LaVine getting foot surgery/Out for the season

[GoBlue72391]

Pat’s next. Just a prediction.

That was my immediate thought upon learning this news.

[ShouldaPaidBG]

Worst contract in history.

[DuckIII]

So I think it's pretty weird that there's been no description of what kind of surgery Zach is having. For that matter, I don't recall any specific description of what specific injury he suffered to his foot. It's all a bunch of really generic stuff. His foot is "inflamed" and now, suddenly, months later, he's having undescribed but season-ending surgery? WTF.

I’m actually in Chicago this weekend for the Kings game and was doing tourist stuff all day with my son and completely ignored the news and this board all day. Didn’t even hear about this until after we got back from the game.

And my reaction was basically this. I know some people are going HAM on Klutch and Zach and some, in return, are calling that nonsense. But come on, no one trying to look at it from a neutral position looks at the timing of the announcements of his injury status all year long and not at least smell something here.

Here’s my speculation: Zach did not screw the Bulls with the decision and he’s not agreeing to a fake surgery. He has a minor injury that surgery is an option to fully resolve, but in many situations the player would play through it and get the surgery in the offseason.

Here, however, the Bulls and Klutch reached the conclusion that Zach’s trade value is indeed zero or even negative at the moment and it’s been made very clear to them that nothing is forthcoming. So they just pulled the plug to get the surgery ASAP so they can reboot his market and try to rehabilitate his trade value next year sooner in the future.

Think about it this way: if his foot injury, whatever it is, really did “require” season ending surgery there is no way the Bulls would have spent this much time trying to trade him, as any such trade would have been negated as soon as Zach took a physical. So why the dog and pony show? The most logical conclusion is that timing wise this is an optional surgery being opted for as part of a way to kick the can down the road, by both Zach and AK, to hopefully get a better deal later.

[boozapalooza]

Worst contract in history.

Not even worst contract on the team…that would be Lonzo. I’m not too worried about Zach. He earned his money last year. Brutal season this year for a variety of factors, but I think he’ll be able to come back and be a 20-25ppg scorer, especially if Demar is gone. Maybe we trade him down the road, but if not I can live with him and Coby in the backcourt.

[MGB8]

With this news, it becomes painfully obvious you have to trade Demar, Vuc and likely Caruso. The first two of which should have already been done.

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

Well, there's obviously no need to trade Demar because he is expiring anyways and it's far from a given that the best return would be better than just letting Demar walk this summer (any deal would probably include bad salary for next year at least and probably not a good enough player or prospect attached to justify it).

Same with Caruso, as he's young enough to potentially be re-signed in a year and help us for years to come.

But yes, if we can get out of Vuc's deal we definitely should. But we most likely can't.

I dunno re trading DeMar. I wonder if OKC would trade Giddey and bad salary for DeMar and Drummond, in order to assist a playoff run. The Lakers also reportedly had an interest in DeMar, and while it wouldn’t be a quality return for DeMar the player, for an expiring contract on a guy that makes zero sense to resign for 30+ M per season for a team that isn’t near even “punchers chance in the playoffs” good….

[MGB8]

Best chance for getting return on Zach is to move DeMar, let it be Coby-Zach on offense (with Caruso / Ayo as the other guard/wing and Pat/whomever as the forward) and see if Zach has a bounce back season where he plays within the team dynamic, defends, and returns to elite efficiency.

[dougthonus]

So I think it's pretty weird that there's been no description of what kind of surgery Zach is having. For that matter, I don't recall any specific description of what specific injury he suffered to his foot. It's all a bunch of really generic stuff. His foot is "inflamed" and now, suddenly, months later, he's having undescribed but season-ending surgery? WTF.

I’m actually in Chicago this weekend for the Kings game and was doing tourist stuff all day with my son and completely ignored the news and this board all day. Didn’t even hear about this until after we got back from the game.

And my reaction was basically this. I know some people are going HAM on Klutch and Zach and some, in return, are calling that nonsense. But come on, no one trying to look at it from a neutral position looks at the timing of the announcements of his injury status all year long and not at least smell something here.

