NBA Trade Deadline 2017: DeMarcus Cousins Deal Impacts Chicago Bulls
On Sunday night, the All-Star Game was barely over before Adrian Wojnarowski fired off the first Woj Bomb of trade deadline week. The report has the Sacramento Kings sending DeMarcus Cousins to the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for a whole lot of pieces. This is great news for New Orleans, and bad news for a whole bunch of teams, including the Chicago Bulls.
Must Read: Bulls 2017 Draft Board, Part 2
It’s going to take a while for this to sink in and it will be super weird to see Cousins in a jersey other than the Kings. Think about it, the Pels are going to have Anthony Davis and Cousins running in the same frontcourt. It’s going to be somewhere between totally insane and amazing to watch them running the court together.
One team that this isn’t amazing for is the Bulls.
When post-All-Star activities resume, Sacramento will be positioned for the No. 11 slot in the draft. They are 0.5 games ahead of the Portland Trail Blazers and could easily slip below them without the fiery center who currently sits in fourth among all scorers in the league at 27.8 points per game, just 0.1 points ahead of his new teammate, Davis.
Losing Boogie and all of his scoring, along with his late-game defensive heroics, is going to hurt the Kings. Even with the supposed return of Tyreke Evans, Buddy Hield and multiple draft picks, there is little reason to believe Sacramento can maintain their place in the standings.
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This is a major blow to Chicago. The Kings 2017 first-round draft pick is top-10 protected. If the draft were to happen today and there were no surprises in the lottery, that pick would transfer to the Bulls. Now, it appears that all hope for Chicago to add another pick this summer is lost.
The trade has many implications for the entire Western Conference, but the effects will be felt as far away as the Bulls. Chicago was already reportedly looking to acquire first-round picks in exchange for players like Doug McDermott and Robin Lopez. If that information was accurate, they should be even more inclined to make a move before the deadline now that the Kings have heralded their intentions to move away from their star and add multiple young players through this deal with rookie Hield and the upcoming draft picks.
If the rumors of the Bulls chasing first-round picks is accurate, the pressure is going to be on Gar Forman to deliver now that it appears the Sacramento pick will not be a first-rounder, but will land the in the second-round.
One great bit for both Forman and the Reinsdorf ownership group is that their terrific failures will be overshadowed by Vlade Divac and Vivek Ranadive, easily one of the worst front office-ownership combinations in professional sports.