"If you're in a winning environment, a lot of the rumors and deals don't happen. Chicago Bulls boss Zach LaVine said. He said it well. This seems to be an absolutely correct nonsense, but in fact it is indeed a meaningless correct statement.
LaVine uttered the words ahead of the team's 12th game of the new season. Ahead of this game, rumors were that the Bulls were becoming more open to trading LaVine. Combined with LaVine's nonsense, you know that the Bulls didn't start the season well, they lost seven of their first 11 games, and after LaVine made his own opinion, they were killed by the Magic.
The atmosphere of the loss is already abundant, and the rumors of a trade are getting more and more rampant.
And if a team puts the boss on the shelf, it basically means that they are ready to rebuild.
This season marks LaVine's 10th year in the league, with the Timberwolves and the Bulls seven years after that. When LaVine arrived in Chicago in 2017 as a bargaining chip for the Timberwolves to trade Jimmy Butler, he was just 22 years old and already a two-time slam dunk contest champion. The young man is beautiful and smooth, the ball style is elegant, and he shoots a good three-point shot in the most glamorous era of the Warriors, and is nicknamed Curry in the Windy City. LaVine had his own classic moment early on: on November 24, 2019, when the Bulls trailed by eight points in the final 56 seconds and trailed by seven points at 32 seconds, LaVine made three three-pointers in the last 40 seconds and made 13 three-pointers in the game, including a three-point shot after a final steal. From that day on, you can even hear people calling Curry Golden State LaVine, and of course some people saying that this is complimenting Curry's dunk skills, and they don't know which one to believe.
In short, for a period of time, public opinion generally believed that LaVine was a potential star, with strong physical fitness and superb marksmanship, wearing shoes of 1.98 meters to play the No. 2 position in Chicago, there was a lot of room for imagination, and it would be good to build a team around him quietly.
In fact, around LaVine's team, the Bulls can be said to be very down-to-earth step by step: in LaVine's first year on the team, the Bulls fired head coach Hoiberg, and after the second year, they fired head coach Boylan, and after the third year, they simply uprooted the management of Klaus Paxson Foreman, who had been in the same vein since the Jordan era, and replaced a whole management team.
The next thing is up to Lavin himself, who led the team to not win much in the first three years, and his occasional explosive scoring performance was difficult to sustain throughout the year, with the highest average of 25 points per game. But in his fourth year with the Bulls, LaVine was averaging 27.4 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists per game, shooting 50 percent from the field, shooting 8.2 three-pointers per game and shooting 41.9 percent from the field.
There has never been a big free throw in Chicago's recent history, and the only experience that came close was the downhill Wade and Rondo to form a triple with Jimmy Butler, and most of the time, they only relied on their own rookie development to succeed, and even blockbuster deals were difficult to make. Now that LaVine is in front of them, the situation looks a bit like the Rockets getting Harden from the Thunder, LaVine has been averaging points per game every year for four seasons in Chicago, and finally reached the 27-point level, and at the same time, it has come to the node of contract extension, and the Bulls have no reason to stop fantasizing at this time.
They even need to add some chips to the negotiating table where LaVine stays, so that LaVine can see their sincerity and make LaVine happy. So the team was built around Lavin, and from the fourth year onwards, it began to move in earnest.
Everything was done in half a year.
Match him with an interior lineman, so Vucevic came in the middle of the 2020-21 season, give him a point guard, so in the summer of 2021, Lonzo Ball came, Caruso also came, and in the summer of 2021, DeRozan came.
Counting the Bulls' actions around LaVine in the past six months, there may be only one thing they haven't done well, that is, they didn't keep Markkanen with a contract, but turned to develop their No. 4 pick, Pawe.
The flaw was not a big deal, and the results were immediate, and the team made the playoffs in the following 2021-22 season. Despite losing to defending champions Bucks in the first round, morale was high, as DeRozan said: "A lot of our team is playing the playoffs for the first time, and we've benefited a lot from being able to play to that level with a championship." ”
Naturally, in the summer of 2022, LaVine and the Bulls renewed their five-year, $215.2 million contract with a maximum salary. This is the largest contract in the history of the Bulls, and LaVine also became the first player of the Bulls to earn more than 100 million.
But from the perspective of the 2021 wave of team building, the Bulls don't have much to blame. While Ball's poor attendance has lowered their ratings, having a luxury spare tire option like Caruso is another level of precaution, and from a business standpoint, the Bulls haven't even reached the luxury tax threshold when they put together such a roster. Overall, such a team may not make the team an immediate contender for the title, or at least a solid playoff team.
But there's a hidden premise, and the most important one: that LaVine is indeed the man Bull imagines.
We can roughly speculate on how high the Bulls imagined LaVine at the time of the contract extension:
First of all, it can be made clear that LaVine is not a person who can make outstanding contributions on the defensive end, in 2021 he announced that he has the ability to be a "player who can play both offense and defense", but his career defensive efficiency has never been higher than 110, hovering around 115 most of the time, and the steals and blocks on the panel data are not outstanding;
LaVine is also not a two-way guard who can do more to control the team, and in 2020 he vowed to become an "assist master", but his assist-to-turnover ratio was average, and he averaged more than five assists per game in no year;
So the rest of what can be expected is clear, LaVine needs to be an invincible scoring machine that can also match the salary he gets.
Perhaps the problem lies in this, LaVine's average of 27 points per game before signing a big contract is his peak scoring performance so far, and in the next two years, LaVine did not average more than 25 points per game, and in the first 12 games of the season, his average points per game fell to 21.7 points, shooting 4 percent from the field and only 3 percent from three-point range.