Here’s my speculation: Zach did not screw the Bulls with the decision and he’s not agreeing to a fake surgery. He has a minor injury that surgery is an option to fully resolve, but in many situations the player would play through it and get the surgery in the offseason.

Here, however, the Bulls and Klutch reached the conclusion that Zach’s trade value is indeed zero or even negative at the moment and it’s been made very clear to them that nothing is forthcoming. So they just pulled the plug to get the surgery ASAP so they can reboot his market and try to rehabilitate his trade value next year sooner in the future.

Think about it this way: if his foot injury, whatever it is, really did “require” season ending surgery there is no way the Bulls would have spent this much time trying to trade him, as any such trade would have been negated as soon as Zach took a physical. So why the dog and pony show? The most logical conclusion is that timing wise this is an optional surgery being opted for as part of a way to kick the can down the road, by both Zach and AK, to hopefully get a better deal later.

I think I mostly agree with you, and would say these general points:
1: This wasn't done to avoid a trade. Klutch could make a phone call and convince Detroit not to trade for Zach pretty trivially, and this didn't seem like something overly likely to happen based on the rumors of what Detroit wanted to do and what Chicago wanted back.

2: Zach clearly has some legit injury, and the thoughts that he's just faking it or being shut down just to find a trade are wrong. He missed a lot of time, came back, and then was out again, and now is having surgery. I think people are stuck anchored to the idea that he's faking it because the 1st time around when it happened right after the trade rumors leaked, that seemed plausible. With the full chain of events now, that is no longer plausible, and the much more rational thing is that he's really hurt.

3: Surgery may or may not be strictly necessary, but it clearly creates what is believed to be the best long term outcome. You just don't get surgery if that's not true. Maybe Zach could have tried to tough it out, but maybe not. What evidence is there to think he could play through it? He wasn't able to play through it on two different stints and attempted to come back and failed once already, so clearly it's not obvious that would work even if he wanted it to.

4: If he and the Bulls want to separate, and if the surgery is necessary, now is better than later. There's no market now, he probably could have had his trade voided if his medicals were bad even if one was found. He wasn't going to have time to reset his value by playing well (obviously). Best bet for both him and the Bulls now is to hit the 2024/5 season healthy rather than being in this state and get back to his pervious levels of play.

[Stratmaster]

With this news, it becomes painfully obvious you have to trade Demar, Vuc and likely Caruso. The first two of which should have already been done.

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

Well, there's obviously no need to trade Demar because he is expiring anyways and it's far from a given that the best return would be better than just letting Demar walk this summer (any deal would probably include bad salary for next year at least and probably not a good enough player or prospect attached to justify it).

Same with Caruso, as he's young enough to potentially be re-signed in a year and help us for years to come.

But yes, if we can get out of Vuc's deal we definitely should. But we most likely can't.

Point taken on Demar. Like I said, he should have been traded already (over a year since I have been asking for that).

Caruso is the one player who will actually get you something valuable back now. While he has been relatively healthy this season (he has "only" missed 14% of the games), he is likely to miss significant chunks as he ages, especially with our genius coach now playing him 37 minutes. I believe what you could get back might be more valuable 3 seasons from now than he would be.

As far as Vuc, like Demar, it should have already happened. Is there a contending team who needs a quality backup center? That's about the only chance of getting value at this point.

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

[League Circles]

With this news, it becomes painfully obvious you have to trade Demar, Vuc and likely Caruso. The first two of which should have already been done.

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

Well, there's obviously no need to trade Demar because he is expiring anyways and it's far from a given that the best return would be better than just letting Demar walk this summer (any deal would probably include bad salary for next year at least and probably not a good enough player or prospect attached to justify it).

Same with Caruso, as he's young enough to potentially be re-signed in a year and help us for years to come.

But yes, if we can get out of Vuc's deal we definitely should. But we most likely can't.

I dunno re trading DeMar. I wonder if OKC would trade Giddey and bad salary for DeMar and Drummond, in order to assist a playoff run. The Lakers also reportedly had an interest in DeMar, and while it wouldn’t be a quality return for DeMar the player, for an expiring contract on a guy that makes zero sense to resign for 30+ M per season for a team that isn’t near even “punchers chance in the playoffs” good….

