Summer League Underway For Bulls

The Bulls had their first summer league game yesterday, failing to the Golden State Warriors’ summer squad 95-83.  The Bulls are fielding a roster filled mostly with names that the average NBA fan has never heard of.  Both of Chicago’s first-round picks, forwards James Johnson and Taj Gibson, should be the highlights of the roster.  Other notable players include former Illinois center James Augustine, former UCLA guard Josh Shipp and former Florida Gators Taurean Green and Anthony Roberson.  The Bulls were unable to stop Golden State forward Anthony Randolph in this one, as the second-year man tied the Vegas Summer League record with 42 points in the contest.

Johnson was the best player on the court for Chicago in this one.  The Wake Forest product did a little bit of everything, finishing with an impressive line of 21 points, eight rebounds, three assists, one block and one steal.  He shot an efficient eight of 13 from the field and hit one of his two attempts from long range.  Gibson started along with Johnson and had a solid game as well.  He scored 14 points on five of 11 shooting and corralled a game-high 12 rebounds.  Both of these guys looked promising in their summer league debut, which could bode well for them contributing this season.

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Bulls Making Small Moves

The Bulls have made a few moves while we’ve been wrapped up in trade talk on this blog.  The team re-upped veteran guard Lindsey Hunter and inked guard Jannero Pargo to a one-year contract.  These two moves put the team over the luxury tax, resulting in the buyout of forward Tim Thomas in order to get back below that threshold.  The Bulls have been immersed in trade talks involving Utah Jazz forward Carlos Boozer, most notably in a three-team scenario that includes the Portland Trail Blazers, but it looks like those talks have stalled due to the Bulls’ insistence that Portland include guard Jerryd Bayless in the deal.

Re-signing Hunter was a good move as he gives this young team a locker room presence and the veteran leadership that will help the younger players; he’s also a good on-ball defender.  The Pargo signing is a sneaky one.  Some may remember Pargo from his days with the Hornets.  He played last season in Europe after failing to receive an offer he liked from an NBA team.  He’ll be able to provide the team with outside shooting and can play the Ben Gordon role in crunch time.  Pargo been known to rise to the occasion when it matters most, which is probably one of the central reasons for this signing.

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New Developments Concerning Boozer

The Bulls may not be the frontrunners to acquire power forward Carlos Boozer after all, as the Miami Heat appear to be throwing their name into the Boozer sweepstakes in an effort to placate Dwyane Wade.  The Bulls were involved in talks about a three-team trade last week that would have put Boozer in a Bulls uniform, but talks have apparently slowed on that front.  The Jazz, Boozer’s current team, have to decide what to do about Paul Millsap signing an offer sheet with the Blazers first.  The Jazz have a week to decide whether to match the four years and $32 million that Portland offered Millsap.

It’s likely that the Jazz match the offer sheet given to Millsap, as they seem more inclined to move forward with him as opposed to Boozer.  Boozer has one year left on his current contract, though whatever team lands him via trade would certainly look to lock him up long term.  The Blazers were the third team involved in the trade we mentioned last week, as they covet Bulls guard Kirk Hinrich, and the offer sheet to Millsap could be a way of expediting that deal.  Boozer will almost certainly be moved if the Jazz match the offer sheet, as keeping both players would put them in a difficult financial situation.

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Bulls Dealing For Boozer?

Yesterday I said that it wouldn’t make much sense for the Bulls to trade forward Tyrus Thomas unless they were getting a stud post player in return.  Well, not more than a few hours later rumors of a deal in which the Bulls would acquire power forward Carlos Boozer surfaced.  The rumored trade would be a three-team deal involving the Bulls, the Utah Jazz and the Portland Trail Blazers.  The exact details are not clear, but the crux of the deal has Bulls landing Boozer, the Blazers getting Kirk Hinrich and the Jazz receiving Thomas.

This would be a good move for the Bulls.  They’ve needed a post scorer since they traded Elton Brand on draft day in 2001.  Boozer is one of the better scoring power forwards in the league and would immediately give the Bulls the offensive post presence they desperately need.  Thomas and Hinrich are both good players, and Thomas could be really good eventually, but Boozer would likely be an All-Star in the Eastern Conference.  Were this deal to go down, and it sounds like a genuine possibility, the Bulls would have a projected starting lineup of Derrick Rose, John Salmons, Luol Deng, Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah.  That could be good enough to compete for a first-round bye in the East.

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Bulls Offseason

ESPN’s Chad Ford has the Bulls ranked 22^nd in his rankings of NBA teams’ offseason moves.  “The Bulls made a big, bold move at the trade deadline in February and gave the Celtics all they could handle in the first round of the playoffs,” Ford writes.  “But since then, things haven’t gone well.  They lost their best scorer, Gordon, to the Pistons.  The word is they’re shopping their starting power forward, Tyrus Thomas.  And I’m still scratching my head a little concerning their draft.  The Bulls still have lots of talent, but losing Gordon means they’ve taken a step back.”

Losing Gordon could cause the team to take a step back, at least on offense, but it’s better than overpaying on a long-term deal.  We see teams overpay to keep players all the time, and they always seem to end up regretting it.  If the Bulls have to take a step back and build around Derrick Rose, then it’s not the end of the world.  As far as the shopping of Thomas goes, he certainly has value.  He showed some good signs of development last season, which actually points to the team keeping him unless they can parlay him into a stud post player.

