It’s not even the preseason or training camp, and it already seems as if the Chicago Bulls are a mess.
For starters, they can’t trade Zach LaVine, despite giving it their best effort for nearly a year. Chicago doesn’t want LaVine and he doesn’t want to be there. But it’s been virtually impossible for them to part ways.
That’s somewhat of a surprise. LaVine is actually a pretty good player. When healthy, he’s a borderline All-Star in the backcourt. But a for trading him … again, forget it. No one seems to want LaVine’s max contract. And as good as he is individually, he’s probably the third or fourth option on a contender.
That’s why no one wants his contract, which pays LaVine like a top option.
But LaVine isn’t the only reason the Bulls are a basketball disaster. They are also lost DeMar DeRozan via a sign-and-trade with the Sacramento Kings. Oh, and they shipped off Alex Caruso to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Josh Giddey. So you could say the Bulls made two trades this summer and lost them both. Badly.
All of this is something Dan Favale of Bleacher Report wrote about in his power rankings of teams’ three-year windows. The Bulls are ranked 30th out of 30.
“It really seems like Chicago is caught between warring agendas,” Favale wrote. “That’s not changing so long as Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic are on the roster.
“And if the Bulls truly are rebuilding, Coby White will soon loom as a somewhat bizarre fit. He doesn’t turn 25 until February, but he’s on a bargain-bin contract that concludes in two years and is so cheap Chicago can’t extend him off it. There’s no guarantee he makes a ton of sense next to an offense presumably tailored to Giddey’s on-ball reps, either.
“If this offseason forecasts an eventual, long-overdue pivot into starting over, then so be it. But the duality of the Bulls’ situation puts them at a disadvantage.”
Already, it’s shaping up to be a long season in Chicago. And we’re not even to training camp.
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