http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/05/14/johnson-bulls-may-look-to-trade-noah-deng/ (WSCR) Hampered by salary cap struggles, the Bulls may look to move the mega contracts of Joakim Noah and Luol Deng. Deng is set to earn roughly $14.2 million, while Noah will take in $11.1 million. “I want to emphasize I have not heard that they plan to do this, this is just my speculation,” Johnson said. “Joakim, clearly of the core, has the most value, given that his salary is the lowest and he’s also the most effective player. Deng might have a little bit of value to the right team, especially because he has less years on his deal. The Bulls have the option to get out of the last year of the contracts of Kyle Korver, Ronnie Brewer and C.J. Watson. Still, without moving one of the larger contracts, the Bulls will have a tough time filling out their roster under the salary cap. “The point being, you’re not going to get much by just going out and shopping those expiring contracts in Watson, Brewer and Korver, unless it’s a team that is just desperate to get off money,” Johnson said. “You might have to think bigger and entice the deal with a guy like Noah and see what that could get you.”
I think we all have lulled ourselves in to a false sense of security in regard to management's willingness to pay the luxury tax. I find the news incredibly disheartening. If the Bulls ship talent for the exclusive purpose of getting under the cap then I'm not sure I want to be a Bulls fan anymore.
KC has a little more inside knowledge about the way things work than we do. Mike McGraw thinks they're staying beyond a doubt. The thing is, between Rose, Boozer, Deng, and Noah, there's like $65M in cap space used. KC said he didn't think the Bulls could move Boozer, and that if an amnesty move was made it wouldn't be next season (but the season after). And in spite of it all, Boozer's been a huge part of the team which won the most games in the NBA two straight seasons (that's what he said).
I've simmered a bit and am at least ready to see how this plays out. It's in the Bulls' best interests to say they're willing to move major pieces because it shows that they may be willing to make room for Asik's contract -- lowering the chances that another team will try to sign him while he's a restricted free agent. It's not smart fandom to criticize your franchise for leaking information that can be beneficial. That being said, if Reinsdorf starts cutting corners to save a couple of bucks I think it's a good sign that I shouldn't be invested in the franchise like I am. (Not that there isn't already ample evidence of that!) Your support of Boozer, if you are indeed supporting him, is not resonating with me at all. He had another bad playoff series. His defense is horrible; his rebounding numbers are inflated; and that leaves his offense -- which is soft and inconsistent. I wouldn't be upset if he was moved to give Taj and perhaps Mirotic more playing time.
Boozer had a terrible game the last game of the series. I wouldn't put too much stock in the most recent game in history, though. For Taj or Boozer. The Bulls lost Rose and Noah and Boozer was effectively forced from #3 to #1 option. Deng was a bit more inconsistent, don't you think? And we needed him to step up and be the #1 option. 3 pts, 13 rebounds, 2 assists, 1-11 shooting. Taj 14/5, 4-10 Deng 19/17/3, 8-16 The games before? http://sports.yahoo.com/news/deng-boozer-lead-bulls-past-042050100--nba.html 19 pts, 13 rebounds, 6 assists, 9-20 Taj 8/7, 3-7 Deng 24/8, 10-19 http://sports.yahoo.com/news/76ers-top-bulls-89-82-082757287--nba.html 23 pts, 11 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals, 11-24 Taj 14/12, 6-11 Deng 11/5, 5-11 http://sports.yahoo.com/news/76ers-tops-bulls-79-74-083647147--nba.html 18 pts, 10 rebounds, 2 steals 9-17 Taj 6/7, 3-6 Deng 5/9, 2-7 http://sports.yahoo.com/news/76ers-pull-away-3rd-beat-082644496--nba.html 9/5, 4-10 Taj 8/5, 3-9 Deng 8/5, 3-12 http://sports.yahoo.com/news/rose-injured-bulls-beat-76ers-195828786--nba.html 9/7/4 (Rose injured), 4-8 Taj 7/3, 2-3 Deng 17/6, 8-14
I don't consider KC's musings as "news." He essentially said, "Hey, I could see this happening." While he's certainly closer to the decision-makers, he made it clear that his speculation wasn't based on anything someone said or even hinted. This said, if the Bulls trade Noah and/or Deng for cap/LT relief, I'll be more pissed off at the organization than I've been in my 46 years of following the team.
Would you consider Noah for JJ Hickson and two 1st round picks a good deal? The picks are #6 and 11, likely.
