The deal
Bulls get: Otto Porter Jr.
Wizards get: Jabari Parker, Bobby Portis and a 2023 second-round pick
Get more trade grades for every deal here
Chicago Bulls: C+
After deciding against using their cap space on a trade last summer, the Bulls found a way to do so seven months later.
Instead of taking on bad salaries for a draft pick, Chicago used the money to sign Parker to a two-year contract for $40 million with a team option on the second year. Although the investment in Parker was ill-fated, as he briefly fell out of the rotation after Jim Boylen became head coach and has been an afterthought ever since, the structure of his deal gave him trade value as an expiring contract.
Now, instead of taking their chances in free agency again, the Bulls will commit the bulk of their 2019 cap space to taking on Porter's contract, which will pay him $27.3 million in 2019-20 and $28.5 million the following season. That's a hefty amount for a non-All-Star, though I think Porter is worth it in the right situation, with one caveat: the long-term condition of Porter's hip, which hasn't caused him to miss much time in his career but has forced him to deal with ongoing pain. If Porter is sidelined or limited in the future, he won't be able to live up to the rest of his deal.
As for the right situation, I don't think that's Chicago. Porter is a solid complementary piece, a capable defender who scores with high efficiency in a limited role. He's a career 39 percent 3-point shooter who made better than 43 percent of his attempts each of the previous two seasons before dipping to 37 percent so far in 2018-19. There's little question, it's true, that the Bulls could use a player such as that alongside Zach LaVine on the wing. Porter is a vastly superior fit to Parker.
The issue is that Porter isn't good enough to lift a bad team such as Chicago into competitiveness. Acquiring him will work out only if the Bulls' young talent develops enough over the next two seasons to put him in the right context. In particular, Chicago needs to find a point guard of the future, with Kris Dunn failing to seize that mantle this season.
On the plus side, the Bulls held the line on giving back significant young players or draft picks for a player who's fairly paid. Portis, a restricted free agent this summer, was always going to be blocked in Chicago by young frontcourt starters Wendell Carter Jr. and Lauri Markkanen, and the Bulls gave up only a distant second-round pick in terms of draft compensation. By 2023, Chicago's second-rounders might no longer be valuable.
Barring serious injury, Porter should be a better use of the Bulls' cap space than Parker was this season. (They will still have somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 million to spend, depending where their first-round pick falls.) The only question here is whether Chicago could and should have aimed higher than that.
Washington Wizards: B-
The Wizards' changing course with Porter, who at times seemed unavailable, makes sense in the context of Tuesday's sad news that John Wall will undergo surgery to repair his Achilles tendon after a fall in his home. The surgery will keep Wall out for much of 2019-20, if not the entire season.
The "Ewing theory" references with regard to Wall have gotten quieter the past two weeks, as the Wizards have lost four of their past five games -- including against the Cleveland Cavaliers and at home to the Atlanta Hawks -- to fall 3.5 games back of the Miami Heat for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Realistically, Washington wasn't going anywhere this season, and Wall's injury will make it difficult to compete in 2019-20.
Paying the luxury tax for a lottery team makes little sense, and while Porter is a quality player to sacrifice, this deal yields far more financial flexibility for the Wizards. They cut their tax bill this season from nearly $9 million to barely $2 million and have a chance to get out of the tax entirely with a small trade by Thursday's deadline. (Moving Sam Dekker, who's in the final season of his contract, would do the trick.)
Washington's potential savings are greater in 2019-20, when Wall's super-max extension nearly doubles his salary. Assuming the Wizards decline Parker's $20 million team option, they'll have around $30 million or so under the tax to fill out the roster instead of starting against the tax line. That should allow Washington to re-sign key parts of this year's team, including restricted free-agent starters Thomas Bryant and Tomas Satoransky. (Starters Trevor Ariza and Markieff Morris are also unrestricted free agents.)
Portis could be in the mix for a new contract as a restricted free agent too. He and Parker will probably divide the 28 minutes or so that Porter has been averaging, with Portis potentially picking off some center minutes that had been going to Ian Mahinmi or small lineups with Jeff Green at the 5. Although Portis isn't as good as his 21 points and 10.9 rebounds per 36 minutes would suggest, his ability to stretch the floor (career-high 38 percent 3-point shooting this season) makes him a useful reserve big.
I'm curious to see whether the Wizards consider Parker part of the value of this trade or simply matching salary. There's no realistic scenario in which Washington picks up Parker's team option, but he could be re-signed at a lower cost as an unrestricted free agent if both sides like the fit.
Losing Porter will hurt the Wizards on the court, no doubt. But with the team having one of the NBA's biggest mismatches between payroll and performance, something had to give in Washington. With no chance of dealing Wall and with Beal the ideal centerpiece of a retooled roster, Porter was the odd highly paid starter out.