[Bumping this from our lockout time. Also check out this newer amnesty roundup at Bulls Confidential, with the disclaimer: "a completely futile exercise that should not be bothered with or considered since you'll miss free agency if you wait around." . I'm inclined to agree that the bid process may have nobody go through waivers if they can claim a player and then trade him. Not sure you can do that though. -ed.]

With the new CBA, there's a good chance that an amnesty clause of some sort is created, as there was with the last CBA in 2005.  ESPN has released this team-by-team breakdown of what players would be let go under such a scenario.  

The Bulls likely wouldn't make use of this clause themselves, and I really don't see a convincing argument for why they should.  I know there are probably some people out there who would be in favor of jettisoning Carlos Boozer, but we're just not gonna find a better PF through free agency, so I fail to see how outright releasing him would do us any favors.  In any case, Marc  Stein and Chad Ford apparently have sources indicating that the Bulls brass isn't even considering that option.

The way this amnesty clause could affect the Bulls is by making the shallow pool of SG candidates just a little bit deeper.  Scrolling through the names listed in the ESPN article, there are some attractive names:

The name that's most intriguing to me is Portland's Brandon Roy.  A couple years ago, Roy was probably the third-best SG in the NBA behind only Kobe and Wade, but injuries have derailed what once looked like a hall-of-fame career.  Stein and Ford seem pretty convinced that the Blazers would proceed to cut ties with Roy, and on a less expensive deal, I think he could really help the Bulls.  He proved in the playoffs this past April that he can still take over a game.  He would obviously be a pretty risky endeavor, but if he can regain his pre-injury form, he'd take the Bulls to another level.

One name that I'm sure will be pretty polarizing is a certain Mr. Ben Gordon.  It's no big secret that signing the Bulls' former 6th man extraordinaire hasn't worked out so well for Detroit and they would probably jump at the chance to get out of the contract.  However, Detroit has some other pretty awful contracts on the books that they'd like to get rid of in Rip Hamilton (another SG option) and Charlie Villanueva, and as much as they'd like to, they can't dump all these guys.

There are also some other semi-attractive names on the list, like Gilbert Arenas, Josh Childress, and a few others.  Discuss.

Hey everybody.  This is going to be a pretty short fanpost, as I don't really have a ton to say.  I would've simply made a comment in the recent fanshot about the possibility of starting Samardzija, but it's been buried, so here goes.

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Hollinger's award picks.  I'm assuming this will be of interest to a lot of people here.  Here they are, along with all the Bulls-related quotes (there's quite a bit, as you probably could've guessed) for all of you without insider.

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Hollinger put out his "All-Improved Teams" today, which are in the same vein as the official Most Improved Player award that gets given out each year.  Here are his picks.

3rd Team:

Mike Conley

Wes Matthews

James Harden

Kris Humphries

Dwight Howard

2nd Team:

Russell Westbrook

Tony Allen

Rudy Gay

Lamar Odom

Lamarcus Aldridge

1st Team:

Derrick Rose

Eric Gordon

Thaddeus Young

Kevin Love

Tyson Chandler

2011 MIP: Darrell Arthur

Wait what?  I thought Hollinger hated Rose and was part of some overarching conspiracy to give him as little credit as possible.  Let's here what he has to say about the man:

 

I've always felt that Rose's case is much stronger for MIP than MVP. The shooting improvement? Legit, and impressive. Rose is up to 33.2 percent on 3s after rarely making them (or even taking them) in his first two seasons, and after shooting in the high 70s from the stripe in his first two seasons, he's at 85.5 percent this year. Rose has also improved defensively, albeit from a low starting point, and has managed to keep his percentages up despite the league's second-highest usage rate.

Well all those things that Hollinger mentioned are pretty obvious to anyone who's paid attention to Rose this year, but it's still praise.  Now to sit back and wait for the comments about how Hollinger is a stat geek who doesn't watch the games and has an agenda against Rose.

Here's the link.  But it's insider, so I'll give you a few of the notable quotes and make this a fanpost for YFBB's sake.

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Perhaps some of you have seen this TrueHoop blog post over at ESPN, but I hadn't until today, and I found it to be quite interesting.  The post comments on some analysis done by Matt Goldman at  hooptheory.com about shot selection and how it should be altered as the shot clock ticks down.   The premise of the analysis, which should be obvious to any basketball fan, is that players should shoot more as the clock winds down, because the value of holding onto ball goes down and time ticks away.

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The argument I'm about to make is pretty simple in essence: Luol Deng has been the best defensive player on the best defensive team in the league and should therefore, at the very least, receive some consideration for defensive player of the year.

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Happy New Years Blogabull!

So I'm actually pretty excited for this game, the reason being that, for the first time this season, I will have the pleasure of seeing this Bulls team in person.  But you guys probably don't care about that, just like nobody cares about the Cleveland and their woeful basketball team, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

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I'm sure there will be much speculation about potentially adding a big man now that Noah's out.  There's an excellent chance that the Bulls don't do anything at all, and if they do make a move, I highly doubt it'll be to add a high impact player.  Allow me to get the ball rolling.

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Kirk Hinrich has played in 7 games and about 36 minutes a game so far this year. He only has an 11.8 PER but a 22.9 TIR (thrust intensity rating). He also has a much better head of hair than Keith Bogans. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'. 

20+ points per 62 minutes on 59.7% TS.

9 boards per 120 minutes.

0 blocks, 1 steal, and an immeasurable amount of grit and tenacity per 36 minutes.

Pretty, pretty good.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/hinriki01.html

This one's for you, yfBB. ;-)

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/players/rookies/rankings

First edition of these from ESPN.  You need insider to see 11-50, so if anybody wants to know what David Thorpe has to say on any rookies not in the top 10 (not everybody has a blurb but about half do), write a comment, and I can do the appropriate copying and pasting.  Obviously it's early, but here are my quick takeaways:

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