I swear, Stone repeats the same 20 - 30 words every press conference. Not that I’m complaining. No real need for the GM to show his hand.
Stone laid out his strategy when he first took over. He has followed the road map exactly. He deserves a hell of lot more credit than he gets on this forum. Not many teams have ever had this quick of a turnaround from full out tanking to relevancy and flexibility this fast.
I was playing around with the trade calculator. Without trading FVV or Brooks, it would be difficult to cobble salary together for 40+ mil dollar guy, though not impossible. For example, Green, Oladipo, Landale, and Tate for Lavine works from a money perspective. The same package works from a money perspective for Mitchell (he makes 33 mil / yr).
Yeah, you gotta include at least one of the high first round guys to make it work. Not ideal but I suppose we're probably not acquiring a guy getting paid that kind of money without sending out a good young player anyway.
I saw it on ESPN Trade Machine. Maybe they changed / corrected it. (S***, you're right. It did say that at one time. I'm going to fix the post containing my inadvertent lie.) EDIT: Actually, I can't be hallucinating. ESPN Trade Machine still lists Bullock's contract at $11,000,000. But according to Spotrac, it was $3 million something. Which is obviously more likely.
I think it was in an article listing each teams tradeable assets, I read it a few days ago and thought "uh oh - someone didn't proof read!!"
...and yet since Landale lost the backup center position, easy to acquire backup "centers" have gotten their @sses handed to them by the 6'8" more of a backup PF much more often than not forcing opposing teams to go small when Sengun sits for Green.
Don't forget, it's not just money, its roster spots too - the team receiving all those contracts cobbled together to reach the matching amount has to have an open roster spot for each one of them. They can cut / waive them after the fact, but they must have a roster spot to land in. Lopsided trades are difficult to pull off during the season because of that fact. They generally occur during the offseason when rosters are expanded to 20. In the Lavine example, Chicago would need 3 open roster spots with Lavine being the 4th.
It would be interesting to see if we could play 2nd fiddle in moving Donovan to one of those teams, and perhaps bring back one of their pieces!
So, some may hate this trade, but how about LaVine and Drummond for Ja. Green, Tate, Je. Green, and Oladipo? I wouldn’t send out any major draft compensation in this trade. Rather, the Bulls are getting a potential LaVine replacement in Green and two win-now players in Tate and Je. Green. Our rotation would be: FVV / Lavine / Brooks / Smith / Sengun Holiday / Amen / Eason / Drummond LaVine gives us what we need – a historical 24 – 25 point scorer who can space the floor. Drummond is the defensive big we desperately need who will take over backup big duties until we find a long-term third big. We hold on to Landale and hope he either recovers well from his injury, or he continues to be a tradable contract. Eventually, you hope Amen will replace FVV, meaning our “core” will be Amen, LaVine, Brooks, Smith, Sengun, Eason, and Whitmore. Add another big, and that’s a deep team that still has several developmental prospects and strong draft assets going forward. Contracts actually lineup pretty well because an Amen and/or Whitmore extension would kick in in the 2027 – 2028 season, right when Brooks and LaVine would, theoretically, come off the books.
With the talk of Mitchell leaving Cleveland and Brooklyn being interested how about we get in the mix to get Bridges. Including some random nets to make the salaries work I got something like this: Cleveland receive: Jalen Green, Oladipo and Giles. Brooklyn receive: Mitchell Houston receive: mikal bridges, Watford and Lonnie walker. We provide the nets picks we already own and get a significant upgrade at the 2 who fits Ime's style far better. Who says no?
