I’ve spent a lot of time on Facebook Marketplace. From browsing free listings to negotiating margins of around $5 that make up less than 10% of the item’s price, I’ve spent time on that junk pile. In fact, nothing has prepared me better to talk about the NBA trade and free agent market than trying to convince someone that a painted plastic table could be considered “redwood” because it was a deep orange color with a wood grain pattern. I’m the Danny Ainge of online selling.
But on the rare occasion that you find something magical — a $30 full-size dining table, a $20 professional knife set, or an $11 Ben Simmons jersey — you overthink it while riding the subway to pick it up, and you wonder why it’s so undervalued.
One day you were right to be skeptical. You wasted a whole day on a sewing machine that wouldn’t pick up thread. Another day, Golden State Warriorsand was offered Zach LaVine simply as a salary filler.
You smile kindly, mute the call to discuss with the front office, and say…
“no.”
How did this happen? Did a 29-year-old All-Star with the ability to shoot from distance and from the rim become a negative asset to most of the league? Why did the Warriors decide to leave the team? Chris Paul cut Why not trade him away for a player who could potentially contribute, as they did when they acquired D’Angelo Russell in a sign-and-trade for Kevin Durant?
The obvious answer is the price tag that comes with LaVine and the five-year, $215 million contract he signed after the 2021-22 season. With a player option for just under $50 million for 2026-27 on top of his contract for this season and next, LaVine’s contract is widely viewed as exactly the type of bad contract that’s holding the NBA back under the new CBA.
However, this is not actually the case.
Excluding players, Zach LaVine is tied for the 18th highest-paid player in the NBA (From Spotrac). Timberwolves, Suns, and Sixers The Pacers account for three of the top 25 contracts in the annual average cap table. Celticsthe Bucks have two each.
Even in today’s NBA, big contracts are not impossible to make — the Suns and Bucks both lost in the first round, while the Timberwolves and Pacers both made it to the conference finals — and Boston is willing to pay big money to the top two teams. The greatest contract in NBA history And the NBA champions, the Sixers Huge payment This is the first time they have advanced beyond the second round since 2001.
All that remains is health, as LaVine played just 25 games last year before suffering an ankle injury. Subsequent surgery —Finished the season Bulls fans begged for For relief from the half-assed hell that GM Arturas Karnisovas has led them into.
However, simply saying LaVine isn’t worth the contract in that situation doesn’t stand up to any deeper analysis. Consider the Sixers. Paul George caught the big fish this seasonPG Signed Four-year, $213 million contractThat’s more than Zach LaVine’s second year contract total, just one year less.
But health-wise, there’s not much difference between the two. Paul George has played in 215 regular-season games over the past four years, just a little more than his 60 games last season, while Zach LaVine has played in 227 games, averaging just 25 this year after appearing in more than three-quarters of the Bulls’ games for two straight years.
Paul George is undoubtedly a better player than Zach LaVine. He’s a much better defender, even if he’s not the defensive stalwart and two-way superstar he once was. Historically, George is also a better creator than LaVine, although they had the same assist percentages last year. From track record to reputation to podcasts, Paul George has the edge over LaVine.
That doesn’t change the fact that much older, more injury-prone players are now signing longer contracts, while a player who had the best year of his career just a year and a half ago is failing to take a pay cut because the market is too bad.
All of this brings us back to the question of why. The two obvious reasons, money and health, don’t quite hold up under real-world examination. Was it the Bulls’ fault for publicly publishing ad hominem attacks on a player they planned to trade? I think that’s relevant. Was it wise to anonymously accuse LaVine of having surgery through the media? devalue yourselfAbsolutely not, are you kidding me?!
But while those two things explain the breakdown in Chicago’s relationship with Zach, they don’t explain the pessimism throughout the league. Even the typical “too big to give up” logic against trades doesn’t apply here. Again, the Warriors were offered pay cuts of their own with the Andrew Wiggins trade and Chris Paul’s expiring contract, but they refused. They rejected the trade, even though they were giving up negative value.
Now, it’s worth noting that the entire league doesn’t have to like LaVine. The Bulls only need one team to show interest to make the deal happen. The Lakers Reportedly interested in Jerami GrantDespite having players like him on the roster, Grant would be a real asset to the rebuilding Trail Blazers. Why wouldn’t the Lakers try to acquire a shot creator instead? Who they previously tried to trade with — a few cents on the dollar (or a few cents per DLo).
But that leaves us with an obvious truth: Sometimes things are inexplicable. Sometimes you just have to put your feet on the ground, look around and say, “I’m not wrong, the world is wrong.” For a team with limited room for improvement, especially one trying to keep an aging superstar happy, there is absolutely no world in which it’s not worth taking a shot at Zach LaVine.
The perception of LaVine is way too skewed in the opposite direction from reality.
There’s no purely basketball-based answer to the question of why nobody wants LaVine — at least not one that doesn’t involve obvious contradictions. The 29-year-old shooting guard is one year away from posting the best averages of his career. Defense and Total Win SharesIt’s just baffling that a guy who makes 3-pointers well above league average with and without the ball is being treated like a bedbug-infested duvet being sold on the internet in low-res photos.
It seems the two are headed for divorce anyway. I want to go somewhere elseNow the Bulls will finally listen to their fans’ wishes and begin a rebuild around two young guards, Coby White and Ayo Dosmunu, and recent draft pick Matas Buzelis.
But while the perception of LaVine seems as bad as it gets, sometimes we let the dollar amount dehumanize the player. We often forget who is behind the numbers, and let a little column in Basketball Reference tell us all we need to know, then mold it to fit our narrative. Somehow, with the thundercloud of narrative constantly descending over LaVine’s head, the numbers no longer matter.
This doesn’t mean Zach will immediately return to All-Star status or reach the level his contract implies, nor does it mean he’s capable of being the team’s best player or leading a mid-major roster to a championship contender, but he is certainly a top option for a team looking for a true differentiator in the marketplace, not a negative asset as has been made out to be.
We over-adjusted. We forgot that good players make a lot of money and good players have bad years. Zach LaVine is a great player. You don’t give up good players or give them first-round picks. You don’t turn them down when they’re given to you for free.
Yes, NBA GMs are wrong, and when this is all over, at least a few of them will regret missing out on Zach LaVine.
