SB Nation User Blog: fundamentallysound

A Trade that Dumps Hughes and Lands Kaman

fundamentallysound — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:15:09 -0000

Judging by ESPN's Daily Dime's quote (below) the Clips want an All-Star at the 2 for Kaman. They have interest in Vince Carter:

The Clips have also maintained longstanding interest in New Jersey's Vince Carter, but even if they wound up talking to the Nets, trying to convince them to take back Kaman's long contract would appear to run counter to the Nets' own hopes of being a free-agent player in the summer of 2010. Especially since Kaman's contract contains a 15 percent trade kicker, which, as of Friday, would have resulted in an extra $6.3 million in salary.

So how do we make this work for the Bulls? Well, presuming that the Nets are still trying to go for the 2010 plan (a perhaps dubious presumption with the Knicks seemingly taking the lead in the great race for LeBron this week), here's my plan to land Kaman all while dumping Larry.

Bulls Get:

Chris Kaman and Jason Hart

Nets Get:

Larry Hughes, Thabo Sefolosha, and the Bulls 1st round pick

Clippers Get:

Vince Carter

Why do the Bulls do it? Well, they get rid of Larry Hughes, get a contract that expires this year (Hart) which frees up extra money to re-sign Gordon, and they get Chris Kaman. They also give up their first round pick, but this is a weak draft and the Bulls don't need to get any younger.

Why do the Nets do it? They get Hughes and Sefolosha to plug in the hole that Vince leaves for two years when their contracts expire and gives them about $15 million in expiring contracts in 2010. They also get a first round pick for Vince, which they have to view as a success at this point. They aren't winning much with Vince and it's better to cut their losses and get 2010 expiring contracts and a first round pick.

Why do the Clips do it? Their pieces as they are right now don't fit. They have three capable (using the term loosely with regard to Z-Bo) big men that all are getting paid a lot and will command a lot of minutes. They need a wing player who can score badly if they want to compete this year, which it seems they do. They are an older team at their key positions (PG and C) and so getting the older Vince Carter isn't as big of a problem; they are trying to compete now. Also, Vince is the guy they want according to ESPN and this gets it done. (Side note: Vince was an adjusted plus-minus wonder at +4 last year and has always been consistently positive for his teams, despite the bad rep he gets for not trying hard enough).

So what do you all think? Critiques, criticisms, and proposed adjustments are all welcome, but I think that this is a pretty good deal for all involved (the only one I can think of who wouldn't pull the trigger is the Nets, if they haven't given up on this year or aren't really going for the 2010 guys).

"Thabo's Play: Better than we realize?" or alternatively, "Adventures in small sample size"

fundamentallysound — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:14:11 -0000

The general consensus around here seems to be that Thabo has been worse this year than he has been in previous years and that even though Larry Hughes is awful, the difference between he and Thabo is simply that Thabo takes less shots and is paid less (two big bonuses in and of themselves). From the way Thabo's play has been characterized you'd think the stats would clearly show him a worse player this year. Only, they don't.

Thabo last year posted a 11.4 PER in 1436 minutes with 42.8% FG shooting and 33% shooting on threes. This year in 151 minutes he's posted a 16.0 PER. All of his scoring efficiency metrics are up, despite the fact that he's 1 for 11 from three point land this year, an abysmal 9% from deep. However, he's shooting 46.3% from the field despite that and his eFG% and TS% are both up, at 47.6% and 52.9% respectively. He's been able to do this primarily on the strength of improved foul shooting. He's at 90% (9 for 10). I'd expect regression to the mean on this, but he improved his foul shooting from his rookie year to his second year, so he might not completely regress on his foul shooting from where he is right now. I'd expect his 3 point shooting to return to his usual 33-35% range as well, so those things will probably mitigate one another or even serve to further increase his eFG% and TS% depending on the number of threes he's taking and times he gets to the line. Where else has Thabo seemingly improved? His TOV% is way down from 16.6 last year to 11.7 this year. His block % is up from 1.6 to 2.4, and his steal % has nearly doubled from 2.2% to 4.3%. He's also passing the ball better, with an increased AST % (from 14.3% up to 15.4%) to go along with his much decreased TOV %. These improved offensive figures all might have something to do with another number that's dropped, his Usage %. He went from a USG% of 17.2% his rookie year and 17.3% last year to just 14.6% this year. He hasn't improved everywhere though, his Reb% are down across the board. Last year, Thabo's adjusted plus-minus numbers were -0.7 for the year, indicating that Bulls were about the same with him as without him, marginally worse all things considered. However, looking at the numbers above, with the GIGANTIC caveat that these are based on a horribly small sample size, it looks as though Thabo has improved both offensively and defensively and therefore is more likely to be a net positive when on the floor this year.