Some things to consider. Noah is 29, injury prone, and we don't really have assets to use to bring in players who can be difference makers. And why would anyone think the chairman would pay the LT? Especially to keep this group together while Rose sits out next season? When Rose returns, Noah will be 30, Taj and Asik signed to bigger deals, etc. If you think ahead to two seasons from now, moving Noah and maybe Deng gives us a chance to do a quick rebuild. Of course, replacing either or both is not easy, but one of those two draft picks, next year's, Mirotic, Butler, or the Bobcats pick might turn out great.
I am unable to speak about whether that's a good deal because I didn't follow college ball closely this year. I like Jared Sullinger enough, who DraftExpress currently has slated at the pick, but more as a mid- to late- first round selection. If the Bulls were to make that move, I wouldn't question it from an objective standpoint. I think it's more than possible that they could make the evaluation that two picks in this years' draft would result in a better roster than Noah.
Boozer's ts% on the series was an egregiously bad .435%. You can't win with that. Luol Deng's was a bad but significantly better .512%. And that's not even considering that Boozer's turnovers were over twice as high in the playoffs. I'm ready to see what Taj can bring as a starter at this point in his career, and what Mirotic can bring as a back up in place of Boozer.
His TO is due to being the #1 option and being forced to create shots. You don't best use him by having him dribble from way outside while double or triple teamed, which he was. In spite of all that, he did have 10 assists over two of those games. Mirotic is not going to be on the roster anytime soon. Taj as a starter has proven to be a sub 15 PER guy. I love his energy and the occasional hot games he has though.
http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2012/05/11/carlos-boozer-bulls/ Dump Carlos Boozer? It’s complicated Carlos Boozer quaked under the burden of being the Bulls’ first scoring option after Derrick Rose tore his ACL in Game 1 against the 76ers. This isn’t shocking: Boozer is not an NBA first option, even if he made $13.5 million this season and will make only about $500,000 less than what Chicago’s real first option will receive next season when Rose’s five-year contract extension kicks in. That tiny 2012-13 salary gap between Boozer ($15 million) and Rose ($15.5 million) speaks more to the difficulty of building an NBA team and signing the right kind of second option, at the right price and at the right time, than it does about Chicago’s management or Boozer’s place in the league. Boozer just couldn’t do enough on offense to carry Chicago past a scoring-challenged Philadelphia team that is about to start a seven-game race to 80 points against the Celtics. The 30-year-old power forward wasn’t really bad until Game 6 on Thursday, when he shot just 1-of-11 and sat the last 16 minutes as coach Tom Thibodeau rode the same lineup into the ground. He was a combined 2o-of-44 in Games 4 and 5, with 10 assists, and had Chicago in position to win Game 4 in Philadelphia before getting swatted out of a pick-and-roll in crunch time and then fumbling the ball out of another one less than a minute later. The Bulls ran those plays for Boozer for a reason, though: He is skilled enough and threatening enough to shift defenses a bit his way, creating space for others. Some of those open jumpers that power forward Taj Gibson got flashing to the foul line or hanging around the baseline, for instance, came in part because defenses converged on Boozer during pick-and-rolls or as Boozer slithered around picks near the rim. Point guard C.J. Watson got open looks down the stretch of Game 4 because Philadelphia was more worried about containing Boozer on the roll. Sixers forward Thaddeus Young was late helping on Luol Deng’s “and-one” play late in the third quarter Thursday in part because he had to think twice about leaving Boozer near the basket. These things happen, if you care to look, and they have real value to an offense that isn’t exactly teeming with dangerous players beyond Rose. Despite missing Rose for nearly half the season, Chicago built a top-10 offense largely on the back of two versatile big men, Boozer and Joakim Noah, who screen, pass and move around the floor in smart ways. Then Rose got hurt, and Noah joined him on the sideline, and it all fell apart, with Boozer as the fall guy. That “fall guy” status is not totally undeserved. Boozer took seven foul shots in six games, and his chronically soft finishing ability came back to haunt Chicago at the worst times. He piled up a playoff-high 23 turnovers, dropping passes, losing the ball near the basket or just throwing it into the stands. He missed so, so many mid-range jumpers. His defense was as plodding and flat-footed as ever. The Sixers went after him in pick-and-rolls, knowing even their so-so ball-handlers could tap-dance around Boozer’s stationary “help” defense. Boozer has never been a good defender, aside from his rebounding, and he’s never going to be. Now the calls will come for the Bulls to use the amnesty provision on Boozer, who is owed $47.1 million over the next three seasons. Clearing that money from the books would, in theory, free up cap space to use on something else — perhaps, finally, a player who packages the skills that the Bulls got in combination from a small army of shooting guards. It’s an easy decision for the armchair general managers: Boozer is overpaid, incapable of propping up Chicago’s offense in a crisis, and the team can move on just fine without him. Amnesty, however, is