The 2008 Chicago Bulls Offseason Recap

By Sean Mackey

It's been a while since our last post, but now with only 2 months until the 08-09 NBA season starts, it is truly a time to get excited about Bulls basketball. Since our last update, the summer league has came and went, Chris Duhon has signed up to be the New York Pants' new starting point guard, Deng was re-signed to a 6 year, $80 million contract, the US won the gold and Ben Gordon is still in limbo.

The summer league left most of us pretty unimpressed with Derrick Rose. He looked raw, but then again it was his first time playing against pros and he has a long way to go. The main ending concern was that he has tendinitus in one of his knees.....isn't he a little too young for this to be happening? He was removed from the roster for the last few games so he doesn't tear anything up. My boy Andres Nocioni also has tendinitus going on as well yet it was completely downplayed by Noc. That man would play with one leg if he had to though so I don't trust him when he says that he "feels great".

Chris Duhon left the Bulls as expected, although none of us could have predicted that he would take the dead end job of running the starting point guard position for the NY Knicks. As soon as they tank to dead last in the league, win the lottery and Donnie Walsh selects Spanish prodigy Ricky Rubio, Duhon will soon find his place on the bench again. If that doesn't happen, he'll end up getting in trouble for his well publicized nightlife addiction and crappy taste in novelty t-shirts. Have fun sucking C-Du.....and NY, he's your problem now.

Deng was re-signed to an insane contract that could be worth up to $80 million. This is great for Deng, he truely cleaned up with this deal. Now that you're happy Luol, can you stop sucking and have that breakout season you were suppose to have last year? Good luck brah, since you're now probably going to be the only scoring option on the team this year.

The Olympics finally ended on Sunday, thank God. Congrads to the US team, you toyed with every team, had fun, looked great and still won. Congrads to Noc for pulling in the bronze, I've never seen a guy so proud and enthusiastic to represent his country.

And then there's Ben Gordon. The whole BG fiasco has just gotten completely ridiculous. BG thinks he's worth 13 million, the Bulls think he's worth something in the $9.6 range. 6 years/$58 million is wayyyy more than he's going to get anywhere else. He's an undersized, streaky shooting guard who isn't a great defender. I don't know one team that could use him as a starter other than the Orlando Magic and that's not gonna happen. Then a few weeks ago, BG stated that he wasn't going to take the one year $6.4 qualifying offer with the Bulls and is demanding a sign and trade. No one has cap space for Gordon's ridiculous contract he's demanding he's worth other than the Grizzlies and they have OJ Mayo now so they're not going to want him. However there are a few rumors going around regarding both the Utah Jazz and the Denver Nuggets. The most popular is Gordon/Nocioni for Kirilenko/Brewer. I don't really see how this would work since AK-47 is going to want to start and he's going to have to play behind Deng and Gooden. This would just push him over the edge to go back to the Euro leagues which would be ashame. The other popular scenerio would be to clear out some players and re-sign Gordon such as the Hinrich, Nocioni, Larry Hughes, and Drew Gooden to Denver for Allen Iverson and Kenyon Martin trade. Both this and the Jazz trade are unlikely but it's something to toss around I suppose since no one else has any idea of how to handle this situation.

Don't get me wrong I love Ben Gordon. I think he's a very talented, sick clutch player but dude, just because you've been the the leading scorer for 3 years (18.6 points or something), doesn't mean you're worth top dollar. If teams paid by your logic, Mike Dunleavy would be worth $80 million for 6 seasons.....I mean hell, he's averaging 0.5 points more than you Ben....does that raise him to $80,500,000 or even maybe $81 million? Ridculous, simply ridic. BG, do yourself a favor, stop listening to your retard agents and realize that they aren't going to get you what they're telling you. Stop whining, sign a deal and lead us to a 7th ring.

That is all for now, we'll be releasing the Northern Kentucky (Insight Communications Cable) Chicago Bulls broadcast schedule as well as a season preview soon so stay tuned for that obscure information. Have a great Labor Day weekend!