A couple of takeaways from this: Thabo is best when he doesn't have the ball in his hands and can focus on his defense. He's done that in his 14 minutes a game thus far this year and despite some terrible 3 point shooting he's overall had a more positive impact than last year and his rookie year. Also, if this trend continues, it makes any qualms about sending Hinrich out and running with a three guard rotation of Rose, Ben, and Thabo seem less important, especially given that Rose and Ben are both high usage guys that can and should dominate the ball when paired with Thabo. Lastly, in order for him to be effective with Rose particularly, Thabo has got to improve his shooting from deep relative to what we have seen thus far, but given that the last two years he's been a 33-35% shooter from long range, I'd say we can at least assume he'll return to that level. Guys don't just completely forget how to shoot. So Paxson, buy out Hughes, trade Hinrich after he gets healthy and make sure you show Ben how important he is to us by clearing out some salary for next year. Then we'll have a nice backcourt rotation to roll out, with three big minute getters being Rose BG and Thabo and with Lindsey Hunter filling in occasionally when Rose is tired, and preferably only when BG is out there to shoulder the offensive load.

Thanks to 82games.com and basketball-reference.com for the stats.

The losers in the end may get credit for playing spirited basketball and making a late charge in...

fundamentallysound — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:57:57 -0000

The losers in the end may get credit for playing spirited basketball and making a late charge in order to turn this into a close game, but this was a night of some pretty stupid basketball for the Chicago Bulls.
A simple description, but the best way to put it. The team played needlessly small lineups during good runs and bad runs, got away with it for spells (probably the worst thing that could happen), and managed to make a game of it relying on bad three-point shooting and low-percentage perimeter looks that went in.
Most other games, these shots won't go in. And the Bulls will suffer, badly. This morale win will hurt more than it will help because it will allow the Bulls and the Chicago coaching staff to think that Andres Nocioni pulling up for bombs early in the shot clock or as a transition threat helps. Or that running an undersized power forward, a small forward, and three 6-2 guards as a five-man outfit will work down the stretch. Or that playing Derrick Rose off the ball while Kirk Hinrich dribbles like it is 2004 somehow makes sense.
The Magic played well in the first and third quarters, moving the ball in the first and relying on Rashard Lewis' long-range touch in the third, but they could have done better. The Bulls could have done much, much better; but because they nearly pulled this one out, they may have done themselves a year-long disservice. Great.

Bulls waive Powell and Ruffin

fundamentallysound — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:49:35 -0000

Bulls waive Powell and Ruffin

[From the FanShots -ed.]

Bye bye Powell and Ruffin... why did we even bother with bringing Ruffin in? Seems like a waste of time. Everyone knew he couldn't play before we brought him in.

Blazers Offer Outlaw and Prz for Hinrich

fundamentallysound — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:22:39 -0000

Blazers Offer Outlaw and Prz for Hinrich

The guy who broke the rumored Miller deal before McGraw and the others picked it up is reporting that the Blazers have offered Joe P. and Travis Outlaw for Hinrich. The Bulls have apparently countered with an offer of Gordon, which if it is true... wow, just wow. Anyway, I'd be fine with an Hinrich for JP and Travis Outlaw swap. An extra serviceable big and a young up and coming wing player with a developing skill set for a guy we need to clear out anyway isn't a bad deal.

Competing this year and still building for the future

fundamentallysound — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:48:49 -0000

I don't want the Bulls to suck this year. They sucked last year and it was not fun. I want the young guys to develop, but I also want the Bulls to win games. I want Ben Gordon back, but he seems to be on his way out. He's been (reportedly) offered 6 years $59 million and turned it down. For this, Kelly Dwyer called him "a nutter" in a recent Yahoo BDL chat. I think Ben should take that deal, because I honestly don't see another NBA team paying him 10 million a year next year and he'll have lost out on over a million dollars this year just for the chance to be an RFA. Ben is more valuable to the Bulls than he would be to most other teams in the league, because we're so starved for scorers, and yet, Bulls management still only values him at around 10 million a year (based on last year and this year's reported offers). What does that say about his value on the open market? I don't expect him to be offered a lot more and think he'd be best suited by taking the money. However, I think Ben and his agent are convinced the money will be there next year (it might be, you never know with these things). If it is the case that Ben won't be with us next year or that he'll be on the QO (in which case he shouldn't see much floor action because why would we want to help him drive his value up when he's very likely to bolt this team after the end of the year?)

