If you check the incoming and outgoing salaries for each team they’re all pretty close.
Option 1:
Blazers – In: 13.5 mil, Out: 14.5 mil
Nuggets – In: 15 mil, Out: 13 mil
Bulls – In: 10 mil, Out: 10 mil

Option 2:
Blazers – In: 12 mil, Out: 14.5 mil
Raptors – In: 10 mil, Out: 10 mil
Bulls – In: 22.5 mil, Out: 20 mil

These numbers should be pretty close.

but we’ll still be below the cap this year, we’ll still have some options for free agents next year, and his salary actually goes down by half a million each of the next two years, and a million for the year after that.
08/09 – 10 mil
09/10 – 9.5 mil
10/11 – 9 mil
11/12 – 8 mil

he could be good if in the right enviornment, and a good team

came back from the cancer a couple weeks ago and played a little until he pulled his groin, i think.

I’ll admit it’s a little high, but I think a lot of teams would have taken him at that price before he had this down year. 35 million over 4 years is only 8.75 mil a year which isn’t too bad for a starting point guard. If you look at where that ranks with other point guards salaries who aren’t on their rookie contract I’d say it’s not too far off.

can you name a better defensive PG that will be attainable that is cheaper? Defensive PGs command a lot more money than Offensive ones for their relative worth…thats why he seems overpaid.

I think the problem with this trade is that we don’t give up enough. We’d still be left with our current problem of too many good players. I’d like to see a deal where we give up something like the following package:

1. Sergio
   
2. Jack
   
3. Jones
   
4. Raef
   
5. Any one of Webster, Outlaw, or Frye
   

And get back one good point guard, plus whatever garbage or bad contracts the other teams want to unload on us. Anyone with character issues will be bought out, and the rest can be our scrubs.

For the last choice in my list, it probably is more about who other teams want the most than who we want to keep. But I think that’s about how many players we should be trying to get rid of. I don’t know who we can get for that (Calderon? Haris? Rose?), but if KP could find a way to get a good PG for about 5 of our players like that, that’s what we need to do, because it (1) gets us a good point guard obviously, but also (2) cleans up our roster jams. A win-win for us. Even though may be sad to see so many players go, it needs to be done.

I predict that such a deal will be made either this summer, next season, or next summer, in preference to the kind of deal you described here.

we will need cap to sign a FA or to take on another player…then we will resign our “core” and be over the salary cap for the next 10 years. We gotta load up on talent while we get the chance…then take advantage of the bird rights.

I thought Hinrich actually made more than he does, and at 8+ million a year he is a good deal—provided he goes back to how he was before this season. If KP thinks this past year was just a fluke and caused partially by the Bulls overall being awful, then I’d be all for buying low on some Hinrich. He IS a good defender and more than capable of hitting the 3 point shot, after all… both things we all say we want in our PG.

If we get the right guy now, I could care less about getting a free agent in 2009. Getting a BIG free agent nearly always ends badly… I’ll miss the flexibility cap space allows us to make a deal, but if we can get a Harris, a Calderon, or even a Hinrich (provided KP believes in him, natch) then what the hell are we waiting for?

I also could care less about how much we pay everyone in a few years, once our Big Three are off their rookie salaries. Paul Allen can afford it, and even if the Big Three are all max deal dudes and we are already at the luxury tax, I don’t mind other guys make lotsa money too as long as they are the RIGHT player. A great PG for around 10 million a year is no foldin’ money out of MY wallet, and as long as they are good and mostly worth the cash and we are winning, then Paul Allen won’t mind payin’.

We don’t want to squander this window of sizeable cap space, but we also shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and expect we’ll get something better than, say, a Calderon in 2009. The best free agent deals are with role players and the MLE, not the big time splashy max deal free agent signings. Of course, it ain’t my money, but I’m just overall wary of any BIG TIME free agent we could maybe lure, and think it much more likely we’ll get a good player with a trade that uses the cap space, or negates any future cap space.

I think Hinrich will bounce back, provided he is healthy.

Mortimer

I actually miscalculated using the 35 mil over 4 years that matthewcc posted above. It’s actually 36.5 over the next 4. That comes out to 9.125 million average (only 375 thousand a year more). But, as I mentioned above the nice thing about his contract is that it actually goes down every year instead of up.