I'm making this a FanPost because it's kind of long and wordy. Doug reports "Bulls wanted to dump Gordon no matter what?". He reports on a email sent to KC from RealGM poster Homo Sapien. 

HomoSapien:

The Bulls benched Gordon for Chris Duhon for a season and a half. They benched him for Larry Hughes for 25 games. They offered him much less money than Luol Deng, and then took away his offer the moment he was ready to accept it. This off-season Reinsdorf was quoted as saying that Gordon wouldn't have been able to get playing time behind Rose, Hinrich, and Salmons. Gordon is arguably the best player amongst this group, and currently has the highest PER. Are the Bulls brass just delusional or are they just really disrespectful towards him?

KC:
Disrespectful to him. Never understood their stance with BG. As for the pulled offer, I've heard they decided they made a mistake even offering it to him so even if he said he wanted to sign it, the offer was going to be pulled.

Doug is flummoxed and pissed.

What it seems to point me to is that the Bulls, even more than treating a sport like a business, treat business like a matter of personal friendship and business personal at a ridiculous level. Certain guys are described as and treated like family, despite glaring flaws. Other guys could walk on water and will never be family.  It's messed up, and it's no way to run an muli-million dollar business.

Obviously we're very close to the luxury tax and we're finding our "depth" of Gray, Pargo and Hunter is (to everyone's complete shock) not very good.  One way to acquire another player or two without going over the luxury tax threshold would be to find a team over the luxury tax that would like to save money by unloading an unneeded player onto us for James.

Here's a couple examples of how it'd work.

Bulls trade Jerome James ($6.6M, but insurance is covering his contract, so the true bill to the team is only $1.3M).

Bucks trade Luke Ridnour ($6.5M)

OR

Bucks trade Joe Alexander, Fran Elson, Roko Ukic ($5.6M)

In either trade, the salary cap ramifications are basically neutral, but the Bulls go from collecting insurance on James to actually paying that much salary. So the downside for the Bulls is they have to spend more money. But, they actually get players who may be useful.

The Bucks, on the other hand, have little use for any of those players, as none of them but Ridnour play much. Ridnour is actually a useful player, but the Bucks have Jennings, Bell, Redd, and Delfino, as well as Jodie Meeks, to suck up most of the minutes.

By trading Ridnour for James, the Bucks save about $5M. We'd have to spend about $5M

A similar deal could be had with the Lakers. We trade James, and the Lakers trade Adam Morrison and Jordan Farmar. That'd save the Lakers something on the order of $6.5M when it comes to luxury tax bill. Of course, maybe the Lakers are more interested in winning and wouldn't give up Farmar for nothing. But it'd be worth exploring.

Of course, from a Bulls perspective, any of these deals would increase our payroll, even though they wouldn't put us into the luxury tax.

Bulls trade Kirk Hinrich, James Johnson ($11.1M this year, $10.7M next year)

Kings trade Kevin Martin ($10.6M this year)

Why this works for the Kings.

Tyreke Evans looks mostly like a wing player who would be well-complemented by a solid PG. The Kings don't have a solid point guard. It's unclear how well Evans and Martin will work together since they both appear to work best at the same position.  Hinrich would fill the PG role and, because his salary declines over the next few years, constitute savings vs. Martin. Johnson is still a decent prospect, and if he turns out not to work, the Kings can save money by not picking up his options down the road.

Why this works for the Bulls

We are so screwed in the scoring department for this year it's not even funny. Martin seems like an ideal fit in that respect. He's a good scorer and a very good shooter from distance. In those senses, he seems like he'd be a very good player to fit between Deng and Rose. Defensively I don't think he's quite as good as Kirk, but I don't think he'd have a tangibly negative effect on team defense either. We'll live and die up front.

In the longer run, this is essentially a push financially, so it doesn't kill the idea of getting a 2010 free agent. We'd still need to ensure Salmons opts out, or is traded to have significant cap space, but that's been the name of the game up to this point anyway.  With Martin in the fold, however, our reliance on a risky plan would go down quite a bit.

After the jump, another trade and some general thoughts for a Bulls plan for success

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Consistent with my thoughts on the season, I see three sorts of trades that make sense and have some likelihood of working out for the Bulls.

