According to Ric Bucher. Talk about blast from the past. Odd that Miami would choose to trade the younger guy that we decided to keep for the one we didn't.
Deng must not like it in Miami. I get the feeling that Riley's thing is building relationships with vets. I cant think of any situations where he's threatened to trade a marquis recent acquisition.
My take is that Lu is fool's gold as far as they're concerned. He's probably really beat up from being in Chicago and playing big minutes. He came in the league really young, too. I don't think Miami expected him to replace LeBron, but I do think they expected him to do all the things he seemed good at for the Bulls. Miami had great defense to go with their big 3 offensive players, and won championships. Even though they lost LeBron, they should still have the good defense with Lu and his defensive abilities. Yet Miami is 24th in Def Rtg this year, compared to 11th last year and 9th the year before and 4th the year before. I think they figured out that you don't have to kill yourself on defense to win championships, but they do need better defense than 24th without LeBron. In any case, Reilly called the Deng signing one of the most important ones in team history. I am pretty sure they feel like he hasn't lived up to their expectations. And Lu is scoring 14.3 PPG on .488 shooting and .377 from 3pt with a 16.7 PER. Really good compared to most of his Bulls' seasons.
