Photo Credit: Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune
NBA Offseason Grades – Chicago Bulls & Cleveland Cavaliers
CHICAGO BULLS: C-
What the hell are you doing Chicago? The Bulls in case you didn’t know, remain a dysfunctional front office. They let their best player in Jimmy Butler go and got peanuts and a bag of chips for him. After having Rajon Rondo, Butler and Dwyane Wade to start last campaign, it looked promising for Bulls’ fans, but they have truly messed things up as they’re now left with a strange roster with no balance. Wade took on his player option but then the Bulls traded Butler all but proclaiming they’ll go into rebuilding mode, which forced Wade to push for a buyout from his contract, which was granted just a couple of days ago. He’s off to Cleveland to join forces with LeBron but the Bulls roster is in ruins at the moment. They have too many guards at the moment which is going to be a big problem. Cameron Payne needs surgery, newly acquired Zach Lavine is coming back from injury, Denzel Valentine needs minutes, as does Jerian Grant, new man Kris Dunn, Justin Holiday and rookie Ryan Arcidiacono. So many guards and not enough minutes to go around. The Bulls do have some young talent incuding Bobby Portis, it will be a focus to develop them as much as they can during this rebuilding phase. A poor summer for them.
CLEVELAND CAVALIERS: A+
The Cavaliers may have lost Kyrie Irving, but boy are they ALL IN for this season. Kyrie is a special talent, but despite losing him, the Cavs massively improved this summer. Their roster is completely stacked and could realistically go 13-14 players deep for this season. They have brought in Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Jeff Green, Cedi Osman, Jose Calderon, Ante Zizic, Derrick Rose and Dwyane Wade in a massive punch of talent to an already gifted roster. Their versatility and potential defensive identity is the biggest asset the Cavs have brought in. They have addressed their backup point guard and bench scoring issues which hurt them in the Finals last season. It’s been an almost perfect off season for the Wine and Gold, they had to close the gap to Golden State as best they could, and they’ve done just that.
