If the Bulls want to stay under the luxury tax, which seems obvious given their history, then they have three options to save salary by trading Kirk Hinrich. One of those options expires on July 1st.
First, the Bulls could move Hinrich to a team underneath the salary cap. Options are relatively limited here as most teams probably would prefer to use their cap money in free agency rather than pursuing Kirk Hinrich with their cap space.
Next, the Bulls could trade Hinrich to a team over the cap, but they take back less salary than they take by up to 25% of Hinrich's salary. This doesn't save much money, and it would be difficult to find the right trading partner to maximize the amount of space saved. The Bulls would presumably want an expiring and there may not be a team in the league that has an expiring near 75% of Hinrich's salary who also wants Hinrich.
Finally, the Bulls could trade Hinrich for non-guaranteed contracts and then waive the players they get. This is possible with a few players in the league, most notably Steve Blake and Travis Outlaw from Portland or Jerry Stackhouse from Dallas. Stackhouse's deal is guaranteed for two million while Blake and Outlaw are fully nonguaranteed.
The last option ends on July 1st when those players become fully guaranteed. A Hinrich trade makes a good deal of sense for both of those teams. The Mavericks could choose Hinrich over bringing Jason Kidd back or as a supplement to Kidd. Hinrich would be able to play effectively with Kidd or Terry and help their aim to "win now".
Hinrich also fits well with Portland who nees a quality PG and has enough young prospects that getting a veteran like Hinrich makes a world of sense to them.
If the Bulls are going to trade Hinrich, as I've heard they would, then the best salary saving options appear to be within the next two days. The teams sitting on non-guaranteed contracts can get more value for them now than they can later, and should be pushing to trade them before July 1st if they're interested in maximizing their returns.
I don't understand the motivation in trading Hinrich. A high character leader who plays his heart out. Who else will we use to shut down D-Wade, Kobe, and Paul Pierce? I'd much rather convince some poor sap to take on Ben Gordon and his one-dimensional game.
Since were talking about trades, how about trying to get David West from Knicks? With them drafting Hill/PF, I would say West is expendable? If we send Miller and Tim Thomas to Knicks for Jefferies(which they would like to dump), West, and Mobley. They take on expiring contracts, and dump two players not in there future. We get one good player, a SG whos contract is gone after this year, and a backup center in Jefferies. We get our low post scorer.
Why are these 2 days are so important? What's wrong with the following approach? The Bulls can wait for a month and see how the Gordon situation unfolds. Suppose they can resign him. (If they don't that should definitely alter their of-season plans.) Then they consummate that trade with Portland for guartanteed contracts of Blake and Outlaw with the idea of keeping Blake as an excellent back-up for Rose and offering a (very attractive in my opinion) package of signed (which is a benefit to Toronto!) Outlaw, Deng and Tyrus Thomas for Bosh. I think that these deals look good for all teams and the Bulls will be definitely in a better position later on to see if that makes sense for their roster make-up.
I think that saving money is the secondary objective for the team's management. The primary objective is to improve the team. The Bulls proved by their Boston series that something can be done with this team. That is why the only reason to save money now is to be in a better position to improve in the near future, i.e by the end of next summer. From that standpoint the Bulls seem to gain a lot and lose very little by waiting for a month or so rather than jumping the gun right now. So, I would not expect any moves within the next 2 days and see a higher likelihood of something happenning later in the summer than now... But we will see, and as with any purely hypothetical trade scenario, no trade at all is by far the most likely outcome anyway.
see it should be, but that doesn't mean that making the team better IS their primary focus. Their history has shown that even when they were winning championships they don't want to spend too much money. This is the owner who nearly let MJ walk because he didn't want to pay him 30 mil a year like MJ wanted. Just keep that in mind.
Hey Guys,
I come to this issue from a different perspective than most folks on this blog. I'm a Blazer fan. If Portland trades Blake AND Outlaw for Heinrich, consider yourselves fortunate. Blake and Heinrich are essentially the same players. Herinrich may be a better defender, but Blake is a better floor general, and just as tough. And Outlaw, while erratic, was the Blazers third leading scorer. Both guys are known for making big shots. So if Portland pulls the trigger, I'll consider it your gain and our loss.
Doug said: "I don't think the Bulls want Blake or Outlaw really."
My reply: Good, then let's both hope the Bulls and Blazers don't do this deal.
Doug,
You know the Bulls, I know the Blazers. Heinrich is NOT a "big upgrade" to what we have. And no, I WON'T be happy if Portland makes this trade. We'll just have to respectfully disagree.
Hinrich is way more than just a defensive player, he really is an ideal combo third guard. He may be overpaid for the role, but if he played Gordons minutes, he probably scores 14-16 ppg.
So in addition to doing everything but scoring way better than Gordon does(of course any 3yr old could make that claim), he gives you 70-80% of Gordons scoring, so how are we losing anything by keeping Hinrich over Mr Unidimensional.
Saw a stat the other day, Gordon average 20.something per game in the Bulls wins this past season, and 20.something per game in the Bulls loses, the Bulls finished 41-41, so apparently he had absolutely zero affect on the outcome of the games or the season.
and yes I watched every minute of every game and tivo replayed many of them, including most of Gordons defensive and effort lapses, which usually caused me to double the length of the game.
Anybody, who has ever played the game or coached the game has to hate watching Gordon play, I really don't understand how Skiles didn't kill this guy.
Scoring while absolutely necessary is vastly over rated with respect to winning. Regardless of the level of scoring, it is almost always the better defensive teams that walk away with the rings.
The Bulls won all 6 titles with defense, despite having the greatest offensive player since the early days of Wilt. In fact during the second 3 peat they seldom fell behind by double digits because even when they weren't clicking on O, they could shut teams down for long stretchs on D.
Lastly, trading Hinrich for nothing but cap space/luxury tax relief would be a really bad move in and of itself, doing so to resign Gordon to a $10 million plus deal is just plain assinine.
I'll bet that Rose/Salmons/Hinrich in 09/10 scores just as many if not more points than Rose/Gordon/Hinrich did in 08/09.
Rose will be better, maybe much better, Salmons gives you at least 18, 20 is not out of the question, and Wade and Allen and others won't be torching us for 50 a night.