IMO, a player (like Giddey) would have to be pretty damn good and actually solve a problem for us to justify taking on bad salary (Bertans++) for next year. Otherwise I'd just just let Demar expire and watch him try to give us a few fun playoff games this year before he does.

The priority right now should be trying to unload Vuc's contract and maybe grab a half decent prospect or pick for Caruso before his injuries bring his value down going into next year and next season's trade deadline. Ayo's signing was pointless if he doesn't replace Caruso's utility-man role IMO.

Would also be nice to unload Carter and maybe Terry.

[League Circles]

With this news, it becomes painfully obvious you have to trade Demar, Vuc and likely Caruso. The first two of which should have already been done.

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

Well, there's obviously no need to trade Demar because he is expiring anyways and it's far from a given that the best return would be better than just letting Demar walk this summer (any deal would probably include bad salary for next year at least and probably not a good enough player or prospect attached to justify it).

Same with Caruso, as he's young enough to potentially be re-signed in a year and help us for years to come.

But yes, if we can get out of Vuc's deal we definitely should. But we most likely can't.

Point taken on Demar. Like I said, he should have been traded already (over a year since I have been asking for that).

Caruso is the one player who will actually get you something valuable back now. While he has been relatively healthy this season (he has "only" missed 14% of the games), he is likely to miss significant chunks as he ages, especially with our genius coach now playing him 37 minutes. I believe what you could get back might be more valuable 3 seasons from now than he would be.

As far as Vuc, like Demar, it should have already happened. Is there a contending team who needs a quality backup center? That's about the only chance of getting value at this point.

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

The problem is, and has been for quite some time, salary matching requirements with both Vuc and Demar. There aren't the numbers of just blatantly bad contracts available to just tack-on to picks or low salary rookie deal prospects anymore out there in the league. Most teams that want to win now (the only kinds that would want Vuc or Demar) don't have 20-30 million in spare contracts laying around that aren't already integral to their way of winning. And if they do, the players attached to them are probably so bad that we won't want to make the trades. As much as I like DeMar, it's unlikely (and has been since we've had him) that another winning team will want to significantly upset their scoring hierarchy and offensive system by bringing in ball-dominant Demar. He's very close to being a late career Carmelo Anthony / Dwyane Wade type.

[burlydee]

Well, there's obviously no need to trade Demar because he is expiring anyways and it's far from a given that the best return would be better than just letting Demar walk this summer (any deal would probably include bad salary for next year at least and probably not a good enough player or prospect attached to justify it).

Same with Caruso, as he's young enough to potentially be re-signed in a year and help us for years to come.

But yes, if we can get out of Vuc's deal we definitely should. But we most likely can't.

I dunno re trading DeMar. I wonder if OKC would trade Giddey and bad salary for DeMar and Drummond, in order to assist a playoff run. The Lakers also reportedly had an interest in DeMar, and while it wouldn’t be a quality return for DeMar the player, for an expiring contract on a guy that makes zero sense to resign for 30+ M per season for a team that isn’t near even “punchers chance in the playoffs” good….

IMO, a player (like Giddey) would have to be pretty damn good and actually solve a problem for us to justify taking on bad salary (Bertans++) for next year. Otherwise I'd just just let Demar expire and watch him try to give us a few fun playoff games this year before he does.

The priority right now should be trying to unload Vuc's contract and maybe grab a half decent prospect or pick for Caruso before his injuries bring his value down going into next year and next season's trade deadline. Ayo's signing was pointless if he doesn't replace Caruso's utility-man role IMO.

Would also be nice to unload Carter and maybe Terry.

Giddey is good enough and young enough to take on a bad contract. The Bulls have no way of obtaining guys like Giddey beyond the draft, which is a crapshoot. No way OKC does that trade, but the Bulls would be silly to turn it down. They're not just going to clear enough cap space to be players in an increasingly weak free agent market.