a complicated thing, even leaving out the reality that Chicago owner Jerry Reinsdorf, a fierce negotiator with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, would be paying Boozer a huge portion of that $47.1 million to play for another team. For one, amnestying Boozer doesn’t do all that much to change the team’s cap picture over the next two seasons because the Bulls already have so much money committed to Deng, Noah and Rose. Adding in various cap charges, the Bulls have almost $69 million in guaranteed money for next season. Wiping away Boozer’s $15 million salary would get them down to about $54 million, with an estimated $4 million in cap space, and the $2.5 million room exception for teams that spend up to the cap. That kind of money is not going to bring more talent than whichever version of the mid-level exception Chicago will have access to this summer, depending on its precise cap figure. Cutting Boozer obviously would give Reinsdorf some breathing space in terms of the luxury-tax threshold, which is set to be 70.5 million or so next season, but it won’t allow the Bulls to add game-changing talent. The same basic thing will be true next summer, and until Deng’s contract comes off the books after the 2013-14 season. There’s also the fact that Boozer, warts and all, has proved he can exist within a Bulls team that functions extremely well on both ends of the floor. The Bulls have been the best defensive team in the league for two seasons running while starting Carlos Boozer. They were much better defensively with Boozer on the bench in each of those seasons, and while that stat does tell us something about Boozer, it probably tells us more about the quality of the Gibson/Omer Asik combination and the damage those two can do against opposing backups. The Bulls allowed 89.8 points per 100 possessions without Boozer this season, a number that would have led the league by miles. With Boozer? They yielded 98.9 points per 100 possessions, a number that would have ranked about fifth. It’s possible the Bulls would be better off without Boozer. It’s also possible their offense would suffer in an unpredictable way unless they could find scoring from an unexpected source. Gibson did well in an extended run against the Sixers, but he wasn’t able to lift the offense to an acceptable level, and the Bulls were probably stretching him a bit far at times. Real Madrid forward Nikola Mirotic, a 21-year-old Serbian star and 2011 first-round pick, isn’t expected to come to the NBA for another year or two, at the earliest. And are we really ready to declare that this Bulls team, as constituted and with Boozer as a second or third option, can’t win a title? This season’s playoff flameout has some obvious causes, and Chicago was right there with Miami for almost every second of its five-game loss in the Eastern Conference finals last season. Dumping Boozer might work in conjunction with other moves to improve. But it’s no sure thing, and it’s hard to see what those other moves might be.
This thread confirms the most uncomfortable fact about Rose's injury: this team was ideally configured to compete for a championship this season and next, at which point non-essential contracts were poised to be shaken up. Without a healthy DRose, those title aspirations have evaporated, and there's no easy answer about what to do with the peripheral elements which are no longer necessary. I'm not really sure what I'd do either. My best bet would be to try and change out Brewer/Watson/Korver/Rip with higher risk players, with the hope that one will bloom by the time Rose is 100% healthy.
I agree with a lot of the article. We all know we're just shoveling clouds because there's no way in hell Reinsdorf amnesties Boozer. I differ because I think that there may be addition by subtraction at play. Boozer has proven himself to be a weak offensive option in the playoffs (not in the regular season) and abysmal on defense (in both the playoffs and the regular season). The Bulls need players who can create in isolation when defenses tighten and that's not Boozer, or Korver and Brewer for that matter. I also think there's a reasonable chance Mirotic comes over next season. I'm alone in that assessment but I have also followed the dynamics closer than just about anyone else so I have some license. I'm ready to move on, and wuld consider a trade in which we have to ship assets to unload Boozer's contract.
How do you amnesty a player who just put up a ~20PER and started 82 games on the team with the best record in the NBA? I think it would be a first. The amnesty clause has been used to get rid of contracts like Brandon Roy's, where the guy makes MAX and can't play. Amnesty him and Reinsdorf will be paying him MAX dollars while Boozer plays for the Heat. It's easy to pin the scapegoat label on him because the Bulls failed, but they were down 3-1 and could have easily folded. They didn't and the scapegoat deserves credit for that. He didn't outright disappear or become less of a player; he actually did step it up. He's just not suited to be a #1 option. He may have done better if he were the #2 option all season, but he was #3 and that's the way Thibs coached the team. Give Philly some credit, too. They saw what he did to help bring the Bulls to down 3-2 and adjusted. CJ Watson had a 7.8 PER for the whole playoffs, replacing Rose. Ronnie Brewer had a 4.5 PER for the whole playoffs. The thing is, though, Boozer's not going to help us contend for a championship next year, barring Rose making a January comeback and returning to his MVP level form. Supposing Rose is back the following season, Boozer will be 33 and an expiring contract.
