With the announcement that Chris Bosh and Dwanye Wade will be teammates in Miami, Chicago Bulls fans need to be like Al Gore and realize a very inconvenient truth. The top 3 free agents are NOT coming to Chicago. Tomorrow night’s “very special episode of the Lebron show” will likely yield the announcement of King James staying in Cleveland. There are rumblings he’s going to New York, but really, he’s going to stay put in his hometown. It’s the only place where they intentionally built a practice facility closer to his home.
And with Amare Stoudemire going to the Knicks, and Dirk Nowitzki, Rudy Gay and Paul Pierce re-upping with their current teams, the Bulls have effectively lost out on the top seven free agents. (Depending on how you rank players 5-7 in this free agent class)
So what do you do now? How do you effectively stop disappointment from degenerating into disaster? You can still salvage something substantial from this free agency period.
By Paul M. Banks
Since the Bulls cleaned out all their closets and shelves during the past year and a half, they have to re-stock with something. They only have six players under contract, and plenty of holes to fill. Still, this was the right thing to do, you had to go all in when preparing for the once-in-a-lifetime summer of free agent love. It may look like their best laid plans have backfired now, but that’s not true. All the cliches in the vein of “nothing ventured, nothing gain” certainly apply.
There’s still Carlos Boozer, who’s been injury prone lately, but still a solid All-Star. And a big upgrade over Taj Gibson at the four. He’s the last star available, and a good bargaining chip to get Lebron. If they have any chance at all left at obtaining Lebron, adding Booze to the nucleus authoritatively says to the King- “hey, this is your only place to win a championship.”
The Bulls, and the New Jersey Nets for that matter, still have max cap space to sign LeBron if they can get Boozer to agree to a contract that is reasonable, and not bloated. The Cavs don’t have the cap space to sign Boozer. If the Bulls can get him, they’ll have a solid 19 and 10 guy who began his career in Cleveland, is friendly with LeBron, and may have some pull with him.
Then there’s David Lee. Add him to the Bulls roster and the front court is set. If you’re Chicago, you don’t need Lee and Boozer, but you do need one of them. If you don’t get either of them, then you are screwed. And you can’t wait for 2011 to make a run at Carmelo Anthony, you need players this year because your roster is lacking. And Kevin Durant re-upped with Oklahoma City today, so forget about that next summer.
Is Ray Allen done with Boston? Who knows? He could still stay in New England. He’d be a good add, but maybe the Bulls’ best options are dealing with a team looking to shed cap space. Maybe they could get Al Jefferson or Emeka Okafor by going this route. However, teams shedding salary will want something in return. And the Bulls have little to deal because they have to shop are four tradeable pieces and draft picks. So this puts them in a very rough spot.
Other free agents left who can fill the Bulls’ needs are Kyle Korver and Mike Miller (who they’ll have to move on soon because he’s drawing interest from both the Clippers and the Knicks). After that, because they desperately need a shooter, there’s J.J. Redick. And basically, if this summer ends with the Bulls signing no one else but Redick, then the summer was a disaster of Chernobyl proportions. But we’re not there yet, we’re not even at Three Mile Island.
Chicago still has a couple options for avoiding disaster, and turning this offseason into a positive. But you got to spend some money somewhere, because you need to field a team.
Written by Paul M. Banks, President and CEO of The Sports Bank.net , a Midwest focused webzine. He is also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, the Chicago Tribune’s blog network, Walter Football.com, the Washington Times Communities, Yardbarker Network, and Fox Sports.com
You can follow him on Twitter @thesportsbank and @bigtenguru