Trading Zach LaVine

Bulls back at work

The Bulls host Orlando on Wednesday and Friday, Chicago is 4-7 but looks worse, sub-mediocre in all realms save two. Causing turnovers, and creating them.

Ironic, for the stand-pat Bulls. Chicago’s front office was maligned the last two offseasons for sitting through summer, detractors hit GM Artūras Karnišovas hard in February for staring straight through the trade deadline. Yet these Bulls top the league in trade rumors, kettle of transaction fish, 29 other teams rubbing around the rim, watching what’s flopping, ready to turn the Bulls over.

Chicago’s interest in dealing shouldn’t be a surprise, the club’s problems are the same with or without Lonzo Ball around, the team’s Big Three is resoundingly second-rate. Season upon season’s worth of data swears at us: Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, and Nikola Vucevic don’t play well alongside each other.

The Bulls countered this notion by extending Coby White, a prototype reserve combo guard pressed into duty as starting point guard, and assigning extended responsibility toward Patrick Williams, who repeatedly responds to professional pressure by uncrossing one leg before crossing another.

Williams is lost, cut from the starting unit, White is in his worst shooting season since 2019-20, a rookie campaign. Chicago is 4-7 and intensely lucky to win half that, victories over Toronto and Indiana were presented with bows on top. Two contests against Orlando (5-4, a typical Play-In Tournament contender) should be awfully telling, the rebuilding Magic look thrice as composed, rendered stouter with the two lottery picks (Jett Howard, not so much at the moment, but Franz Wagner) the Bulls outfitted Orlando with in 2021.

Orlando sent its All-Star in return, Vucevic, chief in recruiting 2022 and 2023 All-Star DeMar DeRozan to Chicago. As a mid-range scorer, DeRozan makes scoring tough for slasher Zach LaVine, nearly as tough as LaVine makes it for himself.

LaVine routinely relies upon low-percentage bombs or vocal forays (no NBA player screams for and receives fewer foul calls) into the weight of a legally-situated defender. This didn’t stop Chicago from offering LaVine a five-year, $215.5 million contract extension 18 months ago, the Bulls didn’t want to look cheap, wanted to fill seats — the guy’s an All-Star.

Now, according to Shams Charania, the Bulls are ready to move on, LaVine’s agent wants to help. LaVine was on the block last summer, or should have been, but (as K.C. Johnson notes) the Chicago Bulls tend to scout basketball differently than you or me or the rest of this league:

The Bulls held exploratory trade talks centered on LaVine last offseason. Their asking price remained consistently high. The unanswerable question for now is: Does that asking price drop in light of the Bulls' struggles?

The Bulls aren’t dumb, they just play that way for the boss. Jerry Reinsdorf’s team is, presumably, goin’ for it. The team features three recent All-Stars, signed a former lottery pick to an eight-figure yearly contract extension, and picked up two mid-level veteran free agents in the offseason to align with 2021 free agent signee Alex Caruso. And yet these Bulls rank No. 15 in payroll, 22nd in net rating in a league where 20 teams make the playoffs.

By design. Everything to keep the Bulls in view of a .500 record, nothing to put the Bulls in danger of leaping into the luxury tax.

The basketball problem is the triptych, together, advancing LaVine onto another club clears Chicago for its best chance.

LaVine is not bad, on a great team he’ll be good. He can motor into passing lanes for deflections, lead and finish on the break. A strong catch-and-shoot three-point splasher, as with most things in LaVine’s game, he’ll run far more efficiently if his legs have to do less.

He has to do a lot on the Bulls, because DeRozan is always in his way, Vucevic not far removed. LaVine tries to hoard energy on defense …

… often developing unfavorable results.

LaVine’s lasting Chicago Bull hallmark is his absolute destructiveness within clutch and/or in buzzer situations (look at this clock management, shot selection). The Bulls were desperate for LaVine to replace Jimmy Butler and that ain’t Zach, it isn’t LaVine’s fault the Bulls expected so much of him, and it isn’t his fault Chicago surrounded him with 22 two-point shooters and zero point guards.

But, end it, please. For nothing or for shooting or for picks, I see Davis Bertans or Gordon Hayward in Chicago’s increasingly immobile future and I don’t mind it one side-part.

Future generations will mock us for lasting this long into the column before bringing up Zach LaVine’s knees, he doesn’t bend his knees, not even on offense, it isn’t a good look and it won’t fix itself, even on a team where Zach does less. Yet his three-years and $137 million past this season can be argued away on a team dealing for a ring.

Specifically? Tough. Why break up the 76ers? Philly has the league’s third-best offense with De’Anthony Melton playing two-way ball alongside Tyrese Maxey, the Sixers need all the usage depth it can get around Joel Embiid but I’m not sure alpha scoring is ultra necessary. The Lakers? With that spacing? Miami? Don’t they already have better (Butler) and cheaper (Tyler Herro) and younger (Jamie Jaquez Jr.) wings?

This will take some doing, LaVine makes just over $40 million this season. Trade restrictions recently loosened and the apron-free Bulls are less-taxing to ply, yet dealing remains a profound task.

Chicago must accomplish it without waiting for Dec. 15 (when recently-acquired players can be traded). Front offices talk themselves into fewer things as the season ticks along, another month of Zach LaVine lowlights might be too much for another club’s owner to stomach. This is the same player who needed 178 minutes to dish his sixth assist of the season, the man behind the least-loved 50-point game in Chicago Bulls history.

The Chicago sports legend, for this quote alone:

“We didn’t have a team meeting, I think it’s a basketball conversation.”

