Chisoxfn

Exactly; Bulls were willing entering the draft, but the whole concept of Memphis giving up a #4 pick purely for a contract like Parsons was nuts. Now maybe they give up a future 1st rounder (whether there is a bit more uncertainty, lottery protections, etc added in).

Why is that? They couldn't still do a "sign and trade"?

Bulls are reportedly telling teams they are willing to help facilitate transactions by taking bad contracts off their hands. Good.

It actually wasn't that torched. There have been all kinds of talk about how Butler still likes Chicago and that the relationships are generally fine. The only major question would be Hoiberg. Players respect the heck out of Pax. I have heard that from a number of people who are extremely well connected to the NBA.

Just wait until Butler comes back next season

Why? What exactly have they screwed up since the Butler deal? Did they screw up the 7th overall draft pick a year ago when they arguably got one of the 3 best players in the draft? Did they not get quality development out of Dunn this past year? Lavine has to still be evaluated but that shouldn't be a major surprise given he was coming back from an ACL injury. Yes, the Bulls didn't suck as bad as everyone expected but they got two quality picks in this past draft. So people wanted us to suck and now they are knocking on the Butler deal? I thought there was only a very small minority who were against the Butler deal?

Some rumblings that the Sacramento Kings are going to make a big money offer to Lavine.

Presume you are talking about LBJ? The word on the street is LBJ is going to decide pretty quickly.

Not outright...you'd just have to manage your cap and make some trades to create the space. I think the key is making sure you have contracts that you move to the extent that you need to do cap gymnastics. You need to know you can do it...so that if you get two max guys in, you are able to go execute on some trades. Now if one of those contracts is a Luol Deng type contract...than you might have issues, but if it is a quality player at a fair rate, you shouldn't have any issue moving them.

NBA will be evaluating the Rockets proposal to switch the order of the "draft" and "free agency". I actually think this proposal makes a lot of sense. I would think teams would want to have a better idea as to what is going to happen in free agency so they can than draft accordingly (especially teams like the Cavs who may take two different tacts depending on the outcome of a LBJ). http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/23911959/zach-lowe-houston-rockets-proposal-flip-nba-draft-free-agency

That is why the only thing that will upset me this offseason would be if they handed out some ridiculous contract to minimal upside players. Lavine & Nwaba will probably be the two contracts the Bulls give out and as long as they aren't going "max type" money on Lavine I'm okay with that (and similarly as long as Nwaba is in that 5-6M camp that should be fine and a totally moveable deal if new FA's want to come). I'm not ready to give up on Lavine, but I will admit, there will be some risk to that deal.

Germany losing to Korea has to be one of the bigger upsets in group play the past few world cups.

Yeah - Asik doesn't become a problem 2 years from now. Felicio is the one "bad" contract we have. We need to stay away from that type of deal and hope that Felicio gets his act back in gear this year to where we could move him.

Here is the thing. The Lakers have done worse in there few years of being at the top than the Bulls. Yes, we will be at a disadvantage to the Lakers in terms of marketing, but we are at an advantage to most all other franchises when it comes to making the pitch. The Lakers are all expecting Bron + George (or Leonard). So they are going to spend their cap space this year...next year you will have new teams but the Bulls will be one of the top major market teams. I think somewhere you have luck in the equation but the Bulls are going to beat out one of these teams at some point. I am a believer in maximizing your assets and building as good of a team as you can and than trying to one-up it every year (i.e., Darryl Morey). Paxson is good at acquiring assets...he didn't quite maximize all his assets the pass go-round, but he's going to get another chance at that and hopefully he'll do better this time.

I think everyone is assuming 2 max deals + Lavine in two years. They likely can make some maneuvering to do 2 max deals even next year (to extent it makes sense). My guess is next year's FA and the following year FA basically is their two year window (kind of like this is the start of "Magic's" two year window).

I'll never say such a thing. In NBA, money doesn't matter, the availability of money matters. While Bulls haven't landed big fish, they have been able to land bigger name free agents. Maybe no the name they wanted, but in the city of Chicago with no financial limitations, they should absolutely be competitive (especially with the right nucleus). Its too bad they weren't a year more into this rebuild because if we were, I think a lot more people would be linking Lebron to Chicago. Its just a year (at least a year, maybe two) too soon to begin that discussion. Pax and Gar's strategy is to draft well, get good (without bad contracts) and than see if you can land an extra star via free agency (hopefully you land a few really good players via draft and maybe one of those guys emerges into a star).

I think they view their best shot to the top and continuing to draft well and letting their young nucleus flash so they are a very attractive destination for potential free agents next year. With Dunn and Lavine, that is a solid back-court with upside. Lauri hopefully takes a big next step forward and we'll see what we get out of the two rookies. We have great cap space and are probably a much better team than people think. David Griffin, former Cavs GM, said a day or two ago that no one is talking about the Bulls, but they should be. The only thing that will irritate me this offseason is if we totally hamper ourselves with some awful contracts.

MLB is nothing like NBA relative to teams winning a championship. MLB is much closer to hockey and will likely always be. You just said you can think about 8 or 9 teams playing in October. In basketball, I can predict most playoff teams but I can count on basically two fingers the number of teams capable of winning a championship. In baseball, that is absolutely not the case. The whole nature of the sport means one player can't totally dominate the game. The best team wins the NBA title in basketball 90+% of the time. Not anywhere close to that in baseball, imo.

