Bulls’ acquisition of Nic Claxton in a 3-team trade is already polarizing
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Rahimi, Harrison, Grody. We are family here. We are family.
Middays 10 to 2 on 104.3 The Score. Man, it is going up on a Tuesday. This is a very appropriate comment. This is Rahimi Harrison-Grody on 104.3 The Score. It is NBA Draft Day here at The Score. We have a special that you can access that is going to be streaming for us on our YouTube and Twitch channels tonight. And in the meantime, we already have a big trade. I'm not talking about Giannis going to the heat. I feel like that's been percolating for a minute. What I did not see coming was the Bulls making a trade, acquiring Nick Claxton. And this takes up a lot of the Bulls' salary cap, Marshall, that I think we were curious what was going to happen. The Bulls had the most open cap space in the NBA to work with.
And in a three-team deal, we now see that Claxton goes to the Bulls, and the Bulls needed a center. So this is a guy who averages big numbers as far as games per season. And I feel like this is what the league is doing now. This is one of those moves that instead of free agency, teams will try to make a trade to get what they need positionally.
No, this makes sense. It helps, obviously, Brooklyn clear him off the books. And I like this because Claxton, while he's not a top-level center, he is a traditional rim-defending center, which is something that the Bulls haven't had in years.
I've been asking for the Bulls to get more rim protection basically since they lost Daniel Gafford. It's been 84 years.
What's great about this is that they have him for the next two seasons in theory. And then that also means he's a guy that they could move and get something back from come trade deadline. Not this coming season, but the next season.
And Claxton has $23 million and $21 million left on his deal.
What trade did the Bulls make involving Nic Claxton?
And so that would leave the Bulls with roughly about $30 million of cap space this summer. They've got money to burn. But I think there's a bigger discussion to be had here as far as already you're kind of getting different opinions on this from people saying, oh, Claxton's overpaid. That's why the Bulls got him. But at the same time, I think you're seeing a change. Already we're seeing Bryson Graham and the regime say, this matters to us, right? This is a trade that they get done before the draft for a reason.
I don't know what their final roster obviously is going to look like going into next season. But if they had to play a game today, they have guys that can play a basketball game. They have a center. They have a point guard. They have a wing. They have other guards. They have a basketball team.
They have many guards.
And people are like, oh, are they going to be any good? Are they going to win, you know, 30 games? Are they going to win? you know, 35 games, 25 games. Remember tanking as we knew it, Layla is over because there's a penalty now for finishing in the bottom three in the league, which is usually where somebody from the East ends up. So Bryson Graham has to retool and develop players and make the most of his draft picks while at the same time, make sure that there is a competent basketball team on the floor that doesn't put you at the very bottom.
And the reason we say the Bulls gave up relatively nothing for this is because the Bulls to Wolves part of the trade involves Mohamedou Gueye per Jake Fisher. So that is the reported trade. Gueye will have his team option picked up by Chicago. Then Gueye's contract will convert to be non-guaranteed. And then he's going to be waived by Minnesota following the trade. So we're back to the whole asset balance thing as well, the old trade and cut.
How does Nic Claxton fit into the Bulls' roster needs?
But that's how the Bulls got him for what looks like a deal. This was a win for the Bulls in needing a center and then salary cap money being unloaded.
And you're talking about the salary cap and the fact that they still have room under the cap to go do something. All I expect them to do is to absorb more bad contracts for draft capital. That's what they should be doing right now in this stage of what has been clearly defined and even named, as in said out loud, a rebuild.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
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