Feels like we have an Elton Brand for Tyson Chandler trade coming. Hope Reinsdorf cans Paxson and Gar before they go in this direction. I don't think they've shown enough to be trusted with that type of move. The team needs a coaching change and a talent influx. There are better ways to get talent besides the draft.
Not directly, but they've clearly been busy refuting it through other media contacts. A lot of this is semantics. When you say a team is "shopping" a player, it conjures up an auction block. I doubt that the Bulls are initiating calls on moving Butler. Still, I hope they're accepting calls...it never hurts to listen.
I highly doubt we move him unless a real bargain comes up. Any plan to sign FA's in the future will not fare well IMO. We signed Wade just to move Butler? Come on. No one will sign with us.
Jimmy's playing so well right now that it'd be almost impossible to get equal value back unless you got a top 5 player in return, and I doubt those guys are going anywhere. The only way I think it'd be defensible to trade him is if you got a Herschel Walker type deal that gave the team a significant chance to quickly re-assemble a core that had two all-stars on it and not just one, with the added benefit of good time alignment for your major players so you might be able to strike lightning in a bottle that allows you to solidify yourself as a championship contender before a bunch of big extensions kick in, thus justifying spending through the roof to keep the team intact. For example, something like Marcus Smart, Jae Crowder, Brooklyn's 2017, 2019 and the Memphis pick might be worth considering. Smart, Crowder, Doug, Niko/Taj (pick one), and Rolo is a decent collection of productive vets that you could drop lotto picks into, and since you have three picks in two years that are unrelated to your own team's record you could go head-first into 'Win Now' mode and hope one of our three 2017 picks, or 2019 picks strikes gold on an All-star level player or two, and then you'd be in a situation similar to what the Bulls had in 2009 when they drafted Derrick Rose. They weren't #1 pick bad, so when he came to the team there was already a decent stable of productive vets that he could play with so there was enough peripheral quality to make them a contender when he turned into an MVP candidate. Of course the odds are that those picks will just turn into more Marcus Smarts and Jae Crowders, which would make the trade a loser, but there's maybe a 10-15% chance that you could end up with something significantly more likely to be a contender than what we have now with Jimmy.
That is true. Would be a really good deal for Bulls so that they will risk to scare off possible FAs.
I'm not looking to move Butler and it appears that, despite reports to the contrary, neither are the Bulls. You've laid out the reasons pretty well. When you're a mediocre team like the Bulls, it's unwise to consider anyone untouchable, but with the disappointing play of the Bulls younger players, Butler is pretty much the entireity of the Bulls' "core" going forward. Trading Butler is an extraordinarily high-risk proposition.
If you think the Bulls should hang on to Butler, then they shouldn't be making counter offers. What if the counter is accepted? Denver would be fools to not include Jokic.
The original issue was whether the Bulls were "shopping" Butler. To me, that means that they're making the calls and asking, "What'll you give me for Butler." The Bulls aren't looking to trade Butler and they shouldn't for the reasons I gave. When they insisted that the Nuggets include Jokic, they were telling Denver that they weren't looking to trade Butler, but... Butler should not be considered untouchable....he's not an elite player IMO and he's 27, not 22. If Denver had included Jokic, further discussions may be worthwhile. Same would be true if the Knicks put Porzingis on the table or the Bucks with Antetokounmpo. These are younger players who have a good chance of becoming at least as valuable as Butler. If I could get Jokic and Gallinari for Butler and Mirotic, I'd have to think very hard about that.
http://www.foxsports.com/nba/story/chicago-bulls-don-t-trade-jimmy-butler-011417 Good article as to why we should not trade Jimmy. My thought as I said before is to keep Jimmy, everyone else except maybe Wade is available. Build a team around Jimmy! Not start over. It makes no sense to me to trade Jimmy now for assets, then 4 or 5 years from now trade those assets for a Butler-esque type player. Why not keep Jimmy and go from there? We will need changes in FO first, but any real team building to take place.