Brian - Do you think there is an issue with the pace / lack of action currently? From the tone of your posts, I think you do, but I'm curious. I say this because we are fans (maybe we are in the minority on this site) who obviously are invested in the sport and passionate about the sport (we've spent how much time commenting on it over a 15 year horizon) yet see this type of decline and recognize it. By no means am I saying I hate the game of baseball, I still absolutely enjoy the game...I just enjoy the game less than I did in the past.

It is a data point, but it is not relevant to baseballs argument. Everything is relative. If a football game spiraled to a 3hr and 30 minute game with 40 plays (vs. 100 plays), I think they'd have their own issue. They don't need to look at it relative to baseball to figure out they have an issue. There is a cost-benefit to all things. I won't even argue all of the differences that exist, but a major one is the fact that football is a once a week sport, not a daily sport. So amount of "action" might matter less in football because you are watching it on a per week basis for your team). You might argue that the "quality" of action is better in a football game vs. a baseball game (i.e., far more players involved in each individual play of football vs. a typical play in baseball). A football game might have just more subjective action in the eye of a fan. Either way, while baseball should consider other sports, it needs to isolate its time of game / lack of action issue in an isolated basis and if Rob Manfred doesn't find a way to adjust rules to address "pace of play" and "amount of action", than we will continue to see ratings and attendance declines, imo.

This argument to just bash those who don't appreciate it is just pure nonsense. Don't even get me started on this. Okay, so it is realistic to expect the majority of fans watching a game to be in awe because strikeouts are up because statistical analysis indicates that it is worth the risk of striking out more to increase a HR ratio by X%. Or that a pitcher has identified through statistical data that this is the exact perfect way to pitch the batter and thus his probability of striking out is up 5%. 10 years ago a lot went to each and every pitch as well. The actual action into the game has declined materially and the trend is negative. This is coming from someone who played the game for a long time and who at one point had an offer to be a major league scout and who deals with statistics and financial information on a daily basis as part of his career. Not someone who has on idea as to what goes into the game or no inclination to math/stats.

I don't disagree with teams deciding they should rebuild (and whether the Sox succeed at their rebuild or don't, I agree with their move). I just don't like the use of the word "tank". In basketball there is "rebuilding" and "tanking". I don't see baseball teams intentionally sitting their best players so they can "lose" for a higher draft pick. When they get to that point, than I'll start to call it "tanking". What happens in the NBA is pathetic (we all know my views here) and I'm very consistent in those views (I don't blame franchises for doing it, but basketball needs to fix it...literally you have teams intentionally losing (not just putting bad rosters out their...putting out bad lineups, etc...that is awful for sports). Technically the 2nd wild card makes more teams competitive (and in the race), but the fact that fewer teams can get a "bye" into the actual playoffs actually downplays the impact of being a "wildcard" team and investing in it. I think (and have long said) that baseball needs to expand the playoffs. Better quality / races. That said,the wild-card play-in games make for fantastic TV, so I have a hard time arguing against the impact it makes on those individual games (such drama, etc).

I recognize football has lots of downtime. I'm not arguing baseball vs. football. I'm looking at how baseball has evolved (as its own sport) over the years for the bad. Flat out the quality of a baseball game has declined over the past 10 years. I'm not at all even getting into a "stats" debate, but flat out the level of And if I were going to argue baseball vs. football, I'd lose, the ratings, etc back up everything about larger masses of people watching football vs. baseball. Footballs problem isn't the "lack of action" its the longer-term impacts of the injuries and how they are having to change the game to try and minimize injuries (and with it, minimizing the big hits, etc, that the sport was known for). I also don't believe that football (over the past 10 years) shifted from a sport that had 30 minutes of "actual" play to a sport with "10 minutes" of actual play. Baseball has seen a significant decline in the "action" as evidenced by the stark reduction in balls in play / hits.

I wouldn't be okay with that. I think the time length of a game is one thing...but the lack of action during the game is another. So much stuff ends with zero fielders having to do anything, no bat on ball contact, etc. Its just lousy. Baseball will need to implement rules to fix it. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point the shift is banned (or limited) as a way to spur more balls in play.

I really don't think "tanking" exists in baseball. It is called rebuilding and it has existed in the sport forever. The only difference is right now we are in an era where there are a lot more teams rebuilding at the same time. However, tanking is literally purposefully stinking to acquire top draft picks...I really don't think that is what is happening in baseball. Teams are retooling and moving guys and loading up on as much prospects as possible, however, the value of a #1 pick vs. a #8 pick is not near the disparity that exists in basketball (for example). I think I should ban the word "tanking" on this site cause its just a crappy use. Tanking is losing on purpose and literally trying to "lose". I don't view the White Sox plan as doing that. Yes, they were going to be bad, but it was because they are in a talent accumulation phase and stripping the major league roster of more talent to get more "future" talent given our time horizon. That said, they aren't doing it for the purpose of losing or getting the #1 overall pick, they are doing it to fill their pipeline because they didn't have a forseeable plan to win in the near term. The Cubs/Astros made "tanking" a more cliche term but in the next few years, we will see some teams fail horribly at it (kind of like the Pirates and Royals did for like 30 years (i.e., their inability to rebuild).