Hey basketball fans, (is this getting old?)
A big trade just went down on January 6th, namely the Cleveland Cavaliers are trading former all-star center Andrew Bynum, who is expected to be waived, and three draft picks (plus the right to trade with Cleveland’s first rounder) to the Chicago Bulls for veteran forward Luol Deng, who rejected a three-year $30 million dollar contract extension from the Bulls the week before.
The argument goes that in the NBA “It’s better to be awful than it is to be mediocre.” Were the Bulls to keep Deng this season, they could have contended for maybe the 7th or 8th seed at best and been beaten by either the Indiana Pacers or the Miami Heat, two teams with championship aspirations and the rosters to match them, this season. With this move, the Bulls place themselves in a position not only to afford better players in the future but also frankly it worsens their team, increasing its chances to lose and get a better position in the 2014 draft lottery where the crown prize Kansas’s Andrew Wiggins could be waiting.
So what do you think? Would you rather your team be an “okay” team that limps into the playoffs before being finished off by a clearly better team, just to see them play? Or would you rather they play to lose so they can be in a better position to improve via the draft?