Chicago Bulls: 3 takeaways from 2019 NBA Trade Deadline
1. What does Porter acquisition mean long-term?
Let’s preface the discussion by talking about the positive first. The Parker experiment didn’t pan out too well and with the team trading Justin Holiday a few weeks ago, there was a need for a capable player to fill in at the 3.
Enter Porter.
Following his first two NBA seasons, not only has he been a double-digit scorer, he had increased his scoring output over the past three seasons. Secondly, Porter is a career 39 percent shooter from long range and he has converted better than 43 percent of his attempts from 3-point range in each of the past two seasons.
Standing a 6’8” and averaging 1.5 steals per game, Porter also provides the Bulls with a player who can effectively fill the 3-and-D role. But there is another side of the story that may not be too appealing in the eyes of Bulls fans.
Porter is currently on a contract that will pay him $27.3 million next season and then a player option in 2020-21 that will pay him $28.5 million.
What this means is that the Bulls will not be major players in the upcoming free agency period this summer, as their available cap space has been reduced from approximately $45 million to $19 million.
"“We’re trying to get there,’’ Paxson told the Chicago Sun-Times about the Bulls being a major player in franchise-changing talent. “We were part of the deal [in 2010] when LeBron [James] and those guys were out. We didn’t get them, but we were part of that process. We were in the game, as New York will be in the game this summer, I’m sure. “We are not at that stage. Is it a black eye? No. I don’t consider it. That’s our aspiration. We’ve understood that process we’re in right now is hoping to get to that point, but we also believe that the draft is very important in order to build to get to there, and that’s why we are sitting here a year and a half after trading Jimmy [Butler] with Lauri Markkanen and Wendell Carter out of the draft, another draft pick coming up, and time will tell.”"
So, does this move represent the next logical step in terms of the team’s rebuild? Perhaps. What it does mean, unfortunately, is that the team is no closer to being more competitive than it was a year ago – a fact that can’t sit well with the organization or its fanbase.