Farewell Again, Captain

I really hope you people appreciate what I do for you because sometimes, the stuff I blog about is just baffling.  More of it happened again during Thursday's trade deadline.  While several rumors floated around, most notably the Bulls trading Pau Gasol to Sacramento, they never came to pass.  What did happen was a three-team deal which involved Kirk Hinrich being traded to Atlanta for Justin Holiday, Jrue's younger brother, and a future second-round pick from Utah.

Holiday, known as The Fireman, averaged 2.4 points, one rebound and 0.4 assists over 26 games for Atlanta this season.  In three years, those numbers come to 4.3, 1.2 and 0.8 respectively.  Essentially, he'll replace Hinrich as the guard at the end of the end of the bench.  Don't expect him to see the floor much except in blowouts and necessity due to team injuries.

The move, purely a salary dump, will save the Bulls $3 million, furthering the longtime notion that the organization wants to be as little above the luxury tax as possible ($1.5 million now).  As for Hinrich, he's in the middle of a rather unproductive year, averaging 3.8 points and and 1.7 assists over 35 games.  During his second Bulls tenure, which began in 2012, we've seen him go from starting for Derrick Rose in his lost season to the end of the bench.  That tends to happen to many players when they reach age 35.

There will be time to look back fondly on what Hinrich has done for the Bulls over the years and chances are he'll return as a staffer once he retires.  But people are ridiculing this deal because it means so little to the current group.  Hinrich wasn't exactly wowing people and was borderline lucky to see as much action as he did this season.  Rather than get someone who might be able to help quickly or earn more for the first round of the draft, the Bulls decided to save just a little bit of money and hope to strike gold in some future second round.

The more we see Gar Forman and John Paxson make unremarkable moves such as this one, the less enchanted we become with the organization.  While other teams are trying to stockpile for the future within reason, the Bulls are simply balancing their budget for money that probably won't be used for anything noteworthy.  A role player for next year only, perhaps?  Another undrafted rookie who will see the floor as much as Cristiano Felicio?

On top of that, it's the old practice of refusing to buy or sell high on anybody.  Other than Gasol, not one free agent or trade acquisition as made an impact large enough to push the Bulls to the next level.  And by the time another team gets its hand on a Bull, it only has to send cash or a throwaway draft pick in return.  That's bad business.

I heard someone, I think Marc Silverman, say on the radio yesterday that if the Bulls were his financial adviser, he'd have no money left.  That's how poor they've been in conducting transactions.  They're always praying that their first-round picks will work out and then, they'll keep them around until their value is either gone or high enough that they'll try to justify not trading them.  If Paxson was the CEO of a company, he would have gone bankrupt years ago.

So virtually the same injured, slumping Bulls will face the Cleveland Cavaliers on national TV Thursday night.  I'm not sure if it's possible to kill momentum coming out of the All-Star break, but GarPax might have done it.  We were already low on them, but they keep giving us reasons to think lower.  Hopefully, the players can tune this all out and go 3-0 on Cleveland for the year.