[MikeDC]

So I think it's pretty weird that there's been no description of what kind of surgery Zach is having. For that matter, I don't recall any specific description of what specific injury he suffered to his foot. It's all a bunch of really generic stuff. His foot is "inflamed" and now, suddenly, months later, he's having undescribed but season-ending surgery? WTF.

Think about it this way: if his foot injury, whatever it is, really did “require” season ending surgery there is no way the Bulls would have spent this much time trying to trade him, as any such trade would have been negated as soon as Zach took a physical. So why the dog and pony show? The most logical conclusion is that timing wise this is an optional surgery being opted for as part of a way to kick the can down the road, by both Zach and AK, to hopefully get a better deal later.

I think this is right (it probably describes what's actually happening), but as I said earlier, I think it's patent stupidity that the rest of the league probably found ridiculous.

In the literal sense, all surgery is "optional", right?
The options are you play with an injury, and assume the risks of:

1. Poor play
2. Making it worse and turning a season-ending injury into a career-ending injury.

or you get the surgery, to try and fix what's wrong.

The backdrop of this is that Zach with said injury has looked terrible. And he's got something like $160M guaranteed coming to him with three more seasons on the books.

Now, let's get back to what the Bulls and Zach are actually doing here. They were calling around the league, shopping a guy and telling other teams what? "This guy might need season-ending surgery, but he could maybe gut it out for you and, if he doesn't completely ruin himself doing it and put you on the hook for $140M more of dead money, he'll be well under 100%."

95% of teams are going to respond to a proposal like that with laughter and derision, and think, "these guys are morons". The other 5% are morons themselves, and are going to think "these guys are morons".

So, sure, having the surgery now is butt covering and kicking the can down the road, but
1. The real story is the Bulls/Klutch being totally clueless.
2. ... down the road, the can is sitting there in pretty bad shape. There's no reasonable trade to be had until Zach shows he can play. Which means he's on the roster and playing in 24-25. Which really sucks.

[League Circles]

I dunno re trading DeMar. I wonder if OKC would trade Giddey and bad salary for DeMar and Drummond, in order to assist a playoff run. The Lakers also reportedly had an interest in DeMar, and while it wouldn’t be a quality return for DeMar the player, for an expiring contract on a guy that makes zero sense to resign for 30+ M per season for a team that isn’t near even “punchers chance in the playoffs” good….

IMO, a player (like Giddey) would have to be pretty damn good and actually solve a problem for us to justify taking on bad salary (Bertans++) for next year. Otherwise I'd just just let Demar expire and watch him try to give us a few fun playoff games this year before he does.

The priority right now should be trying to unload Vuc's contract and maybe grab a half decent prospect or pick for Caruso before his injuries bring his value down going into next year and next season's trade deadline. Ayo's signing was pointless if he doesn't replace Caruso's utility-man role IMO.

Would also be nice to unload Carter and maybe Terry.

Giddey is good enough and young enough to take on a bad contract. The Bulls have no way of obtaining guys like Giddey beyond the draft, which is a crapshoot. No way OKC does that trade, but the Bulls would be silly to turn it down. They're not just going to clear enough cap space to be players in an increasingly weak free agent market.

Giddey is a terrible shooter without much size. Is he a really good defender or something that would justify penciling him in as a long term starter? I admit I certainly haven't watched him much but he's obviously not better than Coby, Caruso, or Zach right now so unless he's so much better than Patrick (is he even better at all?) to justify penciling him in as our long term SF AND thus trading Patrick for something now OR we want to go forward with a hilariously ridiculous lineup of Coby/Zach/Giddey/Williams/Vuc, we should definitely pass on Giddey for Demar IMO.

[coldfish]

So I think it's pretty weird that there's been no description of what kind of surgery Zach is having. For that matter, I don't recall any specific description of what specific injury he suffered to his foot. It's all a bunch of really generic stuff. His foot is "inflamed" and now, suddenly, months later, he's having undescribed but season-ending surgery? WTF.

I’m actually in Chicago this weekend for the Kings game and was doing tourist stuff all day with my son and completely ignored the news and this board all day. Didn’t even hear about this until after we got back from the game.

