The Nuggets need a talent upgrade in order to win a second championship. The Bulls need to trade their star Zach LaVine in order to keep their 2025 draft pick and continue to retool a roster with a low ceiling. Could a deal between the two sides be in the works?
The answer might be yes, according to reporting from The Athletic’s Tony Jones and Sam Amick. Those two released a report Tuesday night indicating that the Nuggets have “expressed interest in” LaVine, among other players. They added that “the focus on LaVine in recent discussions is significant.”
The Nuggets are in a tight financial situation. They’re above the first apron, meaning that they can’t take back more salary than they send out in any deal. And they don’t have a ton of tradable contracts. Michael Porter Jr.’s $35.8 million salary would have to be one of the outgoing pieces in any big trade.
Zeke Nnaji is also available, according to Amick and Jones. And importantly, there may be draft picks changing sides in this type of deal. “Any significant deal the Nuggets would do, may also have to involve a pick swap as a sweetener,” according to The Athletic’s report.
Here’s how that LaVine trade would flesh out, and whether it makes sense for both sides.
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Zach LaVine trade to the Nuggets
The trade
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Nuggets get:
Bulls get:
- Michael Porter Jr.
- Zeke Nnaji
Why the Nuggets do it
Nikola Jokic is probably going to win a fourth MVP award this season, and the Nuggets are going to waste his historic production if they don’t make a serious upgrade to their roster. Jamal Murray hasn’t looked like the player that he was during his championship run, and Denver hasn’t gotten enough from the rest of their roster.
The Nuggets are well aware of this fact, which is why they’re shopping for upgrades. They don’t have much to offer. That puts them in the running for names like LaVine, Jordan Poole, Jordan Clarkson, De’Andre Hunter, Cam Johnson, and Jonas Valanciunas, according to Amick and Jones.
LaVine is unquestionably the most talented offensive player of that group. He’s a deadeye 3-point shooter, canning 42.8% of his looks this season and 38.4% for his career. That is a sorely needed skill on a Nuggets roster that is 26th in 3-point makes this season — and that rank is despite Jokic hitting an unbelievable 48.9% of his 3s this year.
LaVine is more than just a shooter. The two-time dunk champion has a great first step and is shooting 56.9% from inside the 3-point arc. He can create his shot whenever he wants, which would help boost a horrendous bench unit that is getting outscored by 16.6 points per 100 possessions when Jokic is on the bench.
LaVine is overpaid relative to his production, which has led to a stagnant market for him. But nobody doubts that he’s a good player, and he’s the most talented guy that the Nuggets can get given that they have zero first round picks available to offer. And given Jokic’s history of making teammates look great, he should be even better in Denver.
Torrey Craig is a throw-in as a part of this deal. The former Nugget is still a useful rotation player, which the Nuggets need given their shaky bench. By including him in this trade (he can be absorbed into a minimum salary exception), the Bulls will be able to create a $2.8 million trade exception which could be useful in later trades. The Nuggets would benefit, too, given that they won’t be able to find a player better than Craig off the street.
The Nuggets are reportedly seeking some sort of draft equity in a Nnaji and Porter trade. The Bulls shouldn’t offer any, but they’ve gotten killed on the margins on pretty much every trade that the current regime has made. The trade as constructed is fair, but maybe the Nuggets negotiate a first-round pick swap too that could turn one of their late first-rounders into a lottery pick.
Why the Bulls do it
The Bulls need to get a lot worse this season in order to retain their top-10 protected 2025 pick. Were the season to end today, they would have a 20.2% chance of sending a late lottery pick to the Spurs. And more than simply keeping the pick, they need a chance to draft one of the top players like Cooper Flagg or Dylan Harper who could truly turn the fate of the franchise around.
Moving LaVine is the quickest way to drop to the bottom of the standings. The Bulls are 1-3 in games that he has missed, with their only win coming in a 122-121 win over a lowly Raptors team that was missing several starters. He’s had a label as a losing player, but the team’s play this season proves otherwise.
Gaining Porter would certainly be a risk for the Bulls. He’s a talented shooter and rebounder who has hit 38.5% of his 3s and averaged 18.5 points per game this season. And he’s three years younger than LaVine, which lines him up more with the team’s current timeline.
Porter is a constant injury risk, though, and the Bulls haven’t exactly had stellar luck with those types of players in the past. He was red-flagged in the draft for back problems, which caused him to miss his entire rookie year and most of his fourth year. He also must wear a custom ankle brace at all times, one that severely restricts his movement, because of how injuries have impacted his left leg.
Porter is in the third year of a five-year, $179 million extension. If injuries do hit him again, then that contract could be dead weight on a team’s books for several years. While his passing vision has improved this year and he has worked to make himself a much better defender, he’s still an overall negative in both of those areas.
Still, 26-year-old shooters with Porter’s 6-foot-10 height don’t come around very often. There is a reason why he was considered the No. 1 player in his high school class and was taken in the lottery of the 2018 draft.
The bigger issue for the Bulls would be taking on Nnaji, who was a first round pick himself in the 2020 draft but has been a major disappointment since signing a four-year, $32 million contract. There’s a chance that he will recover and live up to that deal, but it’s more likely that his money eats into the team’s cap until he becomes a free agent in 2028. He must be included in the deal in order to match LaVine’s salary.
The reality is that the Bulls probably won’t be able to move LaVine without taking some bad salary back. Given the constraints of the new collective bargaining agreement, it is too difficult to make a trade otherwise.
A player of LaVine’s caliber would have gotten a lot more in previous seasons, but this is about the best that they can hope for. A bad contract and a good young player who is also slightly overpaid isn’t a bad package for LaVine. The real prize of this trade, though, will be the player that Chicago gets in the 2025 draft.