1. Trade for a FA target if their team falls apart. That'd be Wade (very unlikely since the Heat look good), James (pretty unlikely, but we're hearing rumblings of unhappiness), or Bosh (They're 3-4, and looking better but not outstanding). This really doesn't need any analysis in basketball terms. The only relevant fact is if one of these guys tells his team he wants to be traded and he wants to come here. Otherwise, a deal like this ain't getting done because a team won't trade a superstar unless he is holding a gun to their head.

Still, this is the sort of deal in which I'd consider trading Luol Deng and/or, since we'd both get an upgrade in talent and offset most of the salary of the incoming star. That would allow us to, potentially, add that star (say Bosh) and then go out and make a pitch to a guy like James that he could and should come join up with a Rose, Bosh, Noah trio.

Example: Deng, Tyrus, JJ, Pick for Bosh. That, I think, still leaves us with enough cap space to make a realistic pitch for Lebron or Wade. Dynasty baby.

2. Trade for a player that combines short-run help and an expiring contract. The goal here is to clear additional cap room (by offloading Salmons and maybe punting on our "Tyrus Problem") and getting back a guy who is obviously better than those guys.

Example: Trade James/Salmons/Tyrus for Tmac and change. I'd be willing to throw in James Johnson too.

Another idea would be the much mentioned Boozer for Jerome James + Salmons/Tyrus idea. I'm a little iffier on that since I think we're weaker on the wings than up front (who'd replace Salmons in the backcourt?), but it'd probably be an upgrade.

3. Trade Trade for a younger player on a rookie deal we can afford to keep without giving up on FA dreams. And oh yeah, the youngster needs to really be able to play. Tyrus, who we can't afford to re-sign, would be the obvious bait, but if we found a team willing to take on salary next year too, that would be ideal (That is, Salmons or Kirk, perhaps).

Example: I think the early returns on James Harden are looking pretty good, but I don't see that the Thunder have immediate plans for him, and they look like the stereotypical team that is just a veteran or two away. Kirk + Tyrus for James Harden, Sean Livingston and Etan Thomas works in the trade machine. I think this would be a calculated risk, because we remove a veteran at a time we need to make a playoff push, but I strongly believe Harden would contribute immediately and we'd cover two others bases. We both create more cap space for next year (Harden will make several million less than Kirk) and we cover our SG position in the long run since it's unlikely we actually fill it in free agency next summer. Similar targets might be Gerald Henderson, Stephen Curry, Brandan Wright, Eric Gordon etc.

Firing Mel Daniels over his (rumored) spilling the Pacers guts to Peter Vecsey seems like more of a distraction from the story Vecsey ran with than the story itself. Last year Vecsey got loudly bashed by the Bulls organization for writing that John Paxson was going to step down as GM. And after loudly bashing Vecsey, Paxson.... stepped down as GM.

So that brings us to the Pacers and Larry Bird. Based on the various articles and interviews directly with him I've heard,  I find it very believable that Bird might step down at the end of the year. He's never looked like a man happy with "living the life" to me. And if that's the case, I think it's especially improper to extend the coach. If you're a short-timer, don't commit the team to a multi-million dollar expenditure to lock in your buddy. That's not right in any case, but it's especially not right in the case of a that's already struggling financially in a small market

When you see stuff like that going on, it explains why the Pacers are struggling so badly. Good businesses don't do that. Also, good businesses don't have to hire pollsters to tell them what their fans are thinking. It's a relatively extravagant expense that doesn't yield any thing useful. If the Pacers brass is too dense to figure it out on their own, they're going to be too dense to figure out how to use the information they paid for.

At the end of the day, the "cultural" problems are important, but the biggest killer is that this team has repeatedly made poor decisions on talent. Looking across this team, what I see is a serious lack of NBA talent.  We've got one star, Granger, and one guy, Dunleavy, who's an above average but not star player who must be accounted for by opposing defenses. And of course, he's going to be returning for a career threatening injury (or not), so we don't know what he'll really bring. We've guys are are legitimate NBA starters, Murphy and Ford, but who are certainly not above the average for what NBA starters should be.

That's 4 guys, and maybe only 3, with any credibility at all. And you need five guys to start. As prospects go, I think Hibbert and Hansbrough are decent, but good teams don't rely on big contributions from prospects. I think Rush is a mediocre prospect. They're not proven players. Jeff Foster is an above average backup, but paid a lot. Sol Jones is fine, but I'm not sure he's much better than a replacement level player.

