to get Amare and a lesser piece, not lock in any huge salaries, and see what happens under the new CBA. Shit, maybe I’m turning into Jerry Reinsdorf, but this seems like such an obvious no-brainer financially, and it probably maximizes our on-court production too. Option 1 is we don’t lock in, and have a potentially 50 win team. Option 2 is we lock in to lots of salary for quite a while, and have a potentially 50 win team.
There's a caveat here. Pretty much all of those SG's didn't play next to a talent like Rose. For the bulls to be effective, three things would need to happen as JJ declined: he'd have to be able to still be a good spot up shooter or develop a strong post up game, he'd have to effectively handle the tougher backcourt defensive assignment, and he'd have to quickly let Rose become the primary offensive star. If he could be as good as Ray Allen was last year, then I think it might be worth it. But I do agree that an 18 PER is pretty weak for a max contract kind of guy. Hell, at that level, BG almost looks reasonable since he was a pretty consistent 16-18, albeit with a lot less defense and a strong desire to be the man. I'm not sure why you'd want to get Amare unless you mean to let him expire this year or next. He's getting benched in the fourth so the suns can win. Why would you want to pay for that guy? Especially when he's very likely to replace Lee in NY and ensure that Knicks continue to have a low ceiling. Also, you'd have to guarantee that Reinsdorf is going to go into the LT because the bulls are going to have to pay Noah and Rose and that's pretty much their whole cap right there. To be contenders they'd have to keep guys like Hinrich and Miller (at a reduced cost) coming off of the bench.