I think the Bulls need insurance at the 2 spot, and better insurance than Thabo and Larry Hughes. This idea is likely to cause a lot of moaning and groaning because the guy has a bad rep, but I think the Bulls should target Vince Carter with Larry Hughes's deal. Why? Vince posted an 18.8 PER this year at age 31. The list of guards who have posted PERs above 18 at age 31 with Vince's size (above 6'5") are Magic Johnson, MJ, Ray Allen, Mitch Richmond, Reggie Miller, George Gervin, Clyde Drexler, Walter Davis, and of course, Vince. Now, statistically the closest to Vince for his career and at age 31 is Clyde Drexler. Looking at the next 4 years of Clyde's career after age 31 (which will be the years remaining on Vince's contract and the last year is an unguaranteed team option). He posted PERs of 22.4, 20.0, 19.9, and 19.8. Clyde showed remarkable consistency and throughout Vince's career he has shown equally remarkable consistency and I expect him to keep it up. It should be noted that the other guys on the list were all able to play pretty well into their thirties. The trade would ideally look like that. The only reason I can think of NJ taking a deal like that would be to shave some payroll this year (since they don't appear to be trying to put a winning team out there) and to get Vince's contract off the books in 2010 which Hughes's deal would provide. Doing that would get them WAY under the cap, to the point that they might be able to target two members of the big FA class of 2010, like say Lebron and Bosh. I read a rumor a while back that they almost deal Vince the Cleveland for Wally Z's expiring deal, so maybe this isn't THAT far-fetched.

Of course, simply acquiring Vince wouldn't make us competitive for next year. That's why we'd have to pull off the much rumored trade of Nocioni and Ced Simmons and a first round pick for Brad Miller. If they didn't bite on that deal, I'd even be willing to make it a Brad Miller and Kenny Thomas for Gooden, Nocioni and Simmons swap. They'd get two players they could potentially start, cap relief early in Gooden and they'd shave salary for this year. Again, these deals are just assuming that Ben Gordon isn't going to be in our long term plans so we don't care about adding salary. If we pulled off the Vince deal and the second iteration of the Miller deal (including Gooden), we'd have a lineup that looked like this:

PG - Rose / Hinrich

SG - Vince / BG (spot minutes) / Hinrich / Thabo

SF - Deng / Thabo

PF - Tyrus (30 minutes) / Noah (18 minutes) / Kenny Thomas (no minutes unless we need to Hack-a-Player or it's a blowout)

C - Miller (36 minutes) / Noah (12 minutes) / Gray (mop up duty in blowouts)

then there'd be the bench guys: Nichols, minimum salary guys

I think that's a very competitive team in the short term, and then Miller and Thomas's contracts come off the books in 2010 and Vince's contract is only partially guaranteed after 2011. By that time Rose will be 21 or 22 and hopefully making many appearances on All-Star teams. Also, a team that was built like that would actually have balance. Miller would provide offense with Tyrus / Noah providing the D. Vince would be able to hit shots from outside as well as slash to the bucket and get opposing teams in foul trouble. Hinrich would get backup minutes behind Rose and Vince (doing his combo guard thing) and Thabo could take ALL the backup SF minutes. That's a pretty good lineup in my view, and all those guys are great adjusted plus / minus guys (we don't know about Rose yet, but I'm assuming he will be because I assume he'll be great). I think we win a lot of games in the short term, potentially surprise some people in the playoffs, get Rose, Ty, and Noah great experience and then when the old guys are completely shot they'll come off the books. I like this plan a lot, especially if Ben and the Bulls really can't come to terms. Feel free to poke holes in the plan (like the small chance that NJN takes that Vince for 2010 cap space deal) and offer better options or different options. I'm open to hearing what people have to say about this.

Luol reportedly pressuring the Bulls to keep Ben and get it done in time for Ben to play for UK

fundamentallysound — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 06:00:28 -0000

Luol reportedly pressuring the Bulls to keep Ben and get it done in time for Ben to play for UK

(via DaBullz.com - they do fine work over there)

Deng said: "I’d love to see him back in Chicago and here with me playing for Great Britain.

"I’ve never been on a court without him and we know what he’s capable of. The Bulls and GB will be better with him."

I agree with the author of the post that it would start Deng's time here as one of the franchise cornerstones pretty poorly if we didn't resign his good friend and running mate BG. Hopefully, Lu's requests don't go unheard or unanswered.

Gordon says "It doesn't look like" he'll remain a Bull

fundamentallysound — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:39:43 -0000

Gordon says "It doesn't look like" he'll remain a Bull

[From the FanShots. Ben really likes talking about leading the team in scoring, doesn't he? He has a case if there is indeed a team willing to do a sign/trade for him. But if there isn't...he will be here next year, at least on the QO. -ed.]