Dahntay Jones, Earl Watson, Luther Head... none one of these guys brings much of value in my eyes. If you disagree, fine, but I think if anyone of them went down today, we could find a free agent off the street who could perform at basically the same level. That's especially bad when it comes to D. Jones, a guy we've locked into for 4 years.

So this team has 3-4 good players and three prospects who might become good players but aren't now. And by the way, it's not like we project them to be all-stars.  Can't win with that.

Unfortunately, I don't see any easy ways out, either. Not that there ever is from bad decisions, but the Pacers are capped out, don't have a surplus of draft picks, and don't have players and contracts that look to be in obvious demand to, well, anyone. So I don't see any obvious means of improvement through trade. To get shorter contracts (and thus flexibility), we'd have to give up talent, and we don't have much talent to give up. To get more talent, we'd have to give up shorter contracts, and we don't have much in the way of short contracts to give up.

Poor management? Check!

Poor talent? Check!

Poor finances? Check!

In short, this team has been run into the ground.

Not in Reinsdorf's position with my desire to win basketball games, but in Reinsdorf's position with his prioritization of cost, flexibility, loyalty and winning, I'd be thinking hard about what the new CBA is gonna look like.

I've been mulling over what the likely effects are of the CBA negotiations coming down the pike. Everything I read seems to indicate the owners are going to push hard for a smaller cap, a hard cap, shorter contracts and probably smaller contracts. I've seen lots of folks that suggest the new CBA will benefit the owners. I've seen no one suggest the new CBA will benefit the players (versus the current situation).

These facts might make a cautious owner with an eye on the bottom line not want to sign any contracts next summer (under the current CBA) - during the "2010 bonanza" - because they could be especially overpriced under the new CBA.

For that matter, it might also behoove them to make an Okafor for Chandler type trade with Luol Deng. The idea being that Deng's contract, while in line with what a player like Deng could expect under the current CBA and good economic times, is prohibitive and out of line with what you'll pay Deng under the upcoming CBA.  Which would be another reason to trade him (in addition to the ones I wrote here, but didn't have the guts to post here after that trade Rose fanpost). 

Anyway, since Jerry proclaimed Deng a future all-star, trading him is either exactly what he's thinking or the last thing he's thinking. I guess we'll see.  Of course, Jerry's got a lot of other stuff on his mind at the moment. Continue reading after the jump to find out what's up with Jerry's latest adventure...

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As I said, we're at a crossroads. some win now guys and some win later guys. Up to this point, we've largely talked about building the team around Derrick Rose, since he's clearly going to be our best player and his best years are clearly ahead of him.

I'm going to suggest we do the opposite. Our current older players are not bad. They're good compliments if we had those stars to put them around. The problem is we don't, and our star is only 20 years old.

As I mentioned before, I think we don't have enough cap space next year without making trades that undercut our ability to actually land a FA. And if we do nothing, we've got an incoherent mix of young and old without the obvious ability to get better.

The best case scenario I see presented is something like we dump Hinrich, Salmons opts out, and we get Dwyane Wade next year". That leaves us with a team of
Rose
Wade
Deng, JJ
?
Noah

That's nice, but the reality is that Wade is in his late 20s, in his prime, and is quite a bit more "ready to win" than the rest of the team. It's not the sort of fit anyone will be looking for. The problem is, to get Wade, we'd have to jettison most of our veteran complementary players. It doesn't look like a very well-conceived plan to me, which is why I'd have preferred to keep Gordon and then make a push for Bosh, who could have been the third leg of a team that would all hit its prime together. But that's not gonna happen now. But since that's water under the bridge, the question is how, if we got Wade, we'd build a good enough team around him to win. We'd need exactly the sort of complementary guys - Miller, Salmons, Hinrich - that we wouldn't be able to keep.

I think the solution is to look at what we could get for Rose, and consider if we couldn't get Wade now, thus enabling us to keep the veteran sort of players around him we'd need to win with.

Besides the general theory that you need to build a team of appropriately complementary, mostly similarly aged players to win with, we also might be presented with another requirement. Opportunity.