And my reaction was basically this. I know some people are going HAM on Klutch and Zach and some, in return, are calling that nonsense. But come on, no one trying to look at it from a neutral position looks at the timing of the announcements of his injury status all year long and not at least smell something here.

Here’s my speculation: Zach did not screw the Bulls with the decision and he’s not agreeing to a fake surgery. He has a minor injury that surgery is an option to fully resolve, but in many situations the player would play through it and get the surgery in the offseason.

Here, however, the Bulls and Klutch reached the conclusion that Zach’s trade value is indeed zero or even negative at the moment and it’s been made very clear to them that nothing is forthcoming. So they just pulled the plug to get the surgery ASAP so they can reboot his market and try to rehabilitate his trade value next year sooner in the future.

Think about it this way: if his foot injury, whatever it is, really did “require” season ending surgery there is no way the Bulls would have spent this much time trying to trade him, as any such trade would have been negated as soon as Zach took a physical. So why the dog and pony show? The most logical conclusion is that timing wise this is an optional surgery being opted for as part of a way to kick the can down the road, by both Zach and AK, to hopefully get a better deal later.

I'm guessing that this very minute, Coby White could get season ending wrist surgery if he chose. This wouldn't be a fake injury or fake surgery. I suspect Zach has an issue. Its just that a large percentage of NBA players are playing through knocks.

I disagree that the Bulls had something to do this. Their press release was odd. IMO, this was Klutch's decision. The real Bulls want to make the playoffs and this doesn't help them in that regard.

To that end, klutch has a long history of this with various clients. They sign big contracts and just sit to force trades or whatever it is they want. Rich Paul has made many comments that dance around the subject of his thinking but it revolves around him not caring about the fans and just focusing on the billionaires that own the teams with an "F them" attitude.

My general thought is that the Bulls are really, really screwed. They are going to have to take back expirings for Lavine. As a result, they are going to have $65m+ of dead money on the cap through the end of next year and only then can they talk about trying to build a quality team.

I'll keep circling back on it. At the trade deadline last year virtually everyone saw this was a dead team walking and wanted it blown up. Had the Bulls done so, they would be YEARS ahead in this process with better assets to get it going. This isn't hindsight stuff. The Bulls lost themselves a lot of money, fans and goodwill due to a core bad decision that a lot of casual fans could identify.

[burlydee]

IMO, a player (like Giddey) would have to be pretty damn good and actually solve a problem for us to justify taking on bad salary (Bertans++) for next year. Otherwise I'd just just let Demar expire and watch him try to give us a few fun playoff games this year before he does.

The priority right now should be trying to unload Vuc's contract and maybe grab a half decent prospect or pick for Caruso before his injuries bring his value down going into next year and next season's trade deadline. Ayo's signing was pointless if he doesn't replace Caruso's utility-man role IMO.

Would also be nice to unload Carter and maybe Terry.

Giddey is good enough and young enough to take on a bad contract. The Bulls have no way of obtaining guys like Giddey beyond the draft, which is a crapshoot. No way OKC does that trade, but the Bulls would be silly to turn it down. They're not just going to clear enough cap space to be players in an increasingly weak free agent market.

Giddey is a terrible shooter without much size. Is he a really good defender or something that would justify penciling him in as a long term starter? I admit I certainly haven't watched him much but he's obviously not better than Coby, Caruso, or Zach right now so unless he's so much better than Patrick (is he even better at all?) to justify penciling him in as our long term SF AND thus trading Patrick for something now OR we want to go forward with a hilariously ridiculous lineup of Coby/Zach/Giddey/Williams/Vuc, we should definitely pass on Giddey for Demar IMO.

Who said anything about trading PWill? Some teams try to acquire multiple good young players.

PWill is a 3-4. Giddy is a 2-3. He's a facilitator which the Bulls need. He's only 21.

Caruso won't be on the team when the Bulls are ready to compete. Zach doesn't want to be here. Derozan is going to want $30 million.

