Late Monday Chicago and Cleveland, two teams with very different goals for this season, completed a trade. In the trade the Chicago Bulls received Andrew Bynum and 3 draft picks. Cleveland received Luol Deng. The Cavaliers haven’t made the playoffs in the 3 seasons since LeBron left to play in Miami. They thought that they had a legitimate chance to make the playoffs this year. Owner Dan Gilbert has said multiple times that the playoffs were his goal for the team this year.  Andrew Bynum was signed by the Cavaliers this offseason fresh off of missing an entire season due to injuries. He has looked a step slow at times this year. He hasn’t had a great start to the year as expected for a player coming off his injury. Recently Bynum had been suspended for conduct detrimental to the team. Bynum has a long history of run-ins with the law and other behavioral problems. Over the years he has had personality conflicts with multiple coaches. Bynum has always been a player notorious for a lack of hustle and effort on the court. Due to his history and injuries there weren’t many teams that wanted to give Bynum a lot of money this offseason. He ended up signing a deal worth $12.3 million in the 2014 season and $12.5 in the 2015 season. There was also a clause in the contract that the cavaliers could waive Bynum before January 7th and not have to pay him any money in 2015 or $6.8 million owed in 2014. Due to Bynum’s recent conduct and suspension the cavaliers decided that they would use this mid-season out to get Bynum off the team. The cavaliers over the past few weeks had been looking to trade Bynum to a team that had no chance of making the playoffs and had quit on this season. In return they wanted a player that could help them make the playoffs this season. Luol Deng is such a player. But the Cavilers just hours before the deadline to waive Bynum relied that in order to acquire a player that could help them make the playoffs this season the cavaliers would have to give up assets for the future. The Lakers had proposed a trade where they gave of Pau Gasol for Bynum and Dion Waiters, a second year shooting guard who was the 4th pick in the 2012 draft. The cavaliers didn’t want to give up waiters because they believe that he is too crucial to the future. In the end the Cavaliers traded away the kings 2014 protected 1st round pick and the Blazers 2015 and 2016 2nd rounders. Cleveland currently has an 11-23 record. They are in 13th in the eastern conference the top 8 make the playoffs. They are currently 3 games out of the 8 seed and 4 games out of the 6 seed. The eastern conference is terrible this year. There are only 3 teams above .500 and one of those teams, Atlanta, is going to get a lot worse because its best player recently had a season ending injury. Toronto is currently in 4th, Chicago is currently in 6th and Charlotte is currently in 7th. The 2014 NBA draft is projected by some to be the best draft since 1985. It is possible that all three of those teams try to lose games in order to get a better draft pick. Toronto has already traded away its best player, Rudy Gay, and could trade veterans Kyle Lowry and Demur Derain too. Toronto GM Mesa Usury was hired by Toronto’s owner this year to make the team better long term and build around young players Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross. He doesn’t care if the team makes the playoffs. They would probably be a first round loser anyway. They would have no chance barring a multiple major injuries to Miami or Indiana that Toronto makes it to the east finals. Chicago’s best player, Derrick Rose, is out for the season and they just traded their second best player, Luol Deng. Charolette is just a bad basketball team they will get worse as the season goes on. With that said it wouldn’t that hard to the Cavaliers to get a high seed in the east. Miami and Indiana are clearly the best two teams in the east. Every other team has a huge flaw. Season ending injuries to Al Horford, Brook Lopez, and Derrick Rose have weekend teams. Detroit, Cleveland, Brooklyn, New York, and Milwaukee have all under performed based on preseason expectations. Any team that wins 55% of their games the rest of the season will probably be the 3 seed in the east. The Cleveland cavaliers could easily be that team. They have had a few locker room conflicts. Some centering on Deon Waiters being mad at his teammates for not giving him the ball enough all season long. The team has showed a lack of effort defensively on many nights. Luol Deng is a great player to add to this cavalier’s team. He is one of the best perimeter defenders in the league. That is an area that the cavaliers have been lacking in all season. Deng’s energy and hardworking personality could motivate the other cavaliers players that sometimes don’t show max effort on defense. In Chicago Deng was asked to be the second or third offensive threat on the team. He was over used offensively. He was asked to be the primary ball handler on pick and rolls and he shot 3 3 pointers a game on average despite being a 33% 3 point shooter over his career. In Cleveland he will be asked to guard the best perimeter offensive player on the other team every night. On the offensive end he will not be asked to do much at all. There is another interesting factor in the Deng addition. While he has never been asked to do so consistently Deng can most likely play as a small ball power forward.  Cleveland doesn’t usually play small ball but Deng is close to the perfect small ball 4. He can guard power forwards and he can hit mid-range jumpers. Playing small ball would give Cleveland line up flexibility, allow them to change the matchups in a game or series, and make up for the hole at the center position left by Bynum. Luol Deng is a free agent this summer. The cavaliers will likely let him leave. It is unclear which teams will be in the market for Deng this offseason or where he is looking to sign. The cavaliers have been working for a few years to get enough cap space to sign LeBron this summer if he opts out of his contract. Acquiring Deng doesn’t change Cleveland’s cap space this summer. They will still try to sign LeBron. If they will look to sign Deng if they can’t sign LeBron that is unclear. In this trade Cleveland was able to get a disgruntled player off the team and acquire an expiring free angent that will increase their palyoff chances this season. Even though they had to give up future assets the Cavaliers did achieve their goal for this trade by making the team better now.
By making this trade it seems like the Bulls’ ownership has waived the white flag for this season the Bulls are a pitiful 14-18, 8-12 without Derrick Rose. Rose is out for the season. The Bulls waived Bynum shortly after acquiring him so they didn’t have to pay him any money at all. Trading Deng for Bynum was a savings of $14 million for Bulls’ ownership this season. With the upcoming NBA draft being so good it is clear that GM is just making the team worse so that they can lose more games. Trading your best healthy player for zero players that will play this season is a good way to do that. The 1st round pick the Bulls acquired is top 12 protected this season and becomes a top 10 protected pick in 2015, 2016, or 2017. That last sentence means that if the Kings pick is in the top 12 in 2014 then the kings keep their pick and the Bulls get their 2015 pick, but if that 2015 pick is top ten then the Bulls get the 2016 pick and so on until 2017. The Bulls also received Blazers 2nd round picks in 2015 and 2016. These picks are useful assets that can be used in future trades or to acquire players through the draft. Since the Bulls figure to become a championship contender as soon as Derrick Rose gets healthy they could be in position to trade picks for players in the upcoming years. There are major questions about this trade. The Bulls ownership has always been cheap. The Bulls have only paid the luxury tax 3 times ever. If the Bulls were looking to trade Luol Deng, a very good NBA player, and they didn’t care at all about being good this season they could have gotten better assets than they did. Houston, Portland, the Clippers, and Golden State are all title contenders that could use an elite level defender. Any of those teams could have offered multiple 1st rounder’s. It seems that the reason that Luol Deng is on the cavaliers is because it saved Bulls ownership $14 million. The bottom line for the Bulls is they wanted to get worse so they traded away their best healthy player who was a free agent at the end of the year anyway. They saved $14 million and got some future assets in the process. Andrew Bynum is now a free agent. His long history suggests that he will only want to play for a few teams and he might not try very hard after he signs. If Bynum shows some effort and gets healthy he could be a huge addition to a title contender. But if he signs for a time then gets into a fight with the coaching staff or management he could soon be waived again. Bynum’s future for this season and beyond remain very unclear.