I think under normal circumstances, any call to the Heat about Wade would be met my laughter and a quick hang up. However the recent going on in Miami, I think, create at least some potential for getting him.

Wade has been offered an extension, within a context of some disagreement about whether he'd sign one. The Heat and Wade seem to be playing a game of chicken. Wade says he won't sign till the Heat get better, and the Heat say they can't make a decision about getting help until they've got Wade locked up.

Sounds like a breakdown in trust to me. I have to think that if Wade follows through and doesn't sign the extension, the Heat have to at least consider moving him

Oh, did I mention that Wade wants to play with Carlos Boozer?

Boozer, for his part, is a guy the Jazz are deperately trying to unload with little salary coming back, given their financial situation and desire to keep Paul Millsap. Understandable... I'd rather have Millsap too, but I'd take Boozer.

So why not try for two great tastes that taste great together (and want to be together), and land both Wade and Boozer. And oh, by the way, have a solid, mostly veteran team to put around them.

Here's the deal:

Bulls trade Derrick Rose, Tyrus Thomas, and Tim Thomas to Miami and Jerome James's 80% insured contract (true cost $1.3M) to Utah.
Bulls receive Dwyane Wade and Carlos Boozer

1- Hinrich
2- Wade
3- Deng, Salmons
4- Boozer, Johnson
5- Noah, Miller

I don't know if that's a title team or not, but it's certainly a contender, and it's a young one that can conceivably be kept together for several years. This is the best we could conceivably do, and I think it works pretty well for the Jazz (mission accomplished on immediate savings for Boozer) and the Heat, if things are actually deteriorating that badly with Wade.

Continue reading this post »

Good:

He's got excellent size and athleticism for both forward spots. He's a ridiculous 257lbs, but he's really athletic, posting good times in the sprint and agility drills, bench pressing a ton, and jumping out of the gym.

In short, he compares very well physically to plenty of successful players. The closest contemporary comparison might be Ryan Gomes, but with way more athleticism.  Perhaps Lebron James if Johnson loses 10-15 lbs. Yes, really.

He's a trained martial arts expert, which suggests to me excellent body control and the potential for good discipline.

Productively, he's demonstrated good but not great returns to his unworldly physical abilities. First, Wake Forest played at an NBA Pace. That's something that's not generally noted, but it's pretty important when considering how guys adjust.  For example, Blair and Pitt played a game that had something like 80 possessions per 48 minutes. The slowest paced NBA team, the Blazers, played 86.6. The Bulls played 93 I think. Wake Forest played about 90 possessions per 48 minutes. So he might be a bit more used to that sort of play from the get-go.

Within this background, he produced at good but not great levels. He's got range out to the 3 point line, he can rebound, and he finished pretty well. He appears to be able to pass the ball.

Bad:
The only physical negative I see is that weight. He's got 12% body fat in a world where the average successful NBA SF has 6-7% and the average PF has 8-9%.  With proper conditioning, I'd guess his proper playing weight would be about 245lbs.

Statistically, he was right on the margin of "troubling" in two areas. First, he fouled quite a bit, though he's not a foul machine. Second, he was just under 70% as a free throw shooter, which isn't all that great, but marginally acceptable. Third, for a guy with his physical tools, he really didn't get to the line a lot compared to what really top notch guys do.

Other:
* He apparently annoyed Chris Paul so badly that Paul told the Hornets not to draft him if available. Usually good players want their college teammates, especially if they think they can be good pros. That's sort of annoying.
* He's talked about an MMA career if basketball doesn't work out. The upside of that is he's a bad ass. The downside is I don't want him thinking aobut what happens if basketball doesn't work out.
* He came to basketball a bit late. I think I read he only started playing a couple years into high school.

Conclusions:
James Johnson has the tools to be an absolutely spectacular player. His physical gifts are second to none, even for the NBA. And his skills are impressive. He's demonstrated every tool you'd want from a basketball player on the court. Except... an overwhelming commitment and drive to succeed.

That's the common theme.

Physically he's gifted, but he's not in the best shape he could possibly be in. Productively, he's demonstrated superb skills, but hasn't produced to the level one could imagine a player with his skills producing at.  In short, it's all there, and even if he half-asses it, he can still be useful. But if he really commits and works his ass off, he could be amazing.