Chicago Bulls: Carmelo Anthony deal means very little

Well, that was a very exciting 10 minutes! After all the effort that was put in by the Chicago Bulls to land Melo back in 2014, they finally got their man.

The Chicago Bulls got their man, Just not the version that they wanted. Adrian Wojnarowski broke the stunning development that Carmelo Anthony was a Bull:

You’d think that the front office had simply given up trying to hide their next level tanking tactics. But, sadly, this was not meant to be. Within 10 minutes, Woj added that he would be sent to the wire and would hit free agency should no one put in a claim for him.

To be transparent, I was so disappointed that we were robbed at the chance to witness Melo and Jim Boylen together in practice. If Boylen had problems with Jabari Parker, good lord who knows what would happen when he’d experience Melo’s definition of ‘effort’.

The transaction:

This trade is very much identical to the salary dump both teams executed with Michael Carter-Williams earlier this month. The Bulls took on MCW and cash considerations, sent a heavily-protected 2020 second-round pick, then proceeded to waive MCW. It appears to have a similar structure this time around, but with an added bonus!

Let’s be perfectly clear: regardless of who those international players are, we will never see either in a Chicago Bulls or Houston Rockets uniform. This was all about Chicago getting more money (possibly for Jerry Reinsdorf’s Chicago White Sox to go get Manny Machado?) and for Houston to clear a roster spot for Kenneth Faried.

Smart money (no pun intended) says that the money could be used towards a possible buyout for Robin Lopez or Parker should the organization fail to move either by the trade deadline.

But it’s also possible that the front office does something completely different.

However, Sean Highkin, a former Bulls beat writer, points out a rather shocking alternative:

While this is nutty and seems like a waste of money well acquired, it’s not crazy to think that GarPax would do something like this. They put themselves in a bad spot when they moved on from Fred Hoiberg. That deal he signed back in 2015 had $25 million guaranteed.

Should Hoiberg find himself unemployed for another year, Chicago is paying him money to do nothing. If I were him, I would:

1. Sit around and take a one-year vacation
2. Milk the organization for every cent they owe me for basically backstabbing me.

But if he gets another NBA coaching gig, then Chicago is off the hook for paying out the rest of his contract.

However, should they punt Boylen this summer (they should!), that means that in addition to making a new coaching hire, the Bulls could be paying for three head coaches all at once.

Hilarity.

This is all merely speculation, but it’s not crazy to think something like this could happen. Either way, Carmello Anthony was a Bull for about 10 minutes and we all had a good chuckle about it.

The End!