NIkola Vucevic to the Bulls. Awesome! The best part as a lifelong Bulls fan is what this says about our new front office. This is not the GarPax Bulls anymore!
I’ve been poo pooing this trade a bit on Reddit and getting flamed (yeah, I know). While I think the Bulls are immediately a much, much better team following this trade, I think giving up those picks is a bad move. Vucevic is not young and LaVine’s contract will be up next year. There’s a non-zero chance that that 2023 First Rounder will be pretty cherry. Similarly, the Bulls could still find themselves in the lottery this season if there’s a key injury.
I know it’s fashionable to say that Draft Picks are overvalued in today’s NBA and there’s some truth to it, but I want the Bulls not just making the playoffs but winning championships. This only happens with a superstar and the only way we get a superstar is by drafting one. We haven’t been a realistic destination for a megastar for decades and that’s not changing.
The Bulls also managed to turn Gafford and Hutchinson into Daniel Theis. I’ll miss Gafford somewhat but Theis will be a big help coming off the bench. Between Vooch and Theis we completely transformed the frontcourt. We also held onto Markkanen which almost no one predicted and I’m pleased. Perhaps he’s not a great fit, but I think he’s valuable. We may not be able to resign him, but I hope we do. Maybe with Vooch in there and WCJ gone something will click with that lineup.
We have to walk before we can run, and this is the first trade the Bulls have made to actually try to get better (I don’t really count Otto Porter), rather than prospects or cash considerations or whatever, in a long while. This also says that the front office is committing to LaVine and trying to put the pieces around him to contend. The idea of LaVine and Vucevic in the pick and roll and pick and pop is really exciting. This new front office, Billy Donovan, and these two all stars might start to change the perception a bit for free agents, but I’ve been a Bulls fan too long to hold my breath. I’m also assuming that the expectation is that those two draft picks will be not that great, and they are top 4 protected, so if we do stink and get a top 4 pick either year we still get that shot at another star. We shall see, but today is a different kind of day for Bulls fans. We’re not used to feeling happy about much lol.
I like the Norm Powell trade for the Raptors. Powell is a good player to have but Gary Trent is younger, cheaper, and could end up being much better.
The decision to not trade Kyle Lowry is… interesting.
I get it, building a winning culture and all that. But one thing we don’t really know is what happens if those picks don’t commute. They are top-4 protected in the primary years, but if the Bulls do strike oil and end up in the top 4 that pick will likely defer to the following year without protections. I think it’s probably a 90%+ chance that the 2121 pick goes to the Magic and it’ll probably be in the 10-15 range. Totally okay with that. But if the bottom drops out due to contracts/injuries not having that 2023 pick could hurt us for a decade.
Sure, if the Zach-Vuc combo turns us into a perennial playoff team for the next 4 years and starts the process of making us a desirable destination for premium free agents, then clearly this will have been an incredibly good trade. Yet, we’ve been trained to expect the worst here.
Prior to this new regime, we’ve been in an abusive relationship with this team for over 20 years. We expect the worst because that’s all we’ve been accustomed to. This is a new day. I’ve heard it compared to getting out of a bad relationship and starting a new one. You have to let the bad relationship go and move forward and try not to carry that baggage with you. We still need a point guard. I don’t see us finishing much higher than 6th in the East this year, and that’s best case. However, the arrow seems to be going in the right direction. You don’t get out of a 20 year funk in one season, but you can start moving in the right direction. Just the fact that nothing leaked about this deal tells you we are in a new era.
Powell is a good player but the Raptors have to build for the future. I like Lowry and hope he sticks around. But if he chooses not to, than the Raptors might not get anything for him later on. It seems to me some of the other trades, which are fine, were meant to make space for trading Lowry. But I’m certainly not anything close to as qualified as Nick Nurse and Co.
It’s possible no one offered what the Raptors were asking for for Lowry; the value in a short term rental isn’t that great. It’s very high risk to give away serious assets for 30 games of a guy, even 30 games of a future Hall of Famer.
If the Raptors had the opportunity to trade him, they made a mistake; they aren’t winning a championship this year.
Trent was a relentless and ferocious defender for the Blazers, a sparkplug off the bench, and his shooting game has been coming on strong since he got the nod to start while CJ McCollum was recovering. I’m sorry to see him go. Not so much Rodney Hood, who has always been iffy as a shooter, especially since recovery from his injury. Powell’s addition is a good one, as it strengthens the bench shooting significantly.
I’d have traded Powell for Trent straight up.
Norm Powell is a very good scorer; he is a bad defensive player. His numbers look good because almost all stats are offensive stats, but D counts. Powell is really stretched as a starter but he’s a terrific weapon as your first bench option when you’re behind and need points in a hurry.
Trent has the potential to be a genuine starter.
Trent’s father played briefly for the Raptors; I believe this is the first father-son combo the franchise has ever had.
Interesting factoid delivered by the announcers at last night’s Blazer game: both Trent and his father were traded from the Blazers to the Raptors after the 41st game of their third season with POR.
It’d be interesting to see a study of the wisdom of drafting the son of an NBA player.
My primary sport is baseball, as I think everyone knows. In baseball, a prospect being the son of an MLB player is an enormously good indicator of future success; it is arguably the most important thing you can know. If you have two young men in the same level of baseball, like two college seniors, with the same general statistics and whatnot, but one is the son of a former pro and the other isn’t, the son of the former pro is WAY likelier to be successful at the major league level. Like, several times likelier.
I suspect this is also true of NBA players but have no data to back it up.
There have been a lot of NBA offspring in the league, it seems to me. Here is a list of them:
Trent has been very impressive from what I have seen. Powell is good at offense, Trent might just be a better defender.