{"id":79837,"date":"2024-06-01T12:11:39","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T16:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=79837"},"modified":"2024-06-01T12:11:39","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T16:11:39","slug":"bulls-lower-asking-price-spur-zach-lavine-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/06\/01\/bulls-lower-asking-price-spur-zach-lavine-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"Bulls Lower Asking Price to Spur All-Star Trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chicago Bulls are trying to figure out how to restore their former glory. While they may never reach the heights of the Michael Jordan<\/a> years, they can at least rise above NBA purgatory. That may be a lot to ask of a franchise that hasn\u2019t been a playoff fixture in a decade. To that point, the Bulls have only had two postseason appearances \u2014both First Round exits \u2014in the last nine years.<\/p>\n

When the Bulls hired executive vice president of basketball operations Art\u016bras Karni\u0161ovas in Apr. 2020, they expected change. The former general manager of the Denver Nuggets under then president Tim Connelly, he was a popular front office candidate. Not only did he have success in a suit but in a jersey, starring overseas for several years. Instead, Karni\u0161ovas hasn\u2019t even been able to live up to his predecessor, Gar Forman. The clock had ran out on Forman in Chicago, but the Bulls did have eight playoff runs in a nine-year stretch when he was general manager.<\/p>\n

Karni\u0161ovas has led the Bulls to one playoff appearance in four years.<\/p>\n

Bulls Lower Asking Price to Spur Zach LaVine Trade<\/h2>\n

Of course, there\u2019s no Derrick Rose<\/a> \u2014the youngest MVP in NBA history \u2014on this roster. Nonetheless, Chicago has three players with 10 All-Star selections between them. That constellation of stars has amassed 50,818 career points in the regular season alone.<\/p>\n

Injuries and defensive issues have undermined their talent though. Exacerbating the problem is fact that Karni\u0161ovas held onto hope that they would mesh for too long. Now, the only member of their Big 3 whose value hasn\u2019t depreciated is DeMar DeRozan<\/a>. Yet, he\u2019s also the plsyer that they want to keep<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Both Zach LaVine<\/a> and Nikola Vucevic<\/a> are on the trade block this offseason. In fact, the Bulls are eager enough to get a deal done that they\u2019ve dropped their asking price for LaVine.<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t think the Bulls will take an awful deal if little materializes<\/a>,\u201d reports NBC Sports Chicago\u2019s K.C. Johnson, \u201cbut I do get the sense they\u2019re open to more possibilities than before. I\u2019ve reported before what their asking price was\u2014All-Star level talent, first-round picks or both\u2014and my sense is that it has dropped significantly.”<\/p>\n

An Imperfect Return<\/h3>\n

With the Detroit Pistons, Los Angeles Lakers, and New York Knicks all expressing interest in LaVine over the past year, they\u2019re his most likely landing spots.<\/p>\n

If the Lakers have lowered their asking price, then they may be targeting players like Jaden Ivey<\/a>, Austin Reaves<\/a>, and Bojan Bogdanovic<\/a>. They may not score at an All-NBA clip, but they each averaged just over 15 points per game in 2023-24. There are also defensive concerns with this trio, but Ivey and Reaves have flashed upside at that end. In fact, Reaves\u2019s defense on Nuggets star Jamal Murray<\/a> was one of the team\u2019s bright spots in the 2024 NBA Playoffs, the Lakers\u2019 fan favorite helping hold Murray to 40.0 percent shooting from the field (29.4 percent from 3).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chicago Bulls are trying to figure out how to restore their former glory. While they may never reach the heights of the Michael Jordan years, they can at least rise above NBA purgatory. That may be a lot to ask of a franchise that hasn\u2019t been a playoff fixture in a decade. To that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":79840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1608,20,10,26,62,12,4721],"tags":[49277,4556,237,4107,4557,4774,457],"class_list":["post-79837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bulls","category-basketball","category-nuggets","category-pistons","category-lakers","category-nba","category-knicks","category-trade-rumors","tag-arturas-karnisovas","tag-austin-reaves","tag-bojan-bogdanovic","tag-jaden-ivey","tag-nba-offseason","tag-rumors","tag-zach-lavine"],"modified_by":"Quenton S Albertie","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}