Blog a Bull has a striking analysis of just how much cash the Bulls have stockpiled since beginning the current rebuild during the 2017 NBA Draft. Per the analysis, the Bulls have taken $14 million in cash considerations in trades with other teams, more than any other team. The next team on the list, the Sixers, who came in with a glut of extra draft picks following The Process, took in about $3 million less.
The Bulls are a piggy bank, not a basketball team
We have that and more in Thursday’s NBA newsletter.
Photo by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images
The argument is that the Bulls have selfishly focused on accepting cash as compensation for trades helping other teams shed guaranteed salary. Rebuilding teams do these kinds of trades all the time -- in fact, it’s a hallmark of a good rebuild to use the resource of cap space to gain assets while preserving future cap space for when it’s needed to turn competitive. But good teams target players and picks in those deals. The Bulls have been happy chasing cash.
Cash doesn’t help the team: it helps the investors. In this case, it helps Jerry Reinsdorf. Given Reinsdorf’s resistance to paying luxury tax even when the Bulls are competing for titles, and given the enormous profitability of the Bulls, the cash essentially becomes straight profits. When the Bulls sell a second-round pick, or help the Rockets cut salary for only cash considerations, that doesn’t help the team at all. But it lines Reinsdorf’s pocket.
The analysis also shows that the Bulls have kept total payroll very low (negating one of the benefits of rebuilding, which is the ability to use excess salary cap space to add assets) and that Chicago has been derelict in adding extra draft picks during the rebuild. Basically, the Bulls’ idea of a rebuild has been to be bad and profitable.
Because the front office is really good on the draft, Chicago is poised to emerge from its rebuild soon. But it could emerge in a stronger position if only it’d spend like a normal big-market NBA team. Alas ...
‘That Man Has Too Much Energy’
In a column celebrating Doc Rivers claiming he quit on Donald Sterling six days into his tenure as Clippers head coach -- Sterling vetoed the J.J. Redick sign-and-trade for unknown reasons, Rivers quit, the deal went through, Rivers came back with nary a report leaking out -- there’s a remarkable addition to the Kawhi Leonard quote canon.
From Arash Markazi in the L.A. Times:
[Steve] Ballmer, Rivers said, has “been phenomenal to work with. He’s got more energy than anybody needs. After Kawhi signed, we had this meeting and Ballmer walks in punching the air and making all these sounds and Kawhi, who doesn’t say much, leans over and says, ‘That man has too much energy.’”
You don’t know the half, Kawhi.
Links
Matt Ellentuck on Aces vs. Mystics being the best possible advertisement for the WNBA.
Kyrie Irving’s face is broken again. It’s an analogy for the fact that Society trying to get in and shut down his Galaxy Brain. Save Kyrie at all costs!
I wrote about the hilarity of the first team punished under new, stricter tampering rules being the team that already has Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Hope you kept your Houston Rockets Ryan Anderson jerseys because he’s back!
Kevin Clark walks the audience through the newest batch of Markelle Fultz videos. I’m so glad Magic fans are there to pick up the mantle carried for so long by Sixers fans.
And finally: KEEP GOING, BUDDY.
Be excellent to each other.
See More:
