Cheap free agent scoring guards/guards to fill up roster spots.

'

Most Bulls fans agree with you, but our SG was 2nd-Team All-Defense last season, so IMHO he's filled the hole pretty well. The question now is, can McDermott - Dunleavy - Snell give us the offense we need from the wing position.

I think they can, but we shall see. If this team has a weakness, it is certainly wing offense without a doubt.

And whether or not Butler can get back to being the 38% 3-point shooter he was in 2012-13. Now that he's the 4th or 5th option on offense, playing off of Rose and Gasol, I think he's going to be back to the 3-point making, driving-and-drawing-fouls Butler we saw back in the 2012-13 playoffs.

People tend to forget that in the playoffs that year, he shot over 40% on 3.1 3-pt attempts per game, and got to the line 4.6 times a game. He was hurting much of last season, which certainly took away from his offensive production.

And while I was a big Afflalo guy, obviously - "Arron Afflalo Bulls SG target? He should be" - I'd much rather have Gasol, and that's what it would have cost us. (Or Mirotic, and that wasn't happening).

 

I gotcha, yeah my answer did make it seem like I was saying Snell was going to step into Deng's shoes.

My bad.

And you make a great point about McDoug - Rip, I think McDoug brings a lot more to the floor than Korver ever did. And JMSO, but I think he has a chance to be better than Rip was on offense in their primes.

This time with USA MNT is going to be huge for McDoug during the summer, if he can build his confidence against the league's best (and show Thibs what he can do against them), he has a chance to surprise us with his contributions as a rookie.

I don't think there's any doubt that he's going to be our most productive rookie since Rose, not that any of our rooks have done anything since Rose. Well, Taj played 24 minutes and gave us 9/6 as a rookie, but I honestly think McDoug can give us that kind of scoring as long as Rose is healthy.

 

Orlando didn't want to take back much salary, in fact Orlando only took back $1,483,920 in salary.

That's the entire point, what makes anyone think Orlando wanted more salary? The ONLY players we could have sent them realistically was Snell and Dunleavy. Why would they want Dunleavy, they obviously wanted the cap space instead. They obviously wanted a young SG to replace Afflalo, and that's what they got.

Fournier is 22 this season and on a rookie contract for another two years. He shot 37.6% from behind the arc last season, it makes sense to me that they wanted him instead of Snell. Ironically, Fournier was drafted at #20 the year before Snell.

And if we took on Afflalo's salary, we wouldn't have had the cap space to sign Gasol or Mirotic, we could have only signed one of them.

What do you think we should have offered for Afflalo?

 

So you think we should have given up Taj- who is signed for 3 years at a very reasonable salary, and who was 2nd in 6th Man of the Year voting- for Afflalo, who is signed for 1 more season.

I couldn't possibly disagree more.

Dunleavy alone wasn't enough to make the trade work, neither was Dunleavy and Snell.

It doesn't do any good to think outside the box unless you combine it with thinking inside the rules of the CBA.

Since there was apparently ONE trade that would have worked (at least that's all you have proposed), I'll have to say Afflalo wasn't worth it, because personally I wouldn't have done that trade.

You would have. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

I don't have blinders on, I am looking for a trade for Afflalo that would have still allowed us to sign Gasol and Mirotic.

Assuming Noah and Rose were untouchable, the only players we kept under contract to clear enough cap space to sign Gasol and Mirotic were Taj, Snell, Butler and Dunleavy.

I wouldn't have traded Taj for Afflalo, and I wouldn't have traded Butler for Afflalo (we would have needed to throw in Dunleavy, but it's Butler I wouldn't have given up for Afflalo).

I would trade Gibson for a SG. Just not Afflalo.

Afflalo consistently makes his teams worse when he is on the floor, mostly because they play defense so much better when he is on the bench.

ORL/DEN Def Eff last 4 years

ORL 13-14: 110.9 w/AA, 105.1 wo/AA
ORL 12-13: 112.0 w/AA, 108.7 wo/AA
DEN 11-12: 107.6 w/AA, 105.3 wo/AA
DEN 10-11: 109.8 w/AA, 106.7 wo/AA

I would certainly trade Taj for a SG now, but he would have to be better than Afflalo. He would have to be a major talent, like a recent lottery pick or All-Star.

He would have to have pretty good handles with the ability to get to the hole off the dribble, while still having 3-point range.

And not on an expiring contract.

I'd even include Dunleavy, that would allow us to take back $17 million in salary.

Gordon Hayward? Check
Dion Waiters? MAYBE, but I doubt it
Kevin Martin? Yes
Goran Dragic? Definitely

I'm sure there's a few others, that's just off the top of my head.

 

Even though I wouldn't do Gibson for Afflalo because I think he can get us a better return if he decide to trade him, we couldn't have done it then.

We had no idea we would be getting Gasol, we were all in for Melo. Without Gasol, Gibson isn't tradeable.