8 NBA Teams That Had a Horrible Summer
Chicago Bulls
Major Additions: Kris Dunn (acquired from Minnesota), Justin Holiday (free agent), Zach LaVine (acquired from Minnesota), Lauri Markkanen (drafted)
Major Subtractions: Jimmy Butler (traded to Minnesota), Rajon Rondo (signed with New Orleans)
Major Problems: Welcome to Tank City, population, Chicago Bulls.
The Bulls' draft-night deal with the Minnesota Timberwolves that sent their All-NBA swingman due north was a sure sign the Chicago decision-makers didn't believe a new iteration of their 2016-17 roster -- a roster that managed an ignominious playoff appearance -- had a chance to be legit. Seems they felt a blow-up was in order.
But man, what a blowup.
Their return in the Butler deal, statistically speaking, was way less than good, something that can be handily quantified with our proprietary metric nERD (a player ranking that measures the total contribution of a player throughout the course of a season, based on efficiency), as well as the telling advanced statistics Box Plus/Minus (BPM), Total Win Shares (TWS), and Value Over Replacement Player (VORP)
| Player | nERD | BMP | TWS | VORP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jimmy Butler | 17.3 | 6.9 | 13.8 | 6.3 |
| Zach Lavine | -1.0 | -2.2 | 0.1 | 0.8 |
| Kris Dunn | -5.6 | -0.3 | 3 | -0.1 |
The advanced stats don't like the deal, the numberFire numbers don't like the deal, and the fans don't like the deal. Not a good look.
Another concern has to be the early returns on rookie Markkanen. His Summer League performance was up and down, but the down was wayyyyy down.
In the Bulls' final game of the tournament, the Arizona product -- who's expected to be a three-point marksman -- stunk up the joint to the tune of 8 points on 1-for-13 shooting. Making matters worse, in that same game, last season's first-round pick, Denzel Valentine, managed just 4 points on 1-for-12 shooting. Of the performance, Chicago fans were, oh, let's go with salty.
When you see Donovan Mitchell And Jordan Bell stats tonight and Lauri Markkanen and Denzel Valentine yesterday. pic.twitter.com/yszfDCclOj
— dv45 (@Denzzy45) July 12, 2017
Takeaway: Looks like a lost season for the Bulls. But with quality bigs like Michael Porter Jr., Mohamed Bamba, and DeAndre Ayton perched at the top of most everybody's 2018 NBA Draft boards, this might not be a bad year to trust the process.
