Flip’s Evil Genius: Bulls Joining the Love Sweepstakes

Could Flip Saunders be an evil genius? It’s looking like he might just be.

On Wednesday, news was passed down the Twitter grapevine that the Chicago Bulls were in on the Kevin Love trade sweepstakes. The source the reporters could be getting this from could be from anywhere and that somewhere just might be from the mind of the part-owner/president of basketball operations/head coach.

Let’s look at the Chicago Bulls and more specifically their big men. Pau Gasol just went to the Windy City to join the team so it now looks like a slate of Joakim Noah and Gasol in the starting five. Where would Love go? There’s no way Love comes off the bench and I doubt that Gasol would be a huge fan of that plan either.

The package that the Bulls are allegedly offering is quite nice: Taj Gibson, Doug McDermott and Nikola Mirotic. That’s a package I’d honestly look at if I was Flip Saunders, but I don’t know if that’s a package Flip honestly has.

I might be thinking it through too much, but it looks more to be a ploy by Saunders to get Cleveland or Golden State to pull their half of the trade trigger.

The big target for the Minnesota Timberwolves has to be Andrew Wiggins. The Wolves never seem to draft All-Stars that want to stay and no free agent is coming to Minnesota anytime soon which means the Wolves need to roll the dice on Wiggins. There’s no concensus on what Wiggins will become in the NBA, but he’s more destined to become a full-fledged superstar than anyone in either the Bulls or Warriors packages. Wiggins could also be a bust, but let’s think positively for a moment…

The Bulls deal can’t be done for 30 days due to the rookie signings of McDermott and Mirotic and the acquisition of Love would make the Bulls very, very top heavy. It’s all setting up for Wiggins. It’s a bluff.

At least it has to be, right? The Wolves couldn’t just luck into something like this. The Wolves have no luck. We have all accepted the fact that the Target Center is built on an ancient burial ground.

Either way, the Wolves are in a good position. They allegedly have three pretty solid deals on or near the table for an All-Star player. I love it.