Its time to flip this roster. Sell the old guys for value. Resigning a 35 year old DeMar makes no sense and you're not going to have cap space even if you let him go. Trading him now is imperative.

[MikeDC]

I dunno re trading DeMar. I wonder if OKC would trade Giddey and bad salary for DeMar and Drummond, in order to assist a playoff run. The Lakers also reportedly had an interest in DeMar, and while it wouldn’t be a quality return for DeMar the player, for an expiring contract on a guy that makes zero sense to resign for 30+ M per season for a team that isn’t near even “punchers chance in the playoffs” good….

IMO, a player (like Giddey) would have to be pretty damn good and actually solve a problem for us to justify taking on bad salary (Bertans++) for next year. Otherwise I'd just just let Demar expire and watch him try to give us a few fun playoff games this year before he does.

The priority right now should be trying to unload Vuc's contract and maybe grab a half decent prospect or pick for Caruso before his injuries bring his value down going into next year and next season's trade deadline. Ayo's signing was pointless if he doesn't replace Caruso's utility-man role IMO.

Would also be nice to unload Carter and maybe Terry.

Giddey is good enough and young enough to take on a bad contract. The Bulls have no way of obtaining guys like Giddey beyond the draft, which is a crapshoot. No way OKC does that trade, but the Bulls would be silly to turn it down. They're not just going to clear enough cap space to be players in an increasingly weak free agent market.

I think to get Giddey, we'd had to give Caruso too. Basically full bore offer of everything we have to give.

Break it down and maybe the following all seem reasonable:
Caruso for Giddey
DeMar for Dieng, Micic and Bertans
Drummond for Poku

OKC ends up with
G- SGA, Wallace, Joe
G- Caruso, Dort, Mann, Wiggins
F- DeMar,
F- J.Will, K. Will
C- Chet, Drummond, Jaylin Williams, Sarr

That's pretty stacked.

Bulls
G- Coby, Micic
G- Ayo, Carter
F- Giddey
F- Pat, Dieng, Poku
C- Vuc, Bertans

That's... not great, but we get a lot younger and if we get lucky, both Dieng and Giddey develop into core pieces. We'll end up in the lottery this year, and likely next year, so maybe we add two more core guys if all goes well.

[League Circles]

Giddey is good enough and young enough to take on a bad contract. The Bulls have no way of obtaining guys like Giddey beyond the draft, which is a crapshoot. No way OKC does that trade, but the Bulls would be silly to turn it down. They're not just going to clear enough cap space to be players in an increasingly weak free agent market.

Giddey is a terrible shooter without much size. Is he a really good defender or something that would justify penciling him in as a long term starter? I admit I certainly haven't watched him much but he's obviously not better than Coby, Caruso, or Zach right now so unless he's so much better than Patrick (is he even better at all?) to justify penciling him in as our long term SF AND thus trading Patrick for something now OR we want to go forward with a hilariously ridiculous lineup of Coby/Zach/Giddey/Williams/Vuc, we should definitely pass on Giddey for Demar IMO.

Who said anything about trading PWill? Some teams try to acquire multiple good young players.

PWill is a 3-4. Giddy is a 2-3. He's a facilitator which the Bulls need. He's only 21.

Caruso won't be on the team when the Bulls are ready to compete. Zach doesn't want to be here. Derozan is going to want $30 million.

Its time to flip this roster. Sell the old guys for value. Resigning a 35 year old DeMar makes no sense and you're not going to have cap space even if you let him go. Trading him now is imperative.

Zach is stuck on this team indefinitely. We actually can pretty trivially have like 20+ mil of cap space this summer if we want (though we probably shouldn't want to). It's imperative that we clear salary to take advantage of Coby's value contract while we can. That means this summer or next summer we need to have bad contracts off the books, and Giddey projects to be a bad contract (or cap hold, more precisely) by then.

Oh wait, I just realized who Giddey is in terms of his controversy. Hell no am I trading Demar for him AND bad salary.

[PaKii94]

Lol. That's all I'm going to say

[NecessaryEvil]

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So, he was ALMOST out of here, until he wasn't

[aguifs]

What a bum