I will miss him. He was a rock and professional with us all of those years he was here. I kinda knew he was going to be traded. Bulls want to get even younger this summer and Taj is 32.
Okay, some thoughts: 1). The initial response from fans to this trade was outrage, but I had a hard time feeling anything but apathetic. I've nudged myself to the conclusion that guys 3-12 on this roster are fairly interchangeable and this trade only reinforced that intuition. It was a reminder of how much I've drifted out to sea with this team. 2). In the long run I don't think this trade will really matter. 3). In terms of what the Bulls got back, the deal basically has two components to it. The first is the cap management/roster slot component, because Louvergne has a significantly smaller cap hold than either Taj or Niko, it's easier to renounce both of them for max cap space and have him on the docket as a cheap insurance policy for big man depth. This is kinda nice to have but I doubt will be consequential one way or the other since we could've renounced both of those guys even if we didn't make the trade and I don't think Louvergne is all that good, even though he does seem useful. The second is the Doug for Payne swap, which I actually kinda like, even though I know next to nothing about Payne. I think the trade deadline of their third season is the best time to move on from draft picks you don't want to commit to long term. You've had enough time to evaluate them but they still have 1.5 years left on their rookie contract so their trade value is still inflated relative to their production. I've moved on from Doug as a meaningful player, so the timing was right to roll the dice with someone else. 4). Which brings us to Payne as a prospect, which is probably the most important part of the deal and the hardest for me to evaluate. I have nothing substantive to say about Cameron Payne beyond what's easily gotten over the internet. He was a fairly high draft pick from a team that's historically been very good at drafting guards. Supposedly they're still high on him, although you'd think if their opinion was as high as people said they would've been able to have gotten a better package than Doug and Taj. I'm guessing GarPax's opinion on him is based more on their scouting of him when he came out of college than anything he's done in the pros. His production this year has been awful, but apparently due to injuries and not ability. His rookie year he was playable but nothing special. There have been plenty of players both great and bad that have started his career like he has and I genuinely have no way of knowing how the wind will blow with him, although I guess the odds of him turning into something really great are fairly small. So right now I'd say there's a good chance (60-70%) this team is a wash for the Bulls since we basically let go of guys we didn't intend to keep long term and have suitable replacements for. There's a small chance this trade comes back to bite them if Doug or the second round pick turn into important players, but I'm not too too worried about that. And then there's the Cam Payne lottery ticket, and I guess we'll just have to wait and see how that goes.
