Screw Melo. He had the chance to sign with Houston and stupidly spurned us and went to OKC instead. Don't need that washed up loser on this team.
He didn't spurn us for OKC. He was pretty adamant about coming here all last summer until the Knicks new front office finally convinced him they wouldn't trade him for Ryan Anderson and would rather keep him.
He would if a condition of the deal was Chicago releasing him. The point would be if there's a way for OKC to move his salary without having to waive and stretch themselves.
Thats not how it happened doh. Knicks didnt like what rockets offered after new gm. He was either gonna stay in ny with the circus or go to okc just to be free. I hate when people arent honest with takes
If Presti pawns off Melo's salary on the Bulls for anything less than two 1sts, he'll overtake the trio of people running the Lakers as the early favorite for GM of the Year. Lulz.
Again, Chicago releasing Melo would be a condition of the trade. This is the exact scenario Woj outlined Friday. Thus, Melo would definitely approve it, since it would directly lead to him becoming a free agent. That said, I'm with @Deuce in that it feels like a longshot. Problem is that with the Stepien rule, OKC doesn't have much draft sweetener available. Even if Melo was willing to give back $5M in a buyout (i.e. what he could recoup if HOU or LA gave him MLE money), that would still be about $22M that the Bulls would be on the hook for. I'd guess they could do better for $22M than this: A potentially feasible path could be the Bulls sending Asik to OKC in a Melo deal, thereby allowing OKC to waive and stretch Asik over a longer period than they could Melo. But since they'd be shipping out nearly $11M in salary in Asik, they could still reasonably do a Melo/Asik deal after today... so there's not really "deadline" urgency with that path. (EDIT: I see from @Deuce's embedded tweets above that the LaVine match will take Chicago down to $9.9M in cap room... so if a Melo/Asik deal were done after today, the Bulls would have to include a second player to make the math work. So there might be a little bit of deadline pressure... but ultimately, finding a home for one $5M-ish player probably isn't too hard.)
It's an expiring contract that they'll waive immediately. Bulls might even do it for a couple of 2nds. Then trade him to us for Ryno and a protected first. Would be a nice way for us to dump one year of Ryno's contract while losing practically nothing on the court since Ryno didn't play meaningful playoff minutes.
Two unprotected 1sts to save 130M in tax. That sounds about right. If I were the Bulls I wouldn't let OKC off easy.
