By Zach Harper and Shams Charania
Aug 29, 2024
9
The Bounce Newsletter 
| This is The Athletic’s daily NBA newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Bounce directly in your inbox.
Cooper Flagg signed a shoe deal with New Balance. I’m shocked HOKA didn’t offer up more to try to steal him.
NBA Streaming
New NBA Netflix series has some real potential
Back in January, Shams Charania and Mike Vorkunov reported Netflix was making an NBA documentary series similar to what they’ve done with “Quarterback,” following NFL QBs around the league. There have been a few sports iterations of this style of docu-series from Netflix, and they’ve mostly been successful and well-received. Well, guess what! Netflix and Uninterrupted dropped the trailer for “Starting 5,” the docu-series following LeBron James, Jayson Tatum, Anthony Edwards, Jimmy Butler and Domantas Sabonis throughout the 2023-24 season.
OK, so there’s not a ton to the trailer. It’s mostly just a fake group chat conversation between the five players, with Tatum revealing the show’s cover image to the others. That said, I’m extremely intrigued by this idea and curious how it will be executed. You actually have five fascinating subjects to follow, if this thing is allowed to get a little messy with the storylines. That will be the difference between “Starting 5” being a solid time-waster and a must-see series. Here’s what I’m curious about with the series.
- LeBron is LeBron. He’s very curated and careful in what he does/allows, but LeBron being followed around can still be pretty interesting … especially with the season the Lakers had.
- Tatum’s first ring. Do we see him open up during this march to the championship, and how he handled not playing to his standard while his team found the ultimate success?
- Ant’s meteoric rise. The 22-year-old made the Wolves cool, had tons of viral moments, and should have his own documentary crew following him at all times anyway.
- Jimmy Buckets’ culture. The Heat stuff actually got extremely messy, and Pat Riley called him out at the end of the season. Will we see cracks in the Butler effect in Miami?
- Sabonis’ success. He’s the son of a legend, and creating his own insane stats/individual success. But his team also stagnated, and he might be a reason for that?
Depending on how this thing releases on Oct. 9 and what’s included in the series, I might dive into an extensive review in this space. I’ve been waiting for this and want to see more reveals from the upcoming trailers.
The Latest From Shams
Celtics bolster their depth
It’s a quiet time in the NBA offseason, but the defending champions are still making moves.
The Celtics are adding Lonnie Walker IV to their roster, league sources tell me. Those sources say the 25-year-old guard will be brought in on an Exhibit 10 contract, which allows Boston to give Walker a bonus if he is waived after training camp and plays for the team’s G League affiliate in Maine. I’m told there’s a chance Walker is waived after camp to keep Boston’s 15th roster spot open going into the season.
Walker averaged 9.7 points per game and shot 38.4 percent from 3 last season in 58 games with the Nets. He’ll join a Celtics team that is bringing all of its top players back and looking to become the NBA’s first repeat champions since 2018 (Warriors).
Shaq Deals
Recalling bigs who got paid due to the Diesel
The big man tax! Remember that? It has always existed throughout the NBA’s history, as larger humans were deemed more valuable than smaller humans. That’s the game. And there were times you could get a nice payday simply because you were around 7-feet tall and had six fouls to throw around. That was especially valuable when Shaquille O’Neal roamed the hardwood floors. He was so unstoppable that teams were loading up with 7-footers just to have extra bodies to throw his way. And this approach got some guys PAID.
The Bounce could just sit here and name old players all day. That’s 90 percent of what the internet is for. But instead, we’re going to be far more professional and put this into a tidy little graphic. That professional graphic will let you know what these backup big men were signed for (years and money), the percentage of the salary cap eaten up by it, and what their production was before and during the deal. We’ll use our friend John Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Rating (PER) metric to handle that. In short, it quantifies a player’s production on a per-minute basis. The average PER for an NBA player is 15. Then, we just need a professional name for it. How does Bigs’ Bucks List sound? Just to stay concise, we’ll shorten it to the BBL graphic.
