davell

I get bashing GarPax. I love doing it. But, this is a bit of an odd stance to take, considering they literally JUstT took Lauri at 7th. A lot of teams liked L. Markkanen. It was a very deep draft. I think last year's draft was deeper in talent than this upcoming year's draft class. I mean every team would love to draft a 7' PF/C that can consistently shoot from outside. Great pick and I really like L. Markkanen, but it's still questionable whether he will definitely develop into an "Impact Player" as I defined earlier. Top 25 player in the NBA? He has a good chance to reach that status down the road, but it's not a certainty like when the Bulls drafted D. Rose. I think that the 2017 class winds up being one of the better classes of all time. But, it wasn't thought of as anything special heading into it. At the time of the 2017 draft, Fultz and Ball would be the only 2 that'd be in the top 5 of this years class, at this moment. As for Lauri, of course he's not guaranteed to be a top 20-25 guy. But, I'd bet most NBA guys think he does wind up there. At 7, you're going to have a shot at Jackson Jr, the two Bridges, and Sexton. All 4 of those guys have big enough upside to where they can make the Bulls a much better team, than they are currently.

Define impact. Fair enough. A player who has the chance to make the All-Star Game a few times/make the All-NBA team (any of them) and be considered potentially a top 20-25 player in the league. Those players are hard to find, but they usually are top draft picks. You can occasionally get lucky and find them later in the draft (K. Leonard, J. Butler, P. George, etc.) but I don't trust this Bulls FO in terms of scouting and finding/developing those players. They got super lucky with J. Butler. The Bulls have a lot of blind spots when it comes to scouting, and are maybe the least analytical team in the NBA. I get bashing GarPax. I love doing it. But, this is a bit of an odd stance to take, considering they literally JUstT took Lauri at 7th.

I don't think you're getting an impact player picking 6th or 7th this year. A decent player maybe, but we need impact players to really improve and contend down the road. The top tier in this draft is only 4 or 5 players deep (M. Bagley III, D. Ayton, L. Doncic, M. Bamba, and maybe M. Porter Jr.) and after that you're getting solid rotation players/starters. That next tier of players probably aren't developing into impact players. I do like T. Young and he is shooting the lights out in college right now. He is rising pretty fast. Young is in the top group for sure. The second group for me, JJJ, Mk Bridges, and Bamba can all be excellent players too, in my mind. The 3rd group of 4, can all be very solid too. I'd say there's 12 starters. Then you get into role players. Obviously, there'll wind up being a few busts early and a few damn good players found late too. But, this is a very good draft and the Bulls CAN come out pretty good, without a top 5 guy.

The playoff part I definitely agree with. There's too much ground to make up. But, the part about the losses currently and how close they are to the bottom is not indicative of much. Most losses were without Niko and LaVine. With the development of these guys already and what the upside CAN be, with a few of them.....The future looks very bright. A ping pong ball gift would be amazing. The final win total possibility is interesting..... They've still got games with these teams..... Home- Lakers, Magic, Mavericks, Grizzlies, Clippers, Hornets, Nets Away- Hawks(2), Clippers, Kings, Nets(2), Hornets, Grizzlies, Knicks, Magic 17 of 38 remaining are against awful teams. I'll project 11-6 in that. Along with those, they've got 3 left(1 at home) against Detroit, 2 left with Milwaukee(both at home) and 2 left with Philly(1 at home). I'll project 3-4 here. For that matter, the only top 4 seeds in either conference left on the schedule are..... Home- Warriors, Timberwolves, Raptors, Celtics, Cavs, Away-Timberwolves, Celtics, Heat, Rockets Those 9, I'll project 2-7. That leaves 5 games. Home- Wizards(2), Nuggets Away-Pelicans, Trailblazers I'll say 2-3 out of that..... That'd be 18-20 out of what's left. 35-47 for the year. Out of the playoffs, probably out of the top 12. I'd guess 24-14 and 41-41 probably gets the 8th seed. With THAT schedule, health, and no trade offs.....Guess its possible, considering how well they're playing. Bottom line is Niko and others need to go, if there's any shot at less than 30 wins.

