As pointed out, Kobe vetoed the trade for him because it basically crippled the Bulls team he would be coming to. How many trades can you point to where teams traded role players for a huge impact player? The Bulls have regularly been designed where smart drafting and, especially, FA signing would have helped them most, not trades. If you want to gripe about their signings (or ones they missed), fine, but griping about them not "trading high" or not trading for big names is completely ignoring how those types of trades would have sunk them right away.