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At the 57:23 mark of the latest Bill Simmons' podcast, Simmons says he believes LeBron will go to Chicago. Of course, in order to make this happen, we'll have to move Kirk. I swear, my head will explode if I hear another beat reporter or tv announcer make the case for not trading the Captain. The idiot dwarf at ESPN 1000, Harry Teinowitz, and his buddies were making the case that he's basically untradeable. It is essential that we move him for cap space in order to make our dreams come true next year.

J.A. Adande, who covers the Lakers, unfortunately exposes the obvious to a national audience about the Captain at the 51:26 mark.

First off we only need Salmons to opt out to have max cap space. If we traded Hinrich we still be 5 million short to get 2 max stars. Now Fred heres the part where I hope your sitting down as S.I. reported yesterday the Bulls turned down Celtics offer of expirings for Hinrich as they wanted draft picks or quality players

Dpauley23 wrote:
First off we only need Salmons to opt out to have max cap space. If we traded Hinrich we still be 5 million short to get 2 max stars. Now Fred heres the part where I hope your sitting down as S.I. reported yesterday the Bulls turned down Celtics offer of expirings for Hinrich as they wanted draft picks or quality players

Which expirings? Just looking at the Celtics roster without knowing who I can say they have no true PGs which would mean the Bulls playing Pargo or Brown as the backup point. Something which would hurt our record for sure. Not to mention it that it would have to be at least a 3-1 deal assuming just Hinrich is moving and even those trades don't look very plausible.

Not that I wouldn't pull the trigger if I was Chicago, I just don't find it very likely from either side's POV.

Meh it's just Bill Simmon's speculation, I doubt LeBron is telling him anything.

Fred, leaving aside the fact we don't need to trade anyone to have max cap space, if we're getting LeBron wouldn't trading Deng make more sense? I know Deng didn't run over your dog like Kirk did, but LeBron is kind of going to limit the minutes of a guy who only plays SF.

Shakes wrote:
Meh it's just Bill Simmon's speculation, I doubt LeBron is telling him anything.

Fred, leaving aside the fact we don't need to trade anyone to have max cap space, if we're getting LeBron wouldn't trading Deng make more sense? I know Deng didn't run over your dog like Kirk did, but LeBron is kind of going to limit the minutes of a guy who only plays SF.

You just play Deng at the four then

Shakes wrote:
Meh it's just Bill Simmon's speculation, I doubt LeBron is telling him anything.

Fred, leaving aside the fact we don't need to trade anyone to have max cap space, if we're getting LeBron wouldn't trading Deng make more sense? I know Deng didn't run over your dog like Kirk did, but LeBron is kind of going to limit the minutes of a guy who only plays SF.

In this economic enviornment, where I believe 3 teams are profitable, no one is giving up an expiring deal for Luol Deng. So I give up. Let's go with Plan II....Let's extend Kirk out another 6 years. Most white point guards come into their prime at 34. And we'll let the future of our organization ride on the whims of John Salmons.

We don't need to trade Kirk for max cap space. We need to dump Salmons. We just traded for his replacement so I wouldn't expect to see him here past the trade deadline. At this point, Kirk would have to boink JR's wife to be traded.

oi vey. if i have to put on my handy dandy kirk hinrich mask and bang JR's wife( for some reason, i feel as if i'm stuck on the set of Dallas), to get lebron on this team, i guess i'm in.

pinkizdead wrote:
oi vey. if i have to put on my handy dandy kirk hinrich mask and bang JR's wife( for some reason, i feel as if i'm stuck on the set of Dallas), to get lebron on this team, i guess i'm in.

I hate to disappoint you but with how much JR loves kirk, he'd probably join in for the threesome.

Fred wrote:
Shakes wrote:
Meh it's just Bill Simmon's speculation, I doubt LeBron is telling him anything.

Fred, leaving aside the fact we don't need to trade anyone to have max cap space, if we're getting LeBron wouldn't trading Deng make more sense? I know Deng didn't run over your dog like Kirk did, but LeBron is kind of going to limit the minutes of a guy who only plays SF.

In this economic enviornment, where I believe 3 teams are profitable, no one is giving up an expiring deal for Luol Deng. So I give up. Let's go with Plan II....Let's extend Kirk out another 6 years. Most white point guards come into their prime at 34. And we'll let the future of our organization ride on the whims of John Salmons.

If you're really worried about Salmons not opting out you can just dump him for an expiring. Personally I don't see the need: Salmons (or at least his agent if he's too stupid to work it out) surely knows if he costs us max cap space we can just bury his arse so deep on the bench he gets nothing for a contract in 2011.

I don't think Deng is as untradeable as you make out. Lots of teams surely know they don't have a shot at the big free agents, so cashing in an expiring for Deng's contract isn't so bad financially. He'll have 4/51 left come the off-season, I think if you carry that sort of cap space into free agency you'll end up overpaying to get someone worse than Deng.

Not saying we should dump Deng, just that if the premise is LeBron is coming here and we had to dump someone to make it happen, Deng is the logical candidate.

I'm not saying extend Kirk either, but we've swallowed the worst of his contract. At 2/17 going into the off-season you're going to be hard pressed to get anyone better for the price. Just dumping him for expirings makes the team worse for no real purpose.

Shakes, you've got to be kidding me. Your rationalizations are so optimistic that you must be drinking too much happy sauce. Deng is not tradeable now. No team is looking at long term deals till at least late summer 2010. Long term contracts are at an all time low this year, you better be damn good to get traded for an expiring. Hinrich is only fielding interest because he only has a couple of years left on his deal and is valuable to a contender who isn't going to be in the 2010 fiasco anyway. If I could get expiring deals for Deng, Kirk and Salmons, I would pull the trigger tomorrow now that we have brown and especially if we could get blake and outlaw from portland. But thats not going to happen, we will be lucky to get rid of any of them really and I would try to dump Salmons first as Brown seems like a good replacement.

I'm just saying the teams with 2010 cap space are going to have to spend that space or have some very angry fans. The smart way out is to trade for shorter/cheaper than max deals at the trade deadline to eat up the cap space.

I look at Deng at 4/51 and think that he looks a lot better than paying Joe Johnson or Boozer 5/90 if I'm worried about money. Maybe there are other youngish decent players on shorter contracts who'd go before Deng, I don't really know (and Deng wont happen because I don't think he's being shopped). But it wouldn't surprise me to see these sorts of deals to eat up the cap space done at the deadline.

I don't know about that. I think with a lock out looming and another good fa class available the in a couple of years, teams will just wait it out. If there is a lock out, guys like Deng are gonna become cap killers, even more so then they already are.

If there's a lock out then the FAs signed this summer are going to be even worse cap killers since they'll have longer contracts. It's the reason why I think it's smart to keep Kirk knowing he'll only have 2 years vs ending up stuck with someone for 5.

I guess it depends on how many teams decide to wear the PR black eye that not spending their cap space will be. Not many teams have opted to spend less than the cap in the past, but we'll see.

Thats just it, we have never seen anything like this. A looming lockout combined with a declining cap and the nba having to get loans for a lot of teams. Its a perfect storm. I don't think they will spend under the cap but you can clearly see that there are a lot of sellers and few buyers.