Getty Head coach Billy Donovan of the Chicago Bulls talks with his players during a time out.
The Chicago Bulls have been mostly underwhelming through four games of their first-round playoff matchup with the Milwaukee Bucks. They face elimination in Game 5 on April 27.
Greg Swartz of Bleacher Report writes believes the Bulls are just one major swing away from forming the NBA’s next superteam and that they should try their hand.
It would certainly be a headline stealer as Swartz suggests the Portland Trail Blazers send Damian Lillard to the Bulls in exchange for a package that includes former lottery picks Coby White and Patrick Williams in addition to point guard Lonzo Ball.
Buy! Buy! Bulls
Swartz makes note of how close the Bulls are to being a superteam as it is before admitting their late-season swoon should probably force some action. He also addresses the elephant in the room for Portland.
“While the Blazers have held firm on their decision to keep Lillard, the roster around him looks much further away from a championship than the one they began the 2021-22 season with. Lillard has yet to publicly request a trade, although he probably should.
The Bulls are knocking on the door to becoming a superteam, although a sixth-place finish in the East means they could use a six-time All-Star like Lillard to push them up to an elite level.”
On this day in 2019… Damian Lillard hit the SECOND series-winning buzzer beater of his career! #NBA75
He adds in Portland’s own draft pick which the Bulls own rights to the next time they qualify for the playoffs while also making sure to mention the Bulls still have depth at guard with Alex Caruso and second-round rookie gem, Ayo Dosunmu.
“Ball was having a strong first season in Chicago, but injuries limited him to just 35 total games. Still just 24, he’s young enough to join a rebuild in Portland…featuring former Los Angeles Lakers and New Orleans Pelicans teammate Josh Hart.
The Blazers also get…Williams and White, former lottery picks who could take off with bigger roles now in Portland. Getting their own 2023 first-rounder back from Chicago..should be enough to seal the deal.”
A Lose-Lose
This sounds great on paper. More importantly, it would seem to work out financially, per ESPN’s Trade Machine. The Bulls will have to re-sign LaVine to his (presumably) max deal this offseason so the only means of dramatic improvement will have to come via trade.
Lillard has one more guaranteed year on his current deal at $49.5 million with a player option worth $48.8 million for 2025, per Spotrac.com.
But how would it work on the court and is this the move that puts them over the top?
“My number one goal is to win a championship and I need to be in the best form of myself to make that happen.”
@dame_lillard speaks to the media for the first time since his surgery: t.co/38jA6Xl9yx
Lillard missed the final 47 games of the season following core surgery in December after just 29 games. In his first season under rookie head coach, Chauncey Billups, Lillard averaged 24.0 points on 40.8% shooting hitting 32.4% of his deep looks.
That is the worst efficiency of his career while the points are his fewest since 2015. He also averaged his fewest assists since 2019.
White was drafted by the previous Bulls front office and has not done anything to endear himself to his new bosses. Especially in a postseason that has seen him average just 6.3 points while shooting 25.0% from downtown through four games.
Williams was the first pick of the current front office headed but has been plagued by inconsistency and questions over his motor and aggressiveness. He has shown glimpses of what he can do with 20 points and 10 rebounds in the Bulls’ Game 4 loss.
A Done Deal?
As Swartz noted, Portland has been reluctant to make Lillard available and he has yet to request a trade. But there are fit questions to go along with the possibility that Portland could get back a better haul than what the Bulls can offer at the moment.
Additionally, Lillard had his best defensive season in three seasons and still only ranked in the 23rd percentile, per Cleaning the Glass.
He also isn’t the playmaker that Ball is as a score-first guard himself. Where does that leave DeRozan and LaVine? They did well to complement each other this season and, even then, had difficulty getting Vucevic involved. Dropping Lillard into that situation could be detrimental to everyone, even him.
Posting his lowest usage rate since 2014 this season dropped his total points added per 100 possessions down to the 64th percentile, the lowest mark of his career.
The counter to that is it is impossible to draw any conclusions with Lillard having spent such little time on the floor for Billups on top of the Blazers’ roster situation. A situation that led Portland to trade Lillard’s sidekick, C.J. McCollum to the New Orleans Pelicans.
As outlandish as it sounds, this would certainly make the Bulls a bigger challenge for any team in the Eastern Conference if they could pull it off.