Well, that was quite a midday NBA news dump.
On Thursday afternoon, the Oklahoma City Thunder acquired veteran All-Defensive guard Alex Caruso in exchange for young point guard Josh Giddey, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski,
The 30-year-old Caruso is coming off one of the best individual seasons of his career and should be a massive boon to a contending Thunder team. By contrast, Giddey is coming off one of the worst and least efficient seasons of his career, one that also saw him embroiled in potential criminal activity that surfaced on social media before he was cleared by the police.
Let’s examine the finer details that sent Caruso to Oklahoma City and Giddey to Chicago and assign grades to both teams for this trade.
The details
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, here’s what both teams received in this trade:
- The Thunder get: G Alex Caruso
- The Bulls get: G Josh Giddey
Oklahoma City Thunder
The Thunder elected not to load up at this past season’s trade deadline because they wanted to use their first playoff run as informative data for the future. They wanted to understand where they would excel and where they would have to improve around MVP finalist Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
In the aftermath of this trade, one of their clear conclusions was that Giddey was an anchor dragging Oklahoma City down. And they couldn’t have gotten a bigger upgrade in the form of Caruso.
Caruso will likely slide seamlessly into Giddey’s former starting role. He’s obviously one of the NBA’s best defenders, but he can also handle the ball, is a solid playmaker, and has a career 38 percent 3-point shooting percentage. No longer will teams be able to sag off Giddey because of his poor shooting, and, together with Lu Dort, Caruso will give the Thunder one of the more exceptional perimeter defenses in NBA basketball.
The best part? The Thunder didn’t have to give up a single high draft pick for one of their worst rotation players. This was highway robbery.
Oklahoma City finished with the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed and 57 wins in 2023. With the addition of Caruso for basically nothing, it’s hard to see this team losing its mantle and not getting to 60 wins, at minimum.
Grade: A+
Chicago Bulls
What. The. Huh!?
If you are, unfortunately, a Bulls fan, that is the only reasonable reaction to this trade, dearest readers.
Beyond his troubling off-court issues, the Thunder’s eagerness to rid themselves of Giddey after one of their finer seasons in franchise history should tell you everything. He is a horrific shooter and an average defender whose playmaking doesn’t nearly make up for his shortcomings. They couldn’t wait to get him off their hands fast enough.
It should also tell you everything about the Bulls that they apparently think he still has “All-Star potential,” according to Wojnarowski. Never mind that Oklahoma City has a stockpile of first-round draft picks through the rest of the decade. Caruso was one of the more highly-coveted veteran guards on the offseason market, and the Bulls couldn’t get a single quality draft pick for the future in return for his services.
Who is doing the negotiating in Chicago? And why have they not been fired yet? This is a bleak deal and return that somehow spells out even more doom for a moribund franchise.
The Bulls, as they stand, are truly hopeless.
Grade: D-
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