Welcome to Above the Break – the SPOX opinion on the NBA season! Twice a month, SPOX editor Ole Frerks scrutinizes a league issue closely. This time’s topic: How the Chicago Bulls gave the Golden State Warriors a gift – and the questions of the users.
One can only speculate from here what John Paxson and Gar Forman, the Chicago Bulls’ decision-makers, did on the first day of Christmas. Maybe they spent time with the family, maybe they ate well. Who knows, maybe they also counted their cash considerations and patted each other on the shoulders.
But maybe they have also seen the Golden State Warriors playing against the Cleveland Cavaliers – like most people who are interested in the NBA or have anything to do with it. A game that lacked some star power due to injuries on both sides (Stephen Curry, Isaiah Thomas), but which of course still represented a kind of positioning of the still young season. The duel of the best teams of the last three years was, after all, the match.
Maybe Paxson and Forman, if they’ve seen the game, were angry about Kevin Durant’s unpunished fouls to LeBron James like many others. Maybe they were gloating about the divisional rival losing this way. Maybe they didn’t care, either.
Perhaps they have been ashamed of each other for a long time now. Or better yet, I hope they did.
In the Warriors, not only Curry was injured before the game, but Zaza Pachulia had also dropped out. Now the Starting Center was available again, but Steve Kerr preferred to start Jordan Bell – as in the previous games. The coach wanted to test how his rookie would perform on the biggest possible stage (the regular season).
The result after 48 minutes: Bell did quite well. His game was not without mistakes, but that was true for every player on the court that day. But Bell was fitting in defensively and sealed off the area together with Draymond Green and Durant. Two players who combine such a length, athletics and good instincts are barely insurmountable, as Green and Durant showed last year – a third is almost unfair. Especially since Bell, KD and Green can switch pretty much everything that runs around in the NBA.
Although Bell is still raw, especially on the offensive, one can certainly argue that he is already the best center of the Warriors, at least with regard to further duels with the Houstons or Clevelands of this league. And this is where the shame factor comes into play again: The Warriors got this player with the 38th place. Pick. And they only had it because the gentlemen Forman and Paxson sent him to California for cash considerations.
Even then, the decision was inexcusable on several levels. This is not about the bulls escaping talent in Bell; this happens every year. Half the league has been crashing at Bell, just like Kyle Kuzma – and the luck that Donovan Mitchell finished in 13th place. Pick was still available (and the pick by trade from Denver to the salt lake) you will hardly be able to catch in Utah for years.
Draft is not an exact science, as the past has shown. As I said: You don’t have to twist a rope out of it. Rather, Bizarre is: How does a team in the rebuild come up with the idea that it needs more money than young talents? In the third largest TV market in the USA, with one of the largest fan bases of all sports franchises (since the 1990s)? In this situation, can it really be the priority for a general manager to add $3.5 million to the baseline?
Five players were interesting for the Bulls in the second round, but they were all already gone at 38, Paxson explained the “Trade”back then. Let’s assume that this is true – then it speaks for a rather limited scouting. Not only Bell, but also Dwayne Bacon and Dillon Brooks, who are already rotation players in their teams, were still available here, to name just two examples. Since both are guards, the argument that the front court in Chicago is already overcrowded does not apply.
Let’s assume that the Bulls didn’t want to vacate a cadre position for another youngster – which is quite possible. But why not, then, for example, draft a European who would only arrive in one or two years’ time? Or parked for the first time in the G-League like Isaiah Hartenstein (Pick No. 43) or Vlatko Cancar, Mathias Lessort, Sasha Vezenkov or Ognjen Jaramaz, all of whom came after him?
You don’t know if any of these players will ever play such a role in the NBA as Bell does now. But that’s not the point at all; the second round is, especially for teams in the rebuild, also a chance to take risks for players with a lot of potential and even more question marks. Nikola Jokic became 41 in 2014. After a year in Europe, Cola got used to it and is now one of the NBA’s greatest big-man talents. The story of Draymond Green is also well known.
Maybe the next Jokic was not available in the second round this time, but Bell is already called a new green. But the Bulls are in a situation where they could at least afford to find out. In fact, they would have been obliged to do so.
But let’s get back to the $3.5 million again. This is the maximum amount an NBA team can pay for a second round pick. Never before has so much been paid.
The fact that the Warriors made this offer with pleasure should have given the Bulls reason to think. When it comes to talent evaluation, there are not many franchises that have worked as well as the Dubs in recent years.
Page 1: The Jordan Bell Fiasco
Page 2: How the rich are getting richer and richer
Page 3: Boogie’s Future, Clevelands Defense and the Coaching Question in Milwaukee – the User Questions