The Bulls must move forward this summer. Pau Gasol and Joakim Noah are free agents, and Derrick Rose enters the final year of his massive contract. Chicago could return a similar group, but Fred Hoiberg’s first season as coach brought to attention the chemistry issues with the younger Bulls core and the group that led the 2011 Eastern Conference finals run. The Bulls may or may not make the playoffs, but the greater question is the future, specifically their place in the potentially massive 2017 free agency landscape. Let’s take a look at their free agents, salary cap space and assets for this summer before breaking down what needs to be done. Potential free agents: Pau Gasol ($7.8 million player option), Joakim Noah (unrestricted), Aaron Brooks (unrestricted), E’Twaun Moore (unrestricted), Cristiano Felicio (non-guaranteed) and Cameron Bairstow (non-guaranteed). Likely cap space: $13 million. Read more http://www.sportingnews.com/nba-new...y-cap-space-pau-gasol-joakim-noah-free-agency
I'm open to bringing Pau back on a market-level deal for 2 years w/ a team option for the 2nd. He's still pretty darn good. If Pau leaves I'd like to bring back Jo on a 1 year deal to see if he can increase his value, and we can give him freer reign to be the defensive anchor he was in the past. Cristiano and Holiday strike me as good guys to retain since they're on bargain basement contracts and provide genuine value at the bottom of the roster. I'd love E'Twaun back but he may have played himself into a 6-8/million per year payday with his recent play. I'd love for Snell, Bairstow, and Brooks to not be here. I wouldn't be surprised if none of them are on an NBA roster next year.
Maybe re-signing Gasol will be the best alternative available, but I have to admit that I truly hope not. He's a HOFer, still puts up good numbers and all that, but I hate his age and I hate his defense. He feels to me like a dead-end kind of signing at this point. I'm also not inclined to offer Noah a significant contract. I don't believe I can be convinced that his knees are sound and I also get the sense that he's too strongly linked to the past. I love Noah, but this team needs a facelift. I realize that this leaves the team in need of a center (or two) and not enough cap space to get a high profile name. I'm hoping that there will be some younger, healthier big guy available come July.
An idea I've been warning up to is letting Jo and Pau walk, trade Derrick to alleviate some more cap space, make a play for Hassan Whiteside, and officially make this Jimmy's team. Having Whiteside would allow us to fully exploit the offensive talents of Mirotic and McDermott without being defensively inept and Jimmy gets to be the only alpha male on the team. This plan works a lot better if the team makes the playoffs and Derrick has a good go of things there, convincing some team he's worth taking a flyer on in the last year of his contract.
I like Whiteside's game if not his character. You're right that he's the kind of "Human Eraser" big that can cover for weaker defenders like Mirotic and McDermott. The problem with your plan is trading Rose without taking back bad contracts. Though Rose has played better of late, it's hard to argue that he's one of the top 10 PGs in the league, and that's not even considering the fragility of his health/fitness. As Bulls' fans, we get all excited when we see one of his breathtaking drives to the hoop, but the plain truth is that he's now strictly a below-the-rim player, makes $20+mil and there are lots of great PGs out there. I'm all for trading him for pure cap space, but I can't hold it against anyone if it's not possible.
Trading Derrick most likely means taking about an equal amount of salary back for a player who's equally unappealing. I doubt his value is very high. He really hasn't helped himself this year with his inconsistent, timid play. I think there's a good chance that such a deal might still be best for the team and it could still clear his roster spot and some extra salary. However, looking around the league.............he's a tough guy to trade. You need a team that'd actually want him and would have another overpaid player that'd make sense to bring back. I admit, it's hard to make the numbers work.
rosenthall, I was really hoping that you'd come up with some clever angle I hadn't thought of, but yeah, though Rose is playing better lately, he's still a bit of a ($21mil) albatross for the team next season. Any which way I look I'm left with the thought that we just really have to hope that Rose is good enough (and healthy enough) next season that the Bulls have THE best backcourt in the NBA. That's some pretty hardcore hopin'.
You know Transplant, when I began to write my reply to you I was trying to conjecture up trade scenarios that seemed plausible......Rose for Darren Collison & change, Rose for Philadelphia's scrap of decent but limited young guys (Covington, etc).....and I had to stop. If you go through trade checker and look at other team's rosters it's genuinely difficult to put something together for Derrick. There might not be a higher paid player who's less productive right now. And even if you did have a team with interest, his salary means a schmorgasbord of stuff has to be included to make the numbers work and it makes a match very problematic. However, none of that diminishes the fact that the team is probably best off moving on without him. I'm beginning to think any remaining time this team has with Rose on it is going to be a sunk cost, and it might be time to trade him in the offseason even if it means trading him in a straight salary dump. The clock is ticking on Jimmy Butler's prime and Rose's presence just gets in the way of transforming the team into something else. It doesn't seem like this version of the team has what it takes.
Thinking out loud about other possible Derrick Rose trades, how about this one? New Orleans gets: Derrick Rose Bobby Portis Chicago gets: Tyreke Evans Omer Asik Heavily protected 1st The idea is these are two teams with bloat on their roster, and rearranging their dead weight might be mutually beneficial. A crappy team in 'Win Now' mode might be the ideal trade partner for Derrick, and no one better fits the description than New Orleans. Their current version of the roster is going nowhere, and their situation with Anthony Davis is similar to what the Bulls are facing with Jimmy Butler. Even if you're not a fan of Derrick Rose you could reasonably expect him to have a good year next season in hopes of getting one last big payday, and a bet on a 2017 revival coupled with Anthony Davis might be one of their better bets for making themselves relevant again. If it doesn't this move saves them salary in the long run as Asik's deal runs for 4 more years. Supposedly he's unhappy there as well. Giving up Bobby is the price we have to pay in order to extricate ourselves from Derrick, but getting Asik makes it easier to let Pau and Noah walk. Strategically it provides similar benefits as signing Whiteside, but at much lower cost. It's a lot easier to load up your roster with offense-first softies if you have a space eating big to anchor the paint. Portis could be enticing to the Pelicans because it'd allow them to let Ryan Anderson walk in FA and have his replacement for 3 years at a very low cost. I'm not sure if Evans is a fantastic fit on this roster, but he's a talented guy and he'd preferably anchor the 2nd unit while Doug moved to the starting lineup. This would create the need for a 4th big and a reliable pg, but neither of these holes would require marquee FA signings. PG is by far the most problematic, and I haven't looked at who's available in the FA class to decide if there's anything appealing. But for the time being, this is the best I can think of with regards to dumping Rose and getting something halfway decent in return.
If what you mean by a straight salary dump is trading Rose for pure cap space, that would be better than OK, it would be magnificent. Sign me up. Unfortunately, I don't see a team that would wasn't to spend $20mil of cap space on Rose. As for your above trade, both Evan and Asik are flawed relative to what they're paid, but yeah, I think I'd do it.