If I were Daryl Morey and the Sixers, yes. If Nick Nurse can handle the weight of three load-bearing stars, or even convince LaVine to adopt a bench role, you gotta roll with this. Watch film of LaVine alongside Lonzo Ball, he plays free and easy and takes pressure off others. The last thing any side needs is a February transaction.

OTHER BULLS

Extend DeRozan. He works with younger Bulls. Add three-point shooters and survive. Turn his contract into a tradeable asset, as opposed to a zero-value expiring contract. The Heat and Lakers will also call in 2024.

Keep Patrick “Camo” Williams. So he blends with the scenery. So he mopes, you would too if nobody passed the ball. He is probably adjusting to life as a grownup, life tends to distract, but the lanes tend to open up with Zach LaVine around. Dealing players at low points rarely works, why not engage Williams in contract extension talks?

Don’t deal Alex Caruso. First-round picks signify nothing, non-lottery selections are mostly invitations to house a Darius Bazley or Chandler Hutchinson for a few years. If a team snags someone in the depths of the late first-round, it’s not usually Tyrese Maxey, more of a Landry Shamet.

Caruso is one of the best defenders I’ve ever seen. There is worth to this within the Chicago Bulls organization, top evidence is a top-five defensive rating in 2022-23 with a roster which had no reason for being in the top-22 or 23, with Caruso missing his customary 15 games. The Bulls perform exceedingly well with him in the lineup, the Bulls also perform way above a reasonably-expected station with Caruso in street clothes, calling things out from the bench. There is unending value in Alex Caruso (extend him) and DeMar DeRozan working with young players.

The Bulls are not developers, the Bulls prefer Kansas and Duke and North Carolina finish that work, Jerry Krause learned this the hard way:

This pitch is not because I wouldn’t trust Artūras Karnišovas to feed my three cats when I’m away, I wouldn’t trust Jerry Krause, either, I might return home to two kittens, a salamander from Iowa State and a unicorn to be named later.

Name your favorite GM, I wouldn’t trust him selecting the player delivering equal value to Alex Caruso’s next two seasons. In fact, tell your favorite GM that Alex Caruso’s left toe injury could linger all season, a bout of turf toe could be the most debilitating setback yet for the oft-injured Caruso, who thrives on stops and starts. Don’t trade a first-round pick for a guy wearing two different-sized shoes.

It is important that the Bulls keep people like DeRozan and Caruso, doing the work the skinflint organization won’t. Jerry Reinsdorf would hire Daryl Boston for a fourth job before he hires an NBA-sized staff for the team in the NBA’s third-largest market.

The Bulls owe San Antonio a first-round pick if it falls between 1-10 in 2025, 1-8 in 2026 and 1-8 in 2027, turning into a second-round obligation beyond that. All the Bulls have to do is become mediocre again. Average. I think they can maybe do that. Given health.

ALL-STAR GAME UNIFORMS

Again, I insist, go local! Each All-Star Game should feature uniforms heavily influenced by what the host team wears, as was the case a few times in the 1970s.

I’m not sure if NBA fans want to see All-Stars wear their own jerseys in this All-Star Game so much as they want to see All-Stars wear the jerseys from the 1997 All-Star Game because those look so cool.

Are we truly hyped to watch the same Timberwolves and Mavericks uniforms from the previous week’s regular season games roll out, again? Or clubs outfitting All-Stars in the most-recent, fifth-try, City Editions?

No neutral reds and blues, but Pacer, Warrior hues. Lakers next, tell NYC the news. All-Stars in Boston green or Charlotte teals? Doesn’t this evoke the feels?

IN-SEASON TOURNAMENT

The In-Season Tournament features artificially boosted ratings (LeBron James vs. Kevin Durant scored higher than a game between clubs from Milwaukee and Minneapolis) but the play is proper, the court adds a reminder, so far so good.

At the moment, the potential salary bump is enough, Anthony Davis said as much to Dave McMenamin:

“$500 [thousand] sounds real good to us. It’s going to bring that juice, you know what I mean? … I heard one of our players, I’m not going to say who but he was like, ‘Man,’ when we beat Phoenix, ‘That’s one step closer to this $500. I’ve never had that before.’ So it’s like, that’s a little extra motivation.”

(The teams earning Las Vegas prize money should earn money for the extra NBA games they work, this isn’t a bonus, these are wages!)

It won’t always be enough, the league is rich in parity in 2023-24, there isn’t a whole lot $500,000 can do about one Tournament participant being way better at basketball than another. More and more teams will embrace the time off as not, so, bad.

Earning extra money will always be most important to players but what is also nice is making hundreds of thousands and/or millions of bucks at basketball and enjoying a week off five weeks into the season — fall break for the New Climate — between Dec. 3 and Dec. 11.

Vacationing NBA players have a whole week in Vegas to roll their way up to $500k in chips, no running required. What I’m after is veteran millionaires sabotaging a rookie contract-led comeback in the pre-Vegas stages, or rookies sabotaging a veteran vacation, all on a silly court. I like the courts.

(Think of the try-hard social media videos we’ll see during the Vegas break. The Phoenix Suns are gonna lift so many weights.)

I am not against an in-season tournament in principle, nor the elimination of the 82-game season. Combine the two, with teams only visiting opponents once per season for two-game miniseries’, baseball-style, limiting airline exhaust and extending rest segments between player travel.

No team should play an in-conference opponent a single time before flying away, it is a complete waste of time, money, ozone, and competitive verve.

Spread l’il Divisional tournaments all over the calendar, tout yourself as the Greenest League of All. Give us better basketball, because the basketballers will be better rested.

Until then, the courts look cool.

DADDY ROLLIN’ STONE

Thank you for reading!

I need gas money to go look at those courts again: