At the start of the year, the Chicago Bulls were expected to be one of the biggest sellers in the league by the time the trade deadline came around. They got off to a horrid start, but since then, they’ve turned their season around. That said, they still don’t look like a team that’s going to compete with the top talent in the Eastern Conference.
Because of that, it would make some sense for the Bulls to trade assets and restructure things at the deadline. His season-ending surgery likely means a Zach LaVine deal is off the table, but they have some other valuable players who could fetch a solid return.
However, the Bulls may not be interested in trading said players. During a recent edition of “The Hoop Collective,” Brian Windhorst of ESPN stated that Chicago likely isn’t going to trade DeMar DeRozan or Alex Caruso at the deadline. (H/t Doric Sam of Bleacher Report)
“The intel in the league right now… is that despite the LaVine injury, the Bulls are not actively looking to trade those guys. … There is not an expectation that DeRozan is gonna get traded, and I have heard ‘0.0’ on Caruso,” Windhorst said around the 28-minute mark of the show.
Caruso is under contract for the rest of this contract and next year, meaning that the Bulls could wait until the summer to move him and still get value.
DeRozan, on the other hand, is in the final season of his contract and hasn’t worked out an extension with the Bulls. If they don’t trade him before the deadline, they risk losing him for nothing this summer. That’s bad roster management.
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