The Jimmy Butler trade looks like a disaster for the Chicago Bulls

The Bulls traded way too low on Jimmy Butler, one of the 15 best players in the league. An excerpt:

After all the rumors, all the sources, all the alphas… really? This what the Chicago Bulls got for sending Jimmy Butler, one of the 10-to-15 best players in the NBA, to the Minnesota Timberwolves?

Really? Zach LaVine? Kris Dunn? And the №7 pick which they used on Lauri Markkanen? For that, they gave up Jimmy Butler and their own №16, which Minnesota used on Justin Patton.

It’s hard to imagine a team selling lower on a superstar-caliber player than the Bulls did right here. They reportedly wanted multiple first-round picks (in addition to salary-matching players) from the Celtics as recently as the February trade deadline, and they ended up settling for two flawed guards and the opportunity to move up nine picks in the first round, a mere four months later.

The holy grail for a superstar trade is getting back some combination of the following three things: long-term salary cap relief, potential star players still working on their rookie contracts, and draft picks (preferably plural). If you squint really hard, you might be able to convince yourself that the Bulls did alright in this deal: they offloaded the final two years of Butler’s contract in exchange for three guys on rookie contracts. They’re getting a 22-year old high-flying sniper in LaVine, a 23-year old bulldog point guard in Dunn, and the 7-foot sharpshooter from Arizona with the №7 pick. A deeper examination, though, reveals that they likely went 0-for-3.

Read the full story at The Step Back.