I've talked myself into being ok with picking top 12. I kind of doubt we even accomplish that though. And yeah, being the Bulls they'll miss the playoffs. Ayton Bagley Doncic Young Porter Bamba Jackson Mikal Bridges Miles Bridges Sexton Knox Carter That's my personal cutoff. I'm not sure what to do with Niko. If you can't get a 1st for him, maybe you hold him and just try and get someone to take the Lopez contract off the books, to give you some money next year. Roll with that and see how good the youngsters wind up getting in a few years? No idea. I know I want a top 5 pick. But that ain't happening without ping pong ball magic.

I mean, good God.....In a year we're doing our damndest to tank.....We're going to wind up getting our asses beat by the Celtics in the playoffs. There's gotta be a Rachel Phelps joke in here somewhere that I'm just not seeing.

LaVine is going to be ridiculous in this offense.

Jed said they like the pen as it is, at the convention. I doubt they're in the market for anything more than NRI guys at this stage.

Damn, a real W. Fun game, Lauri and Dunn looked good, so did LaVine. Even if they deal Niko quick, I don't see top 6 happening, without help from the lotto. This team isn't half bad and they'll get much better soon. Time to start paying attention to Jackson and the two Bridges, in the draft.

We kind of take how great these two are for granted lol

Z still awesome

Willy is awesome.

I was always dubious on how real their interest/financial ability was for Darvish and how much he wanted to go there. I never really saw them as a threat unless they really went over the top on a offer (which I don't believe they could really afford). I view them more as a Cobb/Lynn landing spot or some of the bargain/risk guys like Tillman, Garcia, etc. Lance Lynn is a perfect Twins signing.

Sounds like a starting pitcher is all we're really looking for now. If that's the case, I really want Darvish even more than before. If it takes 6/150, so be it. Give him a couple of opt out and be done with it.

Eh, TT probably nailed it. Reed may have wanted to close.

Damn, gotta wonder if he turned down more earlier. I wish we had him at that price.

https://twitter.com/CarrieMuskat/status/952202140528840704

well yeah, yu tweeted so himself today Actually, Yu followed that up by saying they had made an offer, just those weren't the right numbers.

I think you're being too conservative about this, they don't need an extra 5 million in buffer for guys coming up on DL stints. If they had no intention of exceeding 15M AAV then the rumors on Darvish wouldn't be as strong as they are, the arb estimates matched up nearly exactly with reality so it's not like anything has materially changed since the Darvish pursuit began. You may be right. I'm not thinking 5 mill though, maybe 2? Even that may be too high. We don't have that many guys at AAA that'll be on a shuttle to begin with. Maples, maybe one or two of those DFA claims. It'd take longterm injuries to ramp that number up to anything substantial.

Honestly, Grimm is kind of a dick. We could have cut him and I'm not sure he'd have gotten 2 mill on the open market.

I thought I did it based on what Cot's has, but looking now they have it as ~$14 for player benefits and $2.25 for the 40 man, which would have me off by about $750k. Then again, that's part of why I rounded up everywhere I could, so as to insulate against any mistakes or changes that go the other direction (for instance, KB making $1m last year even though he was a 0-3 player). But yeah, I think the moral of the story is that if we do Darvish or Arrieta we probably have enough room for a backup catcher and not much else. Further, it probably leaves us enough room for Harper next year but not much beyond that unless we get lucky and Heyward opts out or we dump a salary dump or two. OK, so 2.25 means 150k versus 200k. That makes sense. That said, I guess that number goes up every time during the season a guy goes on the DL and a guy comes up. So, maybe we need to save a bit more just for those occurrences? Cobb at a 15 mill AAV and a low rent backup C seems the most likely scenario for me. You can probably add some sort of pen arm and not worry about things either. Gotta admit, I'd be slightly disappointed with that, I really want Darvish.

Great breakdown. I thought insurance was 15 mill last year? Maybe I'm off on that though. I thought the rest of the 40 man comes in at 200k apiece, not 100% sure on that either. But, if I'm correct, it'd shave another 2.5 off the 35.9 we can spend. Of course, we can make most of it by cutting Grimm. Still, assuming we'll save 7-10 mill for in season moves, it makes a Darvish signing pretty hard to fathom. Same with Jake.

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