In fact, LaVine's performance in the past two seasons with DeRozan and Vucevic is still acceptable, and next to two teammates who also need the ball, LaVine has given up a certain amount of the ball, and the offensive efficiency in exchange has been quite good, you can see it as a sacrifice, but judging from the team's final failure to make the playoffs last year, you can also see LaVine's "powerlessness". As for whether he is satisfied with this inability, an insider revealed: "In some games last season, LaVine would pout after a win, and his teammates didn't know who he was accusing after losing. ”
The description of pouting after a win is very reminiscent of another star. Billups said of his old teammate Melon: "If he gets 20 points and the team wins, he's depressed, and if he gets 30 points and the team loses, he's celebrating in the locker room. ”
On December 18 last year, the Bulls challenged the Timberwolves away and conceded a full 150 points in 48 minutes, the first time in 40 years. During halftime in this game, a violent brawl broke out in the Bulls locker room. Ear of the Wall revealed that part of the altercation was directed at LaVine, if not for LaVine's defensive mistakes.
LaVine did not deny the truth of the incident afterwards, but he tried to show some calmness: "You reporters are rare and strange. A lot of people are frustrated when they lose, it's normal to have a bit of a fight on the basketball team, it's not the first time and it won't be the last. ”
Although the Bulls pulled out a winning streak after a locker room brawl, they still fell on the door of the playoffs. In the first game of the play-offs, LaVine scored 39 points to lead the team to a victory over the Raptors and opened the door to the playoffs, and in the second game, LaVine scored only 15 points on 6-of-21 shooting and 5 turnovers, and was kicked out of the door by Jiba.
The following summer of 2023, the Bulls have actually put LaVine on the shelves, but the market response has not been enthusiastic, and the reason is simple:
LaVine has the potential to be a top scorer, but lacks a winning resume, and if you use Beal as a reference, he has never shown the scoring title form that Beal has been with the team for two consecutive years, and if you use Booker as an analogy, LaVine has not been able to prove that he has shown enough leadership skills after getting help, even DeRozan+Vucevic's combination can't be compared to Paul alone, and people have never asked the Bulls' combination to reach the finals immediately, it's just the playoffs, and LaVine can't lead the team to do it; finally, LaVine is 28 years old, and it's no longer suitable to talk about potential and possibility, he has 4 years left on his contract, 40 million per year, and has a history of serious cruciate ligament injuries.
LaVine's performance at the start of the season struggled to add points to his trade value, and in a game where he shot less than 40 percent from the field and scored less than 20 points, he was interspersed with a game in which he hit 19 of 33 shots and scored a career-high 51 points. It was the third game of the season, and LaVine combined for 24 points on 7-of-30 shots in the first two games. LaVine didn't need any cooperation to hold the ball on the court, heads-up, switching, and top throwing, very chic, but the team was behind most of the time. In the final 75 seconds of the game, LaVine made a conversion error, and the Bulls trailed by 16 points, and Bulls head coach Donovan replaced all the main shots and conceded defeat.
LaVine, who scored 51 points on this career night, didn't provide any assists, and the last time he did so was back in 2018 when Klay did so.
After the game, LaVine said the team was trying to build a new system: "A complete, cohesive, equal-chance offensive system. ”
"In the first few games, DeRozan and I were often in the corner. Now we're trying to touch the ball more and be more engaged. ”
And DeRozan also said, "There seems to be a little bit of overcompensation between our trios. ”
This is tantamount to pointing the finger at another important component of the team: head coach Donovan, who is revered by Bulls fans as a thief.
In fact, during the 20-point home defeat to the Thunder in the opening game of the season, Donovan and Vucevic got into a heated argument on the bench, and immediately after the game, the Bulls called a player meeting without any coaches. Don't say LaVine is unpredictable: It's normal for a basketball team to have a little bit of an argument, and this won't be the first time, and it won't be the last.
So replacing Donovan seems like the quickest solution to the problem, but the Bulls' situation is like this right now:
They just extended Donovan in 2022 with two years left on his contract;
They tried unsuccessfully to peddle Lavin in the summer of 2023;
Negotiations between them and DeRozan over a contract extension have reached an impasse, and DeRozan said that he will see what the team is doing.
What dynamics? Reconstruction, of course. DeRozan is 34 years old, and unless the Bulls are willing to commit to a long-term contract, he has no reason to rebuild with the Bulls. From the Bulls' point of view, they don't have any reason to give DeRozan a fat contract if they plan to rebuild.
DeRozan can be treated relatively simply, either as an expiring contract to a team that needs to clear space, or as a championship puzzle piece to a championship team that needs reinforcements.
It is not difficult to deal with Vucevic, Vucevic is still an efficient double-double machine, able to score, can grab rebounds, can shoot three-pointers, has space ability and a certain ability to protect the basket, and as a European center and has a hand to respond, he is not perfect, especially on the defensive end, but with a 20 million contract is very fragrant, it will be the type of interior that some short teams urgently need.
As for Caruso, who is less than 10 million, oh my goodness...
In addition, if it is rebuilt, Donovan, who has a reputation for being good at coaching the youth team, will become the person the Bulls want to stay the most.
But before all of this can happen, the Bulls have one last and most critical issue to solve: dealing with LaVine.
Dealing with Ravan is not Ravan alone. The 76ers were a potential trade partner, but now they're doing well, and the Knicks and Heat have been chasing another star, but Mitchell could also be on the market next summer, or what if the Clippers break up?
And all the remaining championship contenders, including the Lakers, have their own roster frameworks, and the strongest man is already in the roster, if not just one. It's certainly possible to turn the pieces into pieces and welcome Laven, but you need to accept yourself with this kind of beautiful imagination:
LaVine, a 40 million All-Star who can't even fit DeRozan, will suddenly change his habit of dribbling more than 3 times on most offenses, and become a more off-ball cut-off point option, an upgraded version of the ghost brother Reddish.