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Appreciating Gordon

I want to clarify my post yesterday, just in case it sounded like I didn’t think Ben Gordon was a quality NBA player.  ESPNChicago.com’s Jon Greenberg did a good job of describing Gordon in a recent article.  “Gordon was a basketball assassin, a sniper of the first order who radiated cool, calm and collectedness during his four-year tenure in Chicago,” Greenberg wrote.  ”He was everything you could want in a shooter - he had perfect form and an all-business mentality when it came to scoring.  The obsessively fashionable Gordon led the Bulls in scoring (20.7 points per game) and fancy-scarf accidents (one, which caught on fire in April, burning his arm) and never shied away from a post-game interview.”

Gordon is a heck of a shooter and can score with the best of them when he’s hot.  My point yesterday was that he is too one-dimensional for the kind of money he was asking for.  If he were 6′6″ and played better defense, I’d think he was worth it, but he’s undersized and doesn’t too much else besides score.  It’s too bad that the Bulls had to let him go without getting anything in return, but Gordon served the Bulls well for his five seasons in Chicago, something that all the fans should appreciate.

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Gordon’s Value

While we may never know if a lucrative offer from the Bulls could have convinced Ben Gordon to stay in the Windy City, it’s pretty clear that the team didn’t think the shooting guard was worth the five-year $55 million deal the Detroit Pistons threw at him.  “With the Bulls near the projected luxury tax of $69 million, surpassing that tax by $9 million would have incurred a dollar-for-dollar penalty and prohibited them from collecting the approximate $3.5 million rebate for non-tax teams,” wrote K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune.

While the luxury tax implications were certainly considered, I still think the deal was too rich for Gordon when considering it simply from a value standpoint.  Gordon is a gifted scorer, but he doesn’t do much else.  He’s undersized for his position and is incredibly streaky.  He’s best suited for a sixth-man role where he can come off the bench and ignite a team’s offense.  The Bulls had offered Gordon a similar deal last summer, which he initially rejected.  The Bulls eventually pulled the offer off the table, which was probably a good move.  Gordon was very important to the Bulls’ success last season, especially in the playoffs, but he’s not an irreplaceable piece of the puzzle.

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East Gets Stronger

It seems like the rich have been getting richer in the Eastern Conference as of late.  Some of the top teams in the East have acquired players that should make them better next season, which will only make the Bulls’ job more difficult.  Chicago seems to be on the verge of making the leap toward the top tier of the Eastern Conference, but it may be difficult to compete with the likes of the Orlando Magic, Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics and even Washington Wizards.  Each of these teams has already made significant moves in an effort to better their chances of taking home the conference crown in 2009-10.

The reigning conference champion Magic lost Hedo Turkoglu to free agency, but that blow was significantly softened when the team traded for Vince Carter just before the draft.  The Cavs also swung a deal that same week that landed them center Shaquille O’Neal.  The Celtics just recently signed veteran forward Rasheed Wallace, while the Wizards traded the fifth pick in the draft for Mike Miller and Randy Foye.  These four teams project to be the strongest in the conference next season and the Bulls will need some of their younger players to really take big leaps in their development if the team is going to join the upper echelon of clubs in the East.

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Bye Bye Ben

It looks like Ben Gordon’s tenure as a Chicago Bull has come to a close.  Gordon has reportedly agreed to a deal with the Detroit Pistons to the tune of approximately $55 million over the next five years.  Free agents can’t officially sign until July 8^th, but this looks like a done deal form Gordon’s comments.  “I don’t have any regrets, and I don’t have any bitter feelings for the Bulls,” Gordon told the Chicago Tribune.  ”Business is business.  I’m going to a situation now where winning is the No. 1 priority.  I’m happy with my decision.”

The Bulls were unable to come to terms with Gordon on a contract last summer when the shooting guard was a restricted free agent.  Gordon rejected offers in a similar range to what he accepted from Detroit, but that’s probably more due to the current economic landscape of the NBA than his feelings towards his former team.  Chicago selected Gordon with the third overall pick in the 2004 draft out of the University of Connecticut.  He led the Bulls in scoring each of the past four seasons, averaging 20.7 points per game on 45.5 percent shooting last year and 21.3 points per game for his career.

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The Right Fit

ESPN’s Rick Bucher lists unrestricted free agent Ben Gordon as the second best player currently on the market.  He describes Gordon as a pure scorer.  “Despite his size (6-foot-3), he can elevate and knock down contested jumpers off the dribble against almost anybody and get to the rim,” writes Bucher.  ”Quick brakes and release are the keys.  Mediocre or worse in every other aspect of the game, but you can count on between 20 to 30 points every night and half of those in the fourth quarter.”

Bucher notes that remaining with the Bulls would be the best fit for the shooting guard and goes on to describe the right system for him.  “Simple and wide-open with a place to hide him on defense,” says Bucher.  ”Teammates who will do the dirty work without complaint and a point guard strong enough to keep the rest of the team involved and defend the opposing shooting guard.”  Bucher notes the Hawks, Mavericks, Timberwolves, Knicks, Suns and Hornets as other teams that would be good fits for Gordon.  The Suns and Hornets are probably out, as they’re in penny-pinching mode this summer.  The Knicks are saving cap space for next summer, while the Timberwolves look to be building around their young players and the Mavericks are looking to resign Jason Kidd first and foremost.  The Hawks are intriguing, but I don’t see it with Joe Johnson and Jamal Crawford in the backcourt, plus they need to use their cap space on re-signing restricted free agent Marvin Williams.

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