The Bulls should trade for Andrew Bynum
January 5th, 2014
This article was due to run on Monday on another site. However, it seems as though there can be no delay. Andrew Bynum’s time in Cleveland is all but over. After a poor first few months on the court, in which he has looked awful at times in trying to recover from serious knee problems, a recent suspension for off-court behaviour has seen him essentially placed on gardening leave, while Cleveland tries to find a new home for him and his contract. And they likely will. Cleveland signed Bynum for two reasons. Firstly, to potentially land themselves a quality player at a position of weakness – Bynum’s interior game on both ends once made him one of the best big men in the league, and based on age alone, he should still be short of his prime. And secondly, for the value – even at $24.6 million dollars over two years, Bynum nevertheless represented value if he didn’t work out on the court, based on the nature of his contract. Primarily, though, they wanted him to produce. Bynum, however, has not been able to produce. Save for a couple of strong outings, he has mostly looked like a shadow of his former self, still playing in severe pain and looking just as painful as he is said to be feeling. His inability to play through the kind of severe pain that would lead to most of us taking several months work has unfortunately led to ugly (and apparently open season) speculation about his ‘love’ of the game, for it is always easier to blame someone for things, yet whatever we think of Bynum’s commitment to the game, one thing seems apparent by this time – the former Andrew Bynum, the second best centre in the league, is not coming back. […]
Chicago's Meticulously Crafted 2011 Offseason Plan That Relies An Awful Lot Upon Guesswork
June 9th, 2011
Nothing cheers me up more than heavily contrived and extremely implausible hypothetical transactions for the Chicago Bulls.1 Taking a team’s cap situation, and attempting to maximize the basketball assets that they can get from using it, is what I wish to spend my life doing. It is this love of salary cap manipulation and amateurish talent evaluation that has in the past produced seminal works such as the four team 16 player trade that intended to bring Carmelo Anthony to Chicago whilst getting Denver under the luxury tax in the process2, as well as last offseason’s equally well-intended multi-faceted shake-up that sought only to avoid signing Joe Johnson, and which bizarrely predicted that the Bulls would end up with half of the previous season’s Utah Jazz rotation, but not the half that they actually wound up with. These are my hobbies. Ironically, Joe Johnson would be a somewhat perfect fit for Chicago right now. But unfortunately, Joe Johnson still has five years and $107,333,589 remaining on his maximum salary contract given to him by the Hawks, whom he just led to 44 wins and an ultimately rather purposeless second round exit. When the 29 year old fourth best player at his position gets the fifth biggest contract in the history of the sport, consider yourselves outbid.3 It’s a shame, in a way, for a player of Joe Johnson’s type and talent level would now be an exact fit to the major problem Chicago faces. Chicago isn’t exactly a team awash with strife. They just made it to the Eastern Conference Finals, had the best regular season record in the league, won 62 games, won the Most Valuable Player award, won the Coach Of The Year award, and somehow managed to come both first and third in the Executive Of The […]
Chicago’s Last Resort Offseason Plan That Still Manages To Avoid Signing Joe Johnson
June 14th, 2010
Almost to a man, Bulls fans are shockingly reticent about the great opportunities that might befall them this offseason. They have maximum cap room, they have the man widely regarded as the league’s hottest head coaching prospect, they have the league’s best young point guard, and the league’s second-best young centre.1 They have a sold-out arena, the league’s best profit margins, and a young and athletic defensive-minded rebound-heavy team with scores of potential and a modicum of short-term success, lacking only a superstar and a couple of Anthony Morrow types away from ranking amongst the league’s very best. “Lacking only a superstar” would be a ridiculous statement were they not ideally set up to get one right now. In this precedent-free summer, an unbelievable number of superstars could or will be available via free agency, ranging from the best player in the world (LeBron James) to some of the game’s very best big men (Chris Bosh, Amar’e Stoudemire, Primoz Brezec, Carlos Boozer, even Yao Ming), all the way down to the superstar hometown boy (Dwyane Wade). There’s also David Lee, one of the most maligned players in the NBA today, as well as Joe Johnson, who is guaranteed to be the next Jalen Rose for whoever signs him.2 We almost nearly had Kobe and Manu in the mix as well. These are not normal times we live in. Yet perhaps still healing from vicious scars – the Tracy McGrady signing that became the Ron Mercer signing, the Tim Duncan signing that became the Brad Miller signing, the Pau Gasol trade that nearly happened, Jay Williams crashing into a lamp post because he was revving his engine at traffic lights while still in second gear – a large quota of knowledgeable Chicago Bulls fans are sceptic almost to the point of […]
Trade idea of the week
December 5th, 2009
Last Christmas Eve, the Houston Rockets traded Steve Francis and a 2009 second-round pick to the Memphis Grizzlies in exchange for a conditional 2011 second-round pick. I remember this trade specifically because I totally called it. The deal was made to help Houston dodge the luxury tax. And it worked, because they did. By dumping Francis’s $2,634,480 salary onto the Grizzlies, the Rockets saved themselves that much again in luxury tax savings, as well as picking up a $2,911,756 rebate from not being a luxury tax payer. The amount of money they saved was more than enough to justify giving the Grizzlies the cash to pay Francis’s remaining salary for the remainder of the season, and by returning the Grizzlies’s 2009 pick to them – one which they had previous acquired in the draft night 2008 three-way trade that saw Memphis move up for Darrell Arthur – the Rockets found sufficient incentive for the Grizzlies to help them. For the Grizzlies, they were essentially given a free pick; they were given a player that they didn’t want, but also enough money to pay his salary without him ever turning up, and they got a 30s pick for their troubles. All they had to do was sacrifice some cap space that they weren’t going to use anyway. (The 2011 pick is irrelevant; it is top 55 protected, and only for that season. So if Memphis finish in the bottom 25 of the NBA that year, which they will, then Houston gets nothing. The pick was only included because Memphis had to give up at least something, however arbitrary. Also, the pick Houston gave to Memphis to save this $5.6 million was the #36, which Memphis then used to draft Sam Young. Houston later bought the #32 from Washington for $2.5 million. […]