The quote that makes my stomach sink comes in response to whether or not he'll be a Bull next year:

"Right now, honestly, it doesn't look like it," Gordon said. "I think a decision is going to be made soon. ... I've had a great time here. I was fortunate enough to play on a team that made the playoffs; I led the team in scoring three of the four seasons I've been here. It's been a good experience, but we haven't been able to come to any common ground. It's just part of the business. You have to do what you have to do sometimes."

Damn it.

(Hat tip: RealGM poster 'Bullsville')

Determining Ben's value in dollars and Wins Above Replacement Player (via APBR)

fundamentallysound — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:34:16 -0000

For the record I'd say paying Gordon more than Deng would be a mistake, but I also think that if you can clear out Nocioni for a slightly smaller contract you can free up a bit more space to make BG a little better offer that he'd likely take. However, if the Bulls are successful at using this no-luxury-tax ploy to sign BG on the cheap (6 years 58 million), then I'll agree that it was a smart move. If it results in him taking the QO and walking next year, then I'll be super pissed.

Personally, I'd rather have the certainty of locking him up even if you don't get him for cheap and pay him closer to his value. For the record, if you go to this spreadsheet, that guy (davis21wylie2121 from APBR board) has used Dean Oliver's ORtg and DRtg numbers to calculate the amount of wins a player produced above a replacement player and then used that number to calculate their value in dollars (assuming wins were worth $1,500,000 and replacement level salary was $580,000, the league minimum). Even in a down year, Gordon was worth over $9 million for the year and interestingly, was worth more than Deng (a result of him playing more games than Deng, last year Deng's ORtg and DRtg were quite a bit better than BG's and he played more minutes, so he would likely have been worth several more wins than BG in each of their career years. So for those saying that BG is only worth 9 million a year, well if you expect him never to return to his 2006-07 levels and this off year to be indicative of all he's capable of, he's still worth over $9 million per year. If you, like me, believe he will improve on this year and be closer to last year for the next 5 to 6 years, he should be worth at least $10 million per season. I would not, however, pay him more than Deng, because Deng is 1) younger, 2) better, and 3) a two-way player.

So somewhere between 10 million and the 11.8 million per year that Deng got seems reasonable to me for BG. Say $10.5 million per year? That'd give him a 6 year 63 million dollar contract and using this extremely useful little tool, we can see that a 6 year 63 million dollar contract with 10.5% escalators would only have to start out at about $ 8.317 million this year. In other words, the Bulls would have to shave less than $1 million off of payroll in order to make such a deal possible. In fact, he'd only need to shave about $660,000 off of payroll to do it.

Some deals that would work for this would be Nocioni for Eric Snow's expiring contract (8 million for 7.3125 million), an Etan Thomas deal (assuming his trade kicker isn't prohibitive), even Noce for Jamal Tinsley works (but Tinsley's contract runs until 2011 and he sucks, but it could free us up to move Hinrich in a subsequent deal, I guess, and have Tinsley as the Rose backup, probably my least favorite of these ideas), or Nocioni for Stackhouse (8 million for 7 million), Stack is old and pretty terrible at this point, but they could buy him out easily enough since his last year of his contract (2009-10) is only guaranteed for 2 million. I don't know that Dallas does that last deal, but there are ways of moving Nocioni to clear that extra 660,000 to make Ben paid much more closely to his true value. It's really not that difficult, if only Pax could pull off one of these deals.

I personally like the Nocioni for Eric Snow deal a lot, but that's because I really don't think Noce has much value and I'm all for getting rid of him in a straight up salary dump. The best deal, again assuming the trade kicker isn't too big, is Etan Thomas for Nocioni. We get another serviceable center, someone for Deng to talk with about the big issues of the day, clear out minutes for Thabo and TT by eliminating Noce's presence and lose some salary to resign BG. The Wiz get a pretty solid backup for Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison when they come down with the injury bug that seems to strike the Wiz every year and all they give up is their backup center, which in turn frees up more minutes for their young gun Andray Blatche to see more minutes. Anyway, the point is, there are deals out there to help this team and most of them involve losing Nocioni for lesser salary in order to re-sign Ben to a better deal. I hope Paxson knows that and does something about it, because I'm getting nervous about the possibilty of Ben taking the QO and walking for nothing in 2009. That would suck.

Today In Market-Setting: Biedrins gets 6 years 63 million

fundamentallysound — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:09:33 -0000

Today In Market-Setting: Biedrins gets 6 years 63 million

This should help set the market, along with Monta's contract, for young, non-allstar but very good talent. Hopefully these two signings help expedite the process for the Bulls.