Sources: Basketball Reference, ProSportsTransactions.com
Oh my Moses Malone! Look at these beautiful, nostalgic names! They’re glorious! I’ve highlighted 12 big men I fully believe got PAID because of Shaq’s existence. If you want to quibble with a couple of names on the list, that’s fine. Jim MicIlvaine got paid the same summer Shaq went to the Lakers, and he’s also the only player on this list who played better (by PER measures) during the new deal than before it. The Sonics signed him to replace Ervin Johnson, who was their starting center, after MicIlvaine put up monster numbers of 2.3 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 2.1 blocks with the Washington Bullets.
Deals for journeyman bigs like Chris Dudley and Matt Geiger took up one-fifth of their team’s salary cap. The Geiger one is crazy because the Sixers also threw $57 million over seven years at Theo Ratliff the exact same summer! Dudley is the victim of one of the most vicious poster dunks in NBA history. He got dunked on so badly that he threw the ball at Shaq after.
The Nets pretended Todd MacCulloch would be the size they needed against Shaq after it didn’t work for Philly. I’m shocked it didn’t work in the 2002 NBA Finals. The Mavericks threw crazy money at Shawn Bradley and Evan Eschmeyer (if you’re asking, “who?” don’t worry. You’re correct) just to have giant bodies for Shaq. And, outside of this BBL chart, big men like Joe Kleine, Jon Koncak and Will Perdue saw extra years at the end of their careers just for the fouls. Shaq was an entire economy for giants in the world as long as you were willing to take elbows and demoralizing dunks from him.
TerriBulls History
What will it take for Chicago to thrive again?
Hey, you saw Travis Knight’s name in the BBL chart above, right? Do you know how Knight ended up with that contract for the Celtics? The Bulls selected Knight with the 29th pick in the 1996 NBA Draft. Then, 16 days after drafting him at the end of the first round, they renounced his rights and made him a free agent. He played a year with the Lakers before signing that deal with Boston. In 1996, the NBA started using rookie-scale contracts, which meant the Bulls had to give Knight a three-year rookie deal. They didn’t want to. They didn’t trade the pick either. Hell, Chicago didn’t even pick a European prospect to stash. The Bulls literally wasted a pick out of cheapness after winning 72 games and the NBA title. To me, those are the Bulls I know beyond the ’90s.
If the Bulls could trade away Zach LaVine for a pick and some cap relief today, they absolutely would. They’ve been hoping to trade LaVine for a while, which is crazy considering he signed a five-year, $215 million deal just two years ago. The Bulls just haven’t been nearly good enough to justify the investment, and we’ve started to see them head toward a teardown. DeMar DeRozan and Alex Caruso are gone. They’ve brought in Matas Buzelis (drafted 11th overall) and Josh Giddey (acquired in Caruso trade) for a youth movement.
What should we actually expect in a Bulls rebuild, though? I hate to be so harsh here, but this has mostly been a terribly run basketball franchise for the majority of its existence. I know what you’re thinking:
💭 “But Zach! The Bulls are an NBA institution!” 💭
I mean … kind of? The Bulls won six championships with Michael Jordan leading the way. Jordan is absolutely an institution. Chicago had a brief resurgence with Tom Thibodeau and Derrick Rose before Rose’s body failed him, and the Bulls went back to just good enough sometimes. This has otherwise rarely been a well-run organization, though. And that’s true even with the dynasty from 1991-1998! They had all kinds of turmoil but were just too good to fail.
The Bulls have a bizarre, bad history. The Jordan years made them a hot commodity and gave them the fourth-most championships in NBA history. And they haven’t sniffed a title before or after. Nothing about their past or present makes you hopeful for their future. They need to get lucky in a couple of draft lotteries to bring in some real talent – some talent that can’t miss as superstars. Otherwise, you’re asking a Jerry Reinsdorf organization to be competent and consistent without the greatest player ever swooping in for a decade-plus to carry them. His Airness is 61 years old now … he’